Fusion 360 - MECHANICAL design Tips Tweaks and discussion. (Not Eagle)

[sokoloff]

As they still refuse to offer a reasonably-priced nonprofit/personal use subscription, I'm beginning to wonder how long before all that's left is the advertising. 

yeh, with their claims of "staying true to our guiding principles of democratizing design for everyone." it just doesn't feel right that someone
using every day professionally and some using for fun as a hobby on weekends should pay the same

to a company using it professionally to make money $800 for three years might as well be nothing, for a hobbyist not so much

I'm not happy about the loss of STEP export either, but I take the perspective that I, as a weekend hobbyist, am going to continue to use Fusion360 for modeling for 3D printing and I'm not going to pay the same as someone using it everyday professionally.

They're going to pay $300-450/yr and I'm going to pay nothing.

[PlainName]

I'm beginning to wonder how long before all that's left is the advertising.

It's taken you this long to figure that?

It's Autodesk. They're not in the business of giving people free stuff - their core is to sell expensive stuff. The only reason they let you have this for nowt is because that's the only way to get new bums on seats. It's a well-trodden path, particularly with complex products where there is a learning curve - get them hooked with low- or zero-cost versions and then force them to upgrade once they are locked in. Microsoft achieved this by turning a blind eye to pirated Word, so despite stuff like Ami being superior they got the eyeballs. When a business buts new stuff, what their users already know has the foot in the door, and the rest is history.

Here, they want your muscle memory to favour their tools, and all your documents locked into their format. The longer you stick with them the harder it will be to break away...

The surprise here is not that Autodesk are turning the screws but that apparently no-one saw it coming.

[krzysssztof]

To all who is/was using Fusion 360 for creating KiCAD footprints : you should definitely try FreeCAD.

It has much less features than Fusion 360, it is also harder to master and has some issues.

But from the other side - it has got some plugins dedicated to exchange data between KiCAD and FreeCAD. You can send your models back and forth in just a second. It also has a one button click funtionality to importPCB model from KiCAD so you can easily fit it to your housing modeled in FreeCAD.

[Bassman59]

To all who is/was using Fusion 360 for creating KiCAD footprints : you should definitely try FreeCAD.

It has much less features than Fusion 360, it is also harder to master and has some issues.

But from the other side - it has got some plugins dedicated to exchange data between KiCAD and FreeCAD. You can send your models back and forth in just a second. It also has a one button click funtionality to importPCB model from KiCAD so you can easily fit it to your housing modeled in FreeCAD.

I have tried FreeCAD -- for the Kicad Step-Up -- and other than for that one specific use, FreeCAD is awful.

[PlainName]

FreeCAD is awful

But is actually free, and will remain so

As it happens, I used it for real last night to create a 3D model to print. My normal CAD tool is TurboCAD, so FreeCAD isn't as bad in comparison than if I were coming from Fusion. But then you pays your money and takes your choice - if you like Fusion 360 enough, surely you would buy a license.

[mnementh]

I'm beginning to wonder how long before all that's left is the advertising.

It's taken you this long to figure that?

It's Autodesk. They're not in the business of giving people free stuff - their core is to sell expensive stuff. The only reason they let you have this for nowt is because that's the only way to get new bums on seats. It's a well-trodden path, particularly with complex products where there is a learning curve - get them hooked with low- or zero-cost versions and then force them to upgrade once they are locked in. Microsoft achieved this by turning a blind eye to pirated Word, so despite stuff like Ami being superior they got the eyeballs. When a business buts new stuff, what their users already know has the foot in the door, and the rest is history.

Here, they want your muscle memory to favour their tools, and all your documents locked into their format. The longer you stick with them the harder it will be to break away...

The surprise here is not that Autodesk are turning the screws but that apparently no-one saw it coming.

We all saw it coming. We're not stupid; we're engineers FFS.   

But there's a difference between "turning the screws" and making your introductory product useless for its primary purpose, thereby driving those who might be willing to give you money for it turn away in disgust. AutoDouche aren't just stepping over that line, they're moving the line to the edge of a cliff and jumping over it.

Given what it has to offer now I certainly wouldn't give them more than $50 for it, and "Not only no, but hell NO!" to their moronic subscription-only business model.

