Oh, AutoDesk…you have such a way with words. Honestly, I would rather learn to design in OpenSCAD than send AutoDesk a single penny.
I greatly miss the ability to simply purchase a program on a disk for a given year and just have access to that tool.
So if you have $1001 in annual revenue, you have to pay $680? So if your business has a running cost of %50, you need to go into the red by $180 to continue running your business?
Someone over in marketing is an idiot.
Nobody making $1000 in revenue is buying it, but yes that’s what they’re saying. However, that’d be a business expense and you’d get to deduct taxes for it. Still not amazing but yeah.
You’d not really be getting that much back from a deduction. You’d need over 68% of your revenue to be taxed before it would even start to matter at lower revenue amounts.
I agree it’s a silly breakpoint, but they have to draw the line somewhere, and I’m sure they feel that a 70/30 split is completely reasonable. Besides, a Fusion license is practically coins-in-the-couch compared to their architectural licensing fees. I’m sure they feel like they’re doing us a favor by pricing Fusion so low.
It’s just so weird to go from “free for personal and low Commercial use”, up to “we want 68% of your revenue.”
They could easily have made it a sliding scale, or gone with profit instead of revenue.
Like others have said, Autodesk is a piece of shit company that continues to be customer hostile. They pulled the rug out from underneath users years ago with F360.
FreeCAD is a good alternative. A lot of people complain about the UI polish, and complain that models break. I’ll admit that the UI isn’t as polished as commercial software like F360 or SolidWorks. However, it’s just as easy to break models in SolidWorks as it is in FreeCAD. I’ve been using 3D CAD for over 20 years, and it’s always been a problem. Even with all of my experience, I still have to fix references that get broken as I make design changes. The more you use 3D CAD, the less you run into situations like this because you’re able to think ahead and avoid them. Talk to any experienced CAD user and they’ll tell you the same thing.
The workflows of FreeCAD are just like commercial software for most functions. There are definitely features that commercial software has that FreeCAD doesn’t, but that’s where you have to make the judgement about whether it’s worth it to pay for it.
For me, I’ll continue to use FreeCAD for my personal projects. I use SolidWorks at work, but we have different demands there, and it’s worth the company paying the maintenance for it.
Onshape is another alternative. Even runs on Linux too!
While you are not wrong, I personally wouldn’t consider it unless there was a “buy it for a fixed price option”. Subscription only unless it’s for personal use. Oh and it is Cloud only
Dune 3D is a newer tool built specifically for 3D printing design.
It appears to be built specifically for designing electronics enclosures with 3D printing in mind. I’m sure it’s a great utility, and I don’t mean to argue to no end, but to me a tool built specifically for 3D printed design would have core functionality which offers layer line alignment and orientation, custom and customizable internal structure (what we call “fill”), and a parametric engine to adjust the design and internal structure based on layer and nozzle thickness. While these are all currently slicer-like functions, slicers are absolute trash at being able to customize a part for strength, stiffness, and failure mode selection. (Yes, I’m a structural engineer - I actually do know about these things and design for them - usually being at odds with the slicer over just such effects)
Anyway - I’m sure Dune3D comes in handy for its designer’s purpose, and I’ll probably file this for the next time I think about fighting a Pi case in CAD.
I just got this mail. They are very funny. It is clear that they are trying to generate money by adding features, but the whole point is that I don’t need more features.
I just need the program as it is, hell, they can still take more functionality away and it will still work for me just fine. I just use it for small projects, maybe twice a year.
If the free version ever goes away, I’ll just learn some other program. There might be a learning curve, but I don’t mind.
And I understand that they need to make money, and they have every right to charge whatever they want. But mails like this make them look desperate for cash.
If they really don’t want too, don’t have a free product. Then everybody knows what is up.
FreeCad is petty epic for home projects. It took me about a month to transition from SolidWorks but now I’m a big fan
I worked in architecture.Autodesk certainly doesn’t need any more money. Their subscriptions are amazingly expensive.
What we need is Blender with a timeline! Blender is fantastic, I really hope someone adds a timeline.
I have designed a lot of things in Blender but after using fusion the dam timeline made me a fusion junkie.
Blender is great for 3D modeling, animation, etc. However for CAD work it absolutely sucks. You need to mess around with so many things just to get units right. Not to mention once you have designed something, changing it is really hard.
We need something like Affinity for CAD. Surely it must be possible to make a CAD program that can do the basics you need for 3D printing without all the advanced simulations and analysis. I just want to draw some sketches and extrude them.
OpenCAD. But it’s like Photoshop vs Gimp. But also with a bigger learning curve.
FreeCAD. I’m not sure why more people aren’t using tbh.
Every time I’ve used FreeCAD it felt miserable to use. Idk if I was doing something wrong, but it felt horrendous
I’ve used it for the past year, and no - you aren’t doing anything wrong. Had the same experience, and the privilege to compare it to Solidworks. There is no contest, other than price ofc
Hell, I’d rather use Blender than FreeCAD. FOSS devs really need to get some UI and UX designers involved. Or at least someone with the skill set to know how to make not-ass UIs and UXs
IMHO its because the software lack a lot of polish. At times i found FreeCAD is better that fusion. But for the amount of pain it takes to get the software to work, it makes me want to look elsewhere.
But man are the tools in freecad good, when they work. Just wish it was multithreaded
FreeCAD is soooo shitty. The history breaks all the time - small changes introduce so many issues you might just be better off by starting over.
This is why I will continue putting up with FreeCAD.
There’s a newer project called Dune 3D
It was built specifically for 3D printing in mind.
To be honest, I prefer SolveSpace. It’s significantly simpler and lacks a lot of features FreeCAD has, but it doesn’t crash and does just enough for me to be able to design whatever I need for 3D printing.
In other news, war is still peace and slavery is still freedom.
The price is always whatever they think you are willing to pay. Especially for software where their cost is entirely development and the marginal cost is zero.
I’ve been paying like 10/mo for solidworks.
SolidWorks is cheap for noncommercial and is the only package that I know of that still offers a permanent license for commercial work.
There is also Solid Edge noncommercial if you are doing 3D printing around the house.
