For the amount of time I use the program, I don’t think 25 a month is unreasonable. Not sure if I use any of the features they are removing anyway…
Unless you need to use other documents for sub-assemblies.
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After seeing what autodesk did with sketchup, I am not really surprised by this and why I was a little hesitant to learn fusion 360 in the first place. I don’t mind paying upfront for software, but avoid subscription based software like the plague. Hopefully the removal of simulation is talking about FEA / mechanics not toolpath simulations. If toolpath simulations are removed I will just delete the software.
No rapid feed… What does that mean? It can’t mean no G0’s, can it?
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@dmouw25 Wasn’t it Google which made SketchUp free for long enough to get enough Google Earth modeling done that they tired of it, then sold it off to Trimble?
@neilferreri I believe that’s the case — I suspect that’s also why there’s no tool changes — can’t use a fast tool to move around, then switch to one at cutting speed.
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Silly question, no “automatic tool changing” does that mean we cannot have multiple tools in the same file?
I believe so — I suspect that’s part of how they’re enforcing “no rapids”.
Be aware export formats are highly limited. I’ll be exporting all my files to .stp while I still can, just to be sure.
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Uh, don’t you mean Google? And they didn’t do anything but sell it back to Trimble as Will said. And now its gone to subscription based, too.
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I thought it was Autodesk, but that is what I get for posting without checking first. Still frustrating that they took really useful “free” software and moved most of the features to a subscription basis.
That “no rapids” bit might ruin this for me. Does anyone know exactly what that means?
No G0 rapid moves seems to be the consensus — presumably the tool will only move at the feed rate defined for the one cutting tool.
Perhaps pair it w/ @fenrus’ nifty tool for dynamically recalculating feed rates?
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Yeah, I’ll have to see how they deal with the “No automatic tool changes” and “no rapid feed”…
They’re really trying to make it as much of a pain in the ass, to make people buy it, as they can…
Knew in the back of my head something along these lines would come… hook you in until you become dependent and fluent with the software, then make it hard/impossible to use without forking up the bucks… I know too that it won’t stop here; eventually they will restrict even more features until there is no more free use. Just like they try and do with “gun registration” in the US…
in concept we can fix up gcode afterwards…
(including translating G1’s into G0 when it’s safe… that kind of thing is within scope of a post processor)
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In this same vein. Perhaps there’s an opportunity for C3D here…
Would it be crazy for a Hobbyist level machine manufacturer such as the S3 and C3D to come with optional licenses for F360? I would gladly pay C3D a discounted license cost and I assume someone at autodesk would be interested in a teaming relationship assuming that you could funnel 100s? 1000s? of users to their platform.
food for thought masters. @Jorge @robgrz @edwardrford
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This is really unfortunate - I hope they’re thinking about an option for a “hobby plus” paid subscription with more features. $25/month isn’t terrible, but I’d be a lot happier with a $10-15 cost with the features I’ve got.
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I looked at the costs to re-enable the fourth axis stuff a month or two ago when they moved that feature into the “cloud credits” bin and that was a warning sign.
However, with the various 40% off discounts etc. and the base price it’s not much more than MS Office subscription. This sort of continuously updated software with cloud storage etc. is really not comparable to single license purchase models. It will all depend on how many of the features get moved into the “we can charge $$$$$ for these!” buckets.
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Does anyone complaining about software that isn’t “free” actually work for free?
Hey, its their business model. They can do with it what they please. In their area of expertise, we all have to admit that they have an edge.
If you want free, then you’ll have to start looking; which is what you were doing before you found F360. Right?
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I ran a software company for over a decade, I also contribute individually to open source projects and we contributed company code back to open source projects which we had benefitted from. The division between free and not free is a lot more blurred than it used to be.
The frustration with Fusion, as Will says, is that Autodesk made what seemed to be fairly clear statements of intent that they now appear to be backtracking on.
There is a viable commercial incentive for Autodesk to provide educational and non-professional versions of Fusion for free or cheap in order to produce a lot of pre-trained users and establish market dominance (this is why MS products are so cheap for education). This assists in closing the market to competitors who might start to take real market from them. The ‘free’ or cheap from commercial organisations is rarely done for social good.
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I quickly did a run around to check out pricing of onshape, inventor, carveco, Solidworks and aspire, and I think that for the features you get in fusion $300/ year is VERY fair. However I have no question that this will likely increase In a year or two, and the restrictions on the Hobby license will get tighter.
Bad news for the PocketNC guys who need the multi-axis features
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