I'll continue using the free version to make plastic toys and spacers/cribbing blocks/bushings to print on my 3DP; that's exactly what it's good for. Any further drafting work will be done in some other environment, and I will take the skills I learned on F360 elsewhere, giving AD $0 for that education. That's exactly what their business model is worth.

mnem
Fuck 'em. And the whores they rode in on.

[Bassman59]

I'm beginning to wonder how long before all that's left is the advertising.

It's taken you this long to figure that?

It's Autodesk. They're not in the business of giving people free stuff - their core is to sell expensive stuff. The only reason they let you have this for nowt is because that's the only way to get new bums on seats. It's a well-trodden path, particularly with complex products where there is a learning curve - get them hooked with low- or zero-cost versions and then force them to upgrade once they are locked in. Microsoft achieved this by turning a blind eye to pirated Word, so despite stuff like Ami being superior they got the eyeballs. When a business buts new stuff, what their users already know has the foot in the door, and the rest is history.

Here, they want your muscle memory to favour their tools, and all your documents locked into their format. The longer you stick with them the harder it will be to break away...

The surprise here is not that Autodesk are turning the screws but that apparently no-one saw it coming.

We all saw it coming. We're not stupid; we're engineers FFS.   

Well, see, that's the crazy thing. All over this forum I see engineers (or maybe they're hobbyists pretending to be engineers) who are always looking for ways to "hack" a product to get a "free" upgrade (see the endless Rigol and Siglent threads) or looking for cheap clones of products. "Oh, the Saelae logic analyzer is too expensive, fuck them, I'll use the clone." So if you're an engineer, you should understand how product pricing works and why the Saelae is more expensive.

I wonder how many of these engineers expect customers to pay their asking price for their products.

I wonder how many of these engineers decry Chinese cloners when it comes to their products.

But there's a difference between "turning the screws" and making your introductory product useless for its primary purpose, thereby driving those who might be willing to give you money for it turn away in disgust. AutoDouche aren't just stepping over that line, they're moving the line to the edge of a cliff and jumping over it.

Given what it has to offer now I certainly wouldn't give them more than $50 for it, and "Not only no, but hell NO!" to their moronic subscription-only business model.

To be honest, I'm surprised that their free version has persisted as long as it has. How does a company pay its engineers if a very usable version of its product is free?

Sure, it's just "software," and "software wants to be free," but unless you work for free and don't want anyone to pay you for your designs, then surely you see that software development is not just handwaving and magic. It's real work.

I'll continue using the free version to make plastic toys and spacers/cribbing blocks/bushings to print on my 3DP; that's exactly what it's good for. Any further drafting work will be done in some other environment, and I will take the skills I learned on F360 elsewhere, giving AD $0 for that education. That's exactly what their business model is worth.

Please report back and say which environment you've chosen, and whether it's as efficient as F360 or as easy to learn and use, and we'll all switch to it en masse and show those fuckers at Autodesk that we think they suck!

I mean -- yeah, I use Kicad and it's an excellent piece of work regardless of its cost. I hope that their Kicad Services thing enables the developers to make a living doing it. I started using it several years ago (during the run-up to the 4.0 release) because I needed to design some boards and my Ultiboard license was showing its age. Altium then as now was way more expensive than I could justify. The only real option was EAGLE. And I looked at EAGLE, and considered springing the $1000 or whatever for the unlimited license, but hot damn that program was a mess. The libraries system stinks, the user interface was designed by dingbats and the only reason it ever got any traction was because they had a very limited free version that all of the Open Source Hardware weenies jumped on. (I should note that I looked at gEDA back then and that package sucks in every way.) To be fair, the recent price drop in OrCAD makes that look attractive, but see, Kicad is eminently usable.

Can FreeCAD become to 3D design what Kicad is to PCB design? Sure, yeah, if the developers had vision. And income. Right now, FreeCAD is a toy, it has been a toy for several years now, and I don't see evidence that it will be anything but a toy.

All of this is to say that I'll probably end up springing the $300/yr for the "startup" or "personal" or whateverfuck version of F360. Why? Because it works.

[langwadt]

I'm beginning to wonder how long before all that's left is the advertising.

It's taken you this long to figure that?

