Autodesk Fusion free version - does it do anything beyond viewing?

[ebastler]

Win11 requires, from memory, the SSE4 CPU (not an issue if less than 10 years old), UEFI, secure boot, and TPM.
[...]
If a machine is not 100% compatible then Win11 will need a hack to install. Then, AIUI you will not get Win11 major updates but will get patches and antivirus updates.

Yes, we are talking about the same things. The "Rufus" tool I mentioned is one (very convenient) way to "hack" the installation to avoid those artificial requirements.

I think the 25H2 update, i.e. the most recent major (?) upgrade, has worked or is offered on "non-compatible" machines as well. Sure, Microsoft reserves the right not to roll out future upgrades to those older machines. If they actually withhold them, that may be a good thing... they are just making Windows shittier by forcing Copilot and online services down our throats.

[peter-h]

Yes, 25H2 can be installed with Rufus, but you won't be offered the next one by M$

[ebastler]

Yes, 25H2 can be installed with Rufus, but you won't be offered the next one by M$

What I meant is that I had installed Win 11 24H2 (or whatever the current version was at that time) via Rufus, and could later update to 25H2.

Will a future 2026 version be available too? We don't know. Microsoft states that those old machines "may" not be supported, but up to now apparently all updates have been made available. I have read the claim somewhere that major updates will not be actively offered on those pseudo-incompatible machines, but have to be "requested" by the user somehow -- but I don't recall how this actually went for 25H2.

[peter-h]

Interesting. I have two similar to this

Edition   Windows 11 Pro
Version   24H2
Installed on   ‎24/‎07/‎2025
OS build   26100.7623
Experience   Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.26100.275.0

which will not upgrade, via M$ update. But maybe win11 was installed on these via some other hack. They are Lenovo mini PCs, one i5 and one i7.

Not that this matters to Fusion, or any other app I know about.

[peter-h]

The stupid software now asks for a login, sending a code to your email address before the application opens.

Why on earth are they exercising this degree of control over the user?

[KE5FX]

Because Autodesk.  Any other questions?

[langwadt]

The stupid software now asks for a login, sending a code to your email address before the application opens.

Why on earth are they exercising this degree of control over the user?

because they want people making money with it to pay for the software. free Fusion for home use started with few restrictions but of course people started abusing it

[peter-h]

I appreciate Autodesk won't know what I do with it (I asked someone to design a box for me and I use it to open the .f3d file and export to STEP to get a Chinese shop to make five of them; I have no idea how to use the program for anything, and it seems too bloody complicated to even stick a hole somewhere) but IF I was using it for a core business function (like PCB design or drawing circuits) I would NOT use this thing for it, because Autodesk could f**k me one day with these measures, and then I can't open the file anymore.

If I was actually doing 3D design I would use FreeCAD because it is a standalone application, can be archived, run in a VM if necessary, doesn't AFAIK phone back to the Church to do mandatory telemetry, etc.

Basically Fusion is dongled, and Autodesk owns that dongle and "re-approves" it every time you use the program. It is completely ridiculous what "we" accept this, and spend time to generate designs which nothing else can open.

All Autodesk needs to do is to delete that validation server, or accidentally or deliberately remove your credentials from it, and you cannot use the program!

The only protection you have is to export every version of your design to STEP and archive those, but you can't edit those properly.

And they charge £80/month for this.

And it is not even a normal executable. It is a huge number of files which end up dumped across a number of directories somewhere in Application Data (i.e. under the c:\users tree) so you can't even find the executable, so you could reinstall it.

[langwadt]

I appreciate Autodesk won't know what I do with it (I asked someone to design a box for me and I use it to open the .f3d file and export to STEP to get a Chinese shop to make five of them; I have no idea how to use the program for anything, and it seems too bloody complicated to even stick a hole somewhere) but IF I was using it for a core business function (like PCB design or drawing circuits) I would NOT use this thing for it, because Autodesk could f**k me one day with these measures, and then I can't open the file anymore.

So you used it to make money?

If I was actually doing 3D design I would use FreeCAD because it is a standalone application, can be archived, run in a VM if necessary, doesn't AFAIK phone back to the Church to do mandatory telemetry, etc.

I've tried Freecad because it would be convenient to not need windows, but I find freecad to be absolutely horrid

The only protection you have is to export every version of your design to STEP and archive those, but you can't edit those properly.

And they charge £80/month for this.

You can edit stepfiles, but you will ofcourse lose all the fusion specific things like parametrics and constrains

£80/month is so cheap it might as well be free if you are using it professionally, if you buy a year it is only £50/month
 
Similar programs with a perpetual license you would basically pay the same monthly price 10 years up front then on top pay £1500 per year for updates and support 
 

[ebastler]

So you used it to make money?

Not more than $1000 annually, by the sound of it.

[ebastler]

The stupid software now asks for a login, sending a code to your email address before the application opens.

I don't think this has happened to me yet, except after I had installed Fusion on a new computer. What are the exact circumstances under which you get the code-via-email verification?

[peter-h]

I have not made enough out of this to pay a month's rental It is a hobby project. As I said, it would be dumb to use it for a production item, when you can lose the source. Admittedly that happens when you contract out injection mould design, you get IGES only, but few regard that as unusual...

Not sure of the circumstances or why it does this check. Maybe it found some aborted installs from the past?

[langwadt]

The stupid software now asks for a login, sending a code to your email address before the application opens.

