Changes Coming to Fusion 360 for Personal Use - Blog Post & FAQ

[jodom4]

 UPDATE Sept. 25, 2020: STEP Export stays in Fusion 360 for personal use

STEP export will remain available for Fusion 360 for personal use. This removal of STEP export was previously announced as part of the changes to curb misuse of Fusion 360 for personal use by commercial users. This change had unintended consequences for the hobbyist community. For this reason, we have made the decision to continue to allow STEP export for personal, non-commercial users. It remains in product unchanged and will not be removed as other announced changes roll out this October and January.

We want you to know, while the changes to the personal use entitlement were necessary, we remain committed to our community. You will continue to see development and investment in Fusion 360 for personal use.

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UPDATE: There have been lots of discussions on social media and on our forums. We understand the emotions you’re all going through, so in the spirit of clarity, I want to break it down for you with the most accurate information about what is changing, directly from our team. 

Here are 8 quick answers to the most common questions we’ve seen in the community.

1 – Is Fusion 360 for Personal Use still free?

Yes. Fusion 360 for Personal Use remains free. It’s not going away.

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2 – What does the 10 active documents change really mean?

You still keep your data and can have unlimited number of documents (3D design, drawing, PCB) as well as projects (top level folders in your data panel) in your account. 

• Today all your designs and documents are active by default. You can open any design no matter how old or new and they will open. 
• What this change means: 
  • 10 active documents means that you have 10 spots for any document to open and be editable at any given time. All your other documents will be stored in your projects in a new inactive state. They will remain yours, saved in your projects. 
  • When you reach your 10 document capacity, and you want to revisit an older design and open it up, you can do so by deactivating an active document and activating the inactive one to swap places with. Again, you continue to keep all your designs and projects with no limits on how many you can have in inactive state.  
  • PDFs, images, presentations, spreadsheets, etc do not count towards the 10 active document allowance.
  • If you have an assembly with referenced designs in it, the assembly and each reference (if opened) will count as 1 document each. Assemblies can reference active and inactive documents. You will still be able to edit the referenced designs as long as they are also active. If your referenced designs in the assembly are inactive, you can still open your assemblies, but the references will be read only.
  • Electronics Design Library, schematic, 2D PCB count as 1 document.

• How would this work?
  • The interactions of how you do this is still being worked on, and any existing experience around archiving projects from Fusion Team is not indicative of what this new interaction may be, that’s why it’s slated for January 2021. We hope that you understand that we are trying to put limits in place to stop commercial mis-use, while still enabling the vast majority of hobbyists to continue to design and make with little to no impact.

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3 – Can I still machine parts?

Yes. 2, 2.5 and 3 axis milling will still be available in the new Personal Use offering. 

• More advanced manufacturing functionality such as 3+2 axis, 4 axis, and 5 axis milling will only be available in the paid subscription. 
• Toolpath simulation in the Manufacture workspace is not going anywhere and will still be available. 
• Automatic tool change capability will not be available, and rapid feedrate are limited to cutting feedrate.

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4 – Can I still 3D Print?

Yes, STL Export will still be available in Fusion 360 for Personal Use.

• You can still use Fusion 360 for 3D printing with File > 3D print > send to print utility of your choice, File Export > STL or Save As STL

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5 – Can I still laser-cut or do 2D routing?

Save As DXF is still available from sketch. 

• DXF will not be a supported file format from File > Export, but you will still be able to right click on a sketch in the browser and select Save As DXF for your laser cutting and routing needs.

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6 – Can I still export my designs as STEP?

Yes, STEP export will still be available from the in-product File > Export dialog as well as Fusion Team.

Export of STEP will be not be available from the in-product File > Export dialog on Oct. 1, 2020. After Oct. 1,  You can still export your designs as STEP file formats via Fusion Team in your browser. This workflow will remain until Jan 19, 2021. To get to your Fusion Team page, open the data panel, go into one of your projects, and click on the “Open on the Web” icon.

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7 – Does Extension Access mean Scripts and Add-ins?

No, you still have access to scripts and add-ins downloaded from the Autodesk App Store, there is no change here. 

• You will still be able to leverage our API as well as the add-ins available on our App Store.
• Extensions in this context refer to the Manufacturing Extensions available to purchase. These are the capabilities like Probing, 4 axis Rotary, 5 axis Steep & Shallow Strategies that extend your manufacturing capabilities with more convenience, faster machine times, and higher quality finishing.  

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8 – Are there changes to Education, Startup, Trial & Paid Subscriptions?