It's Autodesk. They're not in the business of giving people free stuff - their core is to sell expensive stuff. The only reason they let you have this for nowt is because that's the only way to get new bums on seats. It's a well-trodden path, particularly with complex products where there is a learning curve - get them hooked with low- or zero-cost versions and then force them to upgrade once they are locked in. Microsoft achieved this by turning a blind eye to pirated Word, so despite stuff like Ami being superior they got the eyeballs. When a business buts new stuff, what their users already know has the foot in the door, and the rest is history.

Here, they want your muscle memory to favour their tools, and all your documents locked into their format. The longer you stick with them the harder it will be to break away...

The surprise here is not that Autodesk are turning the screws but that apparently no-one saw it coming.

We all saw it coming. We're not stupid; we're engineers FFS.   

Well, see, that's the crazy thing. All over this forum I see engineers (or maybe they're hobbyists pretending to be engineers) who are always looking for ways to "hack" a product to get a "free" upgrade (see the endless Rigol and Siglent threads) or looking for cheap clones of products. "Oh, the Saelae logic analyzer is too expensive, fuck them, I'll use the clone." So if you're an engineer, you should understand how product pricing works and why the Saelae is more expensive.

I wonder how many of these engineers expect customers to pay their asking price for their products.

I wonder how many of these engineers decry Chinese cloners when it comes to their products.

But there's a difference between "turning the screws" and making your introductory product useless for its primary purpose, thereby driving those who might be willing to give you money for it turn away in disgust. AutoDouche aren't just stepping over that line, they're moving the line to the edge of a cliff and jumping over it.

Given what it has to offer now I certainly wouldn't give them more than $50 for it, and "Not only no, but hell NO!" to their moronic subscription-only business model.

To be honest, I'm surprised that their free version has persisted as long as it has. How does a company pay its engineers if a very usable version of its product is free?

Sure, it's just "software," and "software wants to be free," but unless you work for free and don't want anyone to pay you for your designs, then surely you see that software development is not just handwaving and magic. It's real work.

but it was only free to those that worked for free and didn't get any pay for their designs, maybe the issue was that too many where abusing the system
which is sad because a $300-500 a year to a company using it professionally is basically nothing

[mnementh]

All of these arguments were addressed in my "not offering a reasonably-priced personal-use/non-profit use version" comment.

What's broken in their business model is not that they expect to get paid for it, but rather that they deliberately design it to use lots of resources on their end, then use that as an excuse to try and sell it the way some corner pusher sells crack: Free at first to get you hooked, then out come the meathooks every few months for another chunk of money.

Not interested in propagating that business model. For my level of design, their thin-client approach serves ONLY them; it does me no favors. If they offered a sanely-priced version that just does what I need, I'd buy it... ONCE. Not gonna buy it over and over again.

Like I said; I'll use them as long as the free version continues to do what I need. I'll gladly take advantage of the education that software offers. When it ceases to do what I need, then AD will have outlived its usefulness to me and they will be kicked to the curb, just like Adobe and Norton before them.

mnem
*playing the non-zero-sum game*

[mstevens]

Can FreeCAD become to 3D design what Kicad is to PCB design? Sure, yeah, if the developers had vision. And income. Right now, FreeCAD is a toy, it has been a toy for several years now, and I don't see evidence that it will be anything but a toy.

At one point people like yourself were saying the same thing about Linux. Just because it is free, and lacks being developed by a company, does not mean it is a toy.

[Bassman59]

Can FreeCAD become to 3D design what Kicad is to PCB design? Sure, yeah, if the developers had vision. And income. Right now, FreeCAD is a toy, it has been a toy for several years now, and I don't see evidence that it will be anything but a toy.

At one point people like yourself were saying the same thing about Linux. Just because it is free, and lacks being developed by a company, does not mean it is a toy.

Are we at Linux on the desktop yet?

Exactly.

But more to the point, it is obvious that there is a difference between OS development and a niche application like 3D modeling.

You might also notice that I mentioned being a Kicad user, and honestly, that's a better comparison than Linux. I think Kicad succeeds where gEDA and FreeCAD fail because the development process is clear and open, there's a vision for the product, there are a handful of serious lead programmers, and there is financial support from at least one large organization.

[langwadt]

All of these arguments were addressed in my "not offering a reasonably-priced personal-use/non-profit use version" comment.