I don't think this has happened to me yet, except after I had installed Fusion on a new computer. What are the exact circumstances under which you get the code-via-email verification?

doesn't seem to have any specific circumstances, it occasionally happens with a paid license too

[peter-h]

In what way is Freecad horrible?

I think Fusion is horrible. I've spent my life learning UIs etc etc and have been totally unable to do anything with Fusion, other than select components for export and rotate them for viewing. It is incredibly context dependent.

I used Autocad ok many years ago.

Fundamentally, with 3D tools you draw the plan view and then extrude it on the Z axis. I am sure Freecad can do that. Also many years ago I played with some free version of Solid Edge (which I now see advertised by Siemens!!).

[ataradov]

If all you do is draw a plan and extrude it, then FreeCAD works fine. If you do anything more complicated, it is pretty painful.

I use it a lot because I won't give Autodesk any money nor do I want to be locked to proprietary ecosystem, but I suffer for it. You need to be careful and work around known weak points, or complex models will break often.

FreeCAD is improving a lot recently and some of the major issues are being addressed, but fundamentally it is limited by its geometry engine (OpenCASCADE). And those issues are not going to be easy to solve.

[jc101]

I've tried FreeCAD, but I wasted a lot of time trying to do what I can do easily and reasonably quickly in Fusion. Currently, I am on a grandfathered plan, which means the recent price increases have not affected me. FreeCAD is, well, free and open source, which is excellent. But it also feels very much that way. It may have improved of late. The last time I really tried to get to grips with it, it felt disjointed and clunky.

The huge downside is that Fusion has zero interoperability with anything else. My stuff is "locked" in the ecosystem. I could export everything and load the .step files into another platform or recreate them elsewhere. For me, it isn't viable time-wise to do that. It is "cheaper" to pay and keep using Fusion. If the price really does go up, then I'll have to look again at options.

[peter-h]

Autodesk make sure the Fusion .f3d format remains non-portable, because they change it with every Fusion update i.e. about once a month. A non-updated Fusion cannot open a .f3d file from a later version. OK; could be just a version # they write in there, which could be hacked (unless they use a crypto hash) but the intention is clearly there.

[MarkF]

I've been using FreeCAD for a long time and don't find it as troublesome
as everyone is making it out to be.  Even for complex models.
I mostly use an old version 0.21.2 for Win7 which was released in 2024.

Examples I've done:

 

 

 

[ataradov]

There is a factor of moving to another CAD. It will always be harder to do the same simple thing in a CAD you never used.

Over time you get used to the way things work and just avoid things you know may cause issues.

FreeCAD is perfectly usable for hobby applications. It is nowhere close to commercial use. But again, everyone who has tried it 3+ years ago does not have a full picture. Last couple major releases fixed a lot of stuff. This jump feels like when KiCad moved from v5 to v6. It is on a path to getting actually useful.

[peter-h]

There is always a learning curve on any sophisticated tool. That's why I refuse to use tools which are controlled "online" by the vendor

I should check out freelancer.com for FreeCAD

FreeCAD is perfectly usable for hobby applications. It is nowhere close to commercial use

Can you quantify this? IMHO a tool suitable for commercial use is one which does the job and has no long term issues. Fusion absolutely does have huge potential long term issues. Imagine you have just chucked out your win10 PCs and replaced them with win11 compatible ones, just so Fusion can continue to receive updates (which is mandatory if you want to open .f3d files produced by Fusion running on a win11 PC). OK; M$ will probably not perform the same mandatory-dumpster-loading stunt on win11 to win12, but can you be sure?

[MarkF]

"Freelancer" . . .      That would be me.   

The last two models I posted photos of I did for two forum members.
Each of the models were done in an afternoon.
But, sub-millimeter adjustments to get the proper fit took a few days.  Time zones wreck the whole process.

Follow along with the fun here:

  3D model for Fluke CableIQ wiremap adapter

  Grille for Kikusui PLZ334W Electronic Load

[peter-h]

I've sent you a PM

[ataradov]

Can you quantify this?

Sure. You need to be prepared to redo a lot of operations unless your tree is absolutely perfect.

The older versions were really bad. They improved topological naming problem, and it became more robust, but still not perfect.

It's geometry engine notoriously struggles with fillets. Sometimes fillets will not work for no obvious reason.

And the biggest one is error reporting. A lot of complex operations will fail with "error: not done" and you will have no clue why. This is really big, and unfortunately it just passes OpenCASCADE error, so it is very hard to fix.

In a hobby environment it is fine, but when time is money,you will be losing money.

[KE5FX]

How easy is it to swap out OpenCASCADE?  If someone waved a magic wand and replaced it with a performant, bug-free geometry library, would FreeCAD suddenly become competitive with the major proprietary packages?

It's not as if there are unsolved problems in the field of computational geometry.  It's just a pain in the ass to work with.  Or, rather, it traditionally has been.  Maybe it's not so bad now.

[ataradov]

It is hard to tell, the UI while somewhat independent, still represents capabilities of the engine. Swapping the engine will lead to some UI changes, and I have no idea how much.

But generally, all long running day to day things end up being engine related. FreeCAD team does decent work on the UI and that work accelerated in the recent versions, but there is so much they can do.

Error reporting is one of the biggest complaints. It would be much easier to figure out how to fix issues if error messages were more specific. It would not eliminate the issues, but it would make existing ones less frustrating.

From my perspective, a lot of workbenches need to be combined. And this is something FreeCAD authors could do, but it looks like they like the way things are. Again, it feels like they are in an early KiCAD days - just doing their own thing. And the only way they get significant traction if they start matching industry standard behavior.