What's broken in their business model is not that they expect to get paid for it, but rather that they deliberately design it to use lots of resources on their end, then use that as an excuse to try and sell it the way some corner pusher sells crack: Free at first to get you hooked, then out come the meathooks every few months for another chunk of money.

Not interested in propagating that business model. For my level of design, their thin-client approach serves ONLY them; it does me no favors. If they offered a sanely-priced version that just does what I need, I'd buy it... ONCE. Not gonna buy it over and over again.

Like I said; I'll use them as long as the free version continues to do what I need. I'll gladly take advantage of the education that software offers. When it ceases to do what I need, then AD will have outlived its usefulness to me and they will be kicked to the curb, just like Adobe and Norton before them.

mnem
*playing the non-zero-sum game*

The subscription model gives them a steady income to keep the product current, at the extreme the alternative is that everyone buys it once and they close the company

this guys explains it well: https://www.reddit.com/r/CNC/comments/iuem5t/lots_of_fusion_users_here_so_heres_a_heads_up_to/g5na7ee/

[PlainName]

Edit: went off on one. A somewhat more coherent response:

The subscription model gives them a steady income to keep the product current, at the extreme the alternative is that everyone buys it once and they close the company

That's rubbish. First, many many MANY companies seem to manage with a single charge per item. Particularly companies that have to actually supply stuff too (so have proper overheads rather than just a software duplication pseudo-charge).

Second, what God-given right do these companies have to be given a living? Why aren't I given a guaranteed income for doing a hell of a lot of work that no-one wants to pay for? If they want income they should supply what people want to pay for.

Manufacturers of physical goods employ designers to design new products. Unless you're selling tractors (apparently) you're not renting the stuff when you sell it. If you can't afford to continue development of your product because everyone that might ever buy one has already bought it, you suck as a businessman and should be doing something else. Running the UK government springs to mind, but there are other scenarios.

[langwadt]

Edit: went off on one. A somewhat more coherent response:

The subscription model gives them a steady income to keep the product current, at the extreme the alternative is that everyone buys it once and they close the company

That's rubbish. First, many many MANY companies seem to manage with a single charge per item. Particularly companies that have to actually supply stuff too (so have proper overheads rather than just a software duplication pseudo-charge).

Second, what God-given right do these companies have to be given a living? Why aren't I given a guaranteed income for doing a hell of a lot of work that no-one wants to pay for? If they want income they should supply what people want to pay for.

Manufacturers of physical goods employ designers to design new products. Unless you're selling tractors (apparently) you're not renting the stuff when you sell it. If you can't afford to continue development of your product because everyone that might ever buy one has already bought it, you suck as a businessman and should be doing something else. Running the UK government springs to mind, but there are other scenarios.

I'm particularly happy about subscriptions either but I understand why the companies do it, unlike a physical product unless there is a big change in computer hardware or OS, software doesn't "wear out"

just consider the subscription as a payment plan,

[PlainName]

just consider the subscription as a payment plan,

It's not, since you can never pay it off. That's like infinite interest.

[Bassman59]

Edit: went off on one. A somewhat more coherent response:

The subscription model gives them a steady income to keep the product current, at the extreme the alternative is that everyone buys it once and they close the company

That's rubbish. First, many many MANY companies seem to manage with a single charge per item. Particularly companies that have to actually supply stuff too (so have proper overheads rather than just a software duplication pseudo-charge).

So you buy an oscilloscope. You give the vendor say $2,500. You have an oscilloscope, hopefully it does what you want. But what if you realize at some point that you need wider bandwidth, or more channels, or deeper memory?  Well, there you go, you have to buy a new oscilloscope. Well, ok, unless you bought one which has an option to add two new channels (which means you paid for an expansion capability you might never use) or add that bandwidth (by swapping out the front end boards with new ones, and you paid for that possibility up front too). In any case, if you want more later, you pay more later too.

re: overheads. So, software engineers don't get paid salaries and benefits? Their offices don't have heating, air conditioning, utilities, all of that? Or are you a hobbyist who thinks like Stallman that "all software should be free?"

Second, what God-given right do these companies have to be given a living?

They have none. But if they offer a product for sale, then what god-given right do you have to say that they charge too much or that you want it for free? Call up Autodesk and demand that they give you full-up F360 for free forever, and they'll politely tell you to go away.

Why aren't I given a guaranteed income for doing a hell of a lot of work that no-one wants to pay for?

People don't want to pay for someone else's work because they think they're special or they're entitled. You think you're entitled to their work for free because nobody wants to pay you for your work.

If they want income they should supply what people want to pay for.

They do. They supply a quality product at an extraordinarily low price. $300 a year for F360 is unbelievably inexpensive, compared to say a SolidWorks license.

Manufacturers of physical goods employ designers to design new products.

And software vendors employ designers and engineers to design new products, too. Again, you're laboring under the delusion that software engineering isn't actually work and that the engineers doing it do not deserve compensation for their labor. You seem like a manager. (Or a hobbyist.)

Unless you're selling tractors (apparently) you're not renting the stuff when you sell it. If you can't afford to continue development of your product because everyone that might ever buy one has already bought it, you suck as a businessman and should be doing something else. Running the UK government springs to mind, but there are other scenarios.

So how is it different from a hardware vendor making a new product with the income generated from sales of the previous product? If you're making a widget that nobody buys, you have no income, and you won't be able to make Widget Version 2. Same thing with software. The vendors take income from sales of previous products and plow it into development of the follow-on. If there is no income, there is no follow-on.

I think you're a hobbyist and you want everything for free because you're special. Ask whomever made the computer you used to post your rants if they'll just give it to you for free, because you're special. Please report back.

[PlainName]

So, software engineers don't get paid salaries and benefits? Their offices don't have heating, air conditioning, utilities, all of that?

Don't put words onto my keyboard. I said that the cost of getting to the next funding round (i.e. the next product or whatever) is part of the selling price of the previous product. Or do you think car manufacturers lay off their engineers once a car is shipping?

Or are you a hobbyist who thinks like Stallman that "all software should be free?"

What post of mine are you commenting to? If you actually read 'em instead of foaming off you'd notice that I've been suggeting people pay for this stuff. At no point have I said it should be provided free, and in fact pointed out good reasons to be wary of stuff that is!

what god-given right do you have to say that they charge too much

My wallet says I have the right to say that are charging too much for me. Or I don't like their terms. So I don't use it and haven't bought it. What's your problem with that?

or that you want it for free?

Gordon Bennett! Please don't make up stuff and then falsely attribute it to me.

Tell you what: comment on what I've actually said, rather than what you wished I'd said, and I'll come back to discuss your points.

[Bassman59]

So, software engineers don't get paid salaries and benefits? Their offices don't have heating, air conditioning, utilities, all of that?

Don't put words onto my keyboard. I said that the cost of getting to the next funding round (i.e. the next product or whatever) is part of the selling price of the previous product. Or do you think car manufacturers lay off their engineers once a car is shipping?

So consider why they are doing this. They could either demand $5,000 for the software, which would not be unreasonable, but it would put it out of the reach of hobbyists like yourself.

Or they could charge a lot less, like say $300 a year, and then as they say, "make it up in volume." Likely the choice to offer it for $300 a year means they think they'll actually make more money on the deal.

But what is obvious is that they were making $0 income on the free product. And in fact they were losing money on it, because it is very easy to get the personal-use license and then use the product professionally. They cut that off. As is their right. You don't like that because you're a cheapskate.

Or are you a hobbyist who thinks like Stallman that "all software should be free?"

What post of mine are you commenting to? If you actually read 'em instead of foaming off you'd notice that I've been suggeting people pay for this stuff. At no point have I said it should be provided free, and in fact pointed out good reasons to be wary of stuff that is!

You're obviously pissed off that they would dare stop giving you their product for free.

what god-given right do you have to say that they charge too much

My wallet says I have the right to say that are charging too much for me. Or I don't like their terms. So I don't use it and haven't bought it. What's your problem with that?

So then, why are you complaining about the pricing on this forum? Find a free alternative and get back to your hobby. But report back how well you're getting on.

or that you want it for free?

Gordon Bennett! Please don't make up stuff and then falsely attribute it to me.

You complain that a product that used to be free no longer is. So clearly you want it to be free for you.

Tell you what: comment on what I've actually said, rather than what you wished I'd said, and I'll come back to discuss your points.

You said:

Manufacturers of physical goods employ designers to design new products. Unless you're selling tractors (apparently) you're not renting the stuff when you sell it. If you can't afford to continue development of your product because everyone that might ever buy one has already bought it, you suck as a businessman and should be doing something else. Running the UK government springs to mind, but there are other scenarios.

And I mentioned that there's no difference between software vendors and hardware manufacturers in this -- both employ engineers to design the new products. Both use income from previous sales to fund development of new products.

You are correct that there's no physical product distribution to deal with regarding software sales. So this gives the software vendor great leeway in deciding how to price their product. They can do what hardware vendors cannot -- make different versions of a product available at different price ranges and let a customer upgrade immediately to one with more features. You can't do that with a tractor, eh?

But there is still cost involved in the development, maintenance and support of a software product. Microsoft and Apple are always updating their operating systems (and Apple is always updating hardware), so there is great cost involved in just making sure an existing product runs on the latest operating systems. All too many software vendors give up on that. "You want support for the new OS? Buy our program again at full price." Or maybe they just never bother updating, abandoning it (like Xilinx ISE, but hey that's free) and then the customer needs to maintain old hardware and old OSes, which just puts more cost in terms of time and effort on the customer. Someone's always paying.

I know there are people on this forum who maintain old machines to run old software. Some of that is not by choice -- they have specialist hardware tied to old computers and new operating systems simply won't run the old software. A lot of it is by choice -- they don't want to re-buy the same software again. Or whatever.

So good luck on your future endeavors.

[langwadt]

just consider the subscription as a payment plan,

It's not, since you can never pay it off. That's like infinite interest.

sure and in about 10 years you'll have paid almost as much as a license for solidworks

[PlainName]

You complain that a product that used to be free no longer is. So clearly you want it to be free for you.

Actually, I expressed surprise that you lot didn't see it coming. Nowhere did I say I wanted this thing, never mind for free. I dare you to point out my post where I said or implied that.

Now kindly fuck off with your made-up insinuations and false attributions.

[sokoloff]

Or are you a hobbyist who thinks like Stallman that "all software should be free?"

Stallman does not object to companies or individuals charging for software. (He's not demanding "free as in beer".)
What he objects to is the lack of freedom as in "freedom of speech".

There is nothing in GPL to preclude charging for software or engineering. There is a lot in GPL to prevent the curtailing of freedom to modify and copy. (The latter has some implications on the practical ability to charge money initially, but those are in my experience [I did some work with/for rms/FSF briefly in college] very much secondary.)

[mnementh]

...So you buy an oscilloscope. You give the vendor say $2,500. You have an oscilloscope, hopefully it does what you want. But what if you realize at some point that you need wider bandwidth, or more channels, or deeper memory?  Well, there you go, you have to buy a new oscilloscope. Well, ok, unless you bought one which has an option to add two new channels (which means you paid for an expansion capability you might never use) or add that bandwidth (by swapping out the front end boards with new ones, and you paid for that possibility up front too). In any case, if you want more later, you pay more later too.

I'm going to quote you out of context here; not to pick a fight but to point out that this is a REALLY bad choice for an example, as modern scopes (and SAs, AWGs, RF Gens... the list goes on and on) come with too much essential functionality that is enabled/disabled purely in firmware.

Then comes the inevitable argument over whether it's right, wrong, fair, immoral, offends the Tooth Fairy, etc if you hack said FW to enable stuff you didn't pay for. 

mnem
Please carry on carrying on!

[Jay_Diddy_B]

Hi,

There has been a change of plan by Autodesk, the STEP file export is being retained.

Details:
https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/changes-to-fusion-360-for-personal-use/


Hackaday: https://hackaday.com/2020/09/25/autodesk-blinks-keeps-step-file-export-in-free-version-of-fusion-360/

Good news for now, for those who use Fusion for making 3D models for KICAD and other EDA software.

Regards,
Jay_Diddy_B

[langwadt]

I think Autodesk could have saved themselves a lot of flak if they had done this from the beginning https://youtu.be/r7U5Pky6EIo

[mnementh]

They could save themselves a lot more flak just by providing a sanely-priced consumer-level product instead of doing the "get 'em hooked then take away feature after feature" marketeering piracy thing.

I get the feeling that 90% of the company is clones of Stef Murky. 

mnem
   http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20180510