There are no changes to these offerings.

• Just to clarify, this change does not impact the trial, Education offering, Startup offering, or the Paid subscription. Product updates will continue to be delivered to all of our offerings, additional advanced functionality may be excluded from the Personal offering moving forwards.
• We will continue to support the Personal Use offering with product updates, improvements, fixes, as well as new features moving forward.

____

Hey everyone,

As announced on the blog, soon we'll be making some changes to the Fusion 360 for Personal Use offering. We’re making these changes so that we can continue to offer Fusion 360 for Personal Use free of charge, clearly differentiating between what’s available in each offering, which we hope will reduce confusion, misuse, and abuse, whether it was intentional or unintentional. 

If this is your first time hearing about this announcement, we encourage you to check out our blog post for the full announcement as well as our FAQ, where we answer more specific questions in detail. 

> See the blog post announcement

> See the FAQ

[Anonymous]

that's great news. Thanks, and cheers

Peter

[r.cameronstahl]

The whining from Autodesk about this move being in response to license abuse is nothing more than a transparent attempt to deflect from their exploitation of the hobbyist users.

It was never a "free lunch" as some are claiming. Corporations are inherently incapable of altruism, and so we can safely infer that at least up until now this has been favorable for Autodesk. In exchange for a hobbyist license, Autodesk got thousands of free beta testers (sorely needed when their initial product offering was a disaster).

Professionals want their software solution to work, or they drop it. Hobbyists tinker, experiment, and collaborate. They provide detailed feedback. They also make content. Thousands of hours of educational content, and we all know how important that is for market adoption. Autodesk got a sweetheart deal with a built-in market and broad userbase educated in the product and influencing vendor decisions in the professional world.

Autodesk can do whatever they want with their program. Users can react however they want. Autodesk positioned itself as a partner to the maker community and their messaging has always taken a supportive tone for collaborative, open-source projects like the countless user-built 3D printers, CNC mills, emergency PPE & ventilator production, and more. Makers are pissed because they feel betrayed by the company that for the past 7 years has represented itself as a benefactor to the community, which visibly curtailed development of open-source alternatives.

Now, as Autodesk breaks revenue targets, they turn around and screw the very users that built their market. Anyone claiming license abuse would make up even a percentage point of possible revenue needs to read Cory Doctrow's work on copyright and piracy. (For those willing to take my word for it, this move will generate zero additional revenue for Autodesk, and likely cost them money and reputation)

I will be pulling my Fusion 360 tutorial content from all platforms.

[Anonymous]

How in the world Autodesk can be forced to pay your full dinner for the second year? And, they do not deny paying the dinner, just the soup and the cheese is not for free anymore.

[fulcrumusa]

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@Anonymous wrote:

How in the world Autodesk can be forced to pay your full dinner for the second year? And, they do not deny paying the dinner, just the soup and the cheese is not for free anymore.

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It's not about forcing them to do it. It's about them standing up to their promise. They got a lot of benefits from the work of those Personal license hobbyists. So, it was a mutually benefitial relationship. Now, that the "free" users have beta tested, debugged, and improved the software, now that they've created countless hours of educational material, Autodesk is deciding to switch the deal.

The "soup" and "cheese" is also not it. They are removing all options for exporting in standard formats. Effectively, they are holding your data hostage. So, again, to re-use your metaphor: The dinner is still free but you only get eat the bread. You can look and smell the rest of the food but if you want to eat it, pay me.

[chrisplyler]

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@Anonymous wrote:

The frustration I have is that by making it "the free option" was how it became the defacto standard in the maker community and gained the enormous amount of penetration it has.  An enormous number of hobbyists, home shops, makers, and community groups have built their shops, toolchains and capability AROUND having Fusion as "the choice" for solid modeling precisely because it WAS free, not because of any particular other reason, and in doing so have built up enormous histories and data stores for projects and builds within the closed ecosystem.  And now, that is basically being used as wide-scale data extortion, in that you can either pay for a commercial license... or lose the ability to *use* your data.  Yes, it's still there... but removing all the options to export it in a format that other programs will read, or continue to use it within the infrastructure of Fusion (primary thing here is the limit on files) they have more or less made it useless to the maker.  

I think this is a large part of why we're seeing so much cry in here for a middle-of-the-road option, for folks that need more than what they're proposing for free, but cannot or will not increase their budget for solid modeling from $0 to $500 for no purpose aside from maintaining... what they've had as the free version forever.  

I don't think anyone denies they need to make money to keep the system running, or that there might be missuse of the free licenses for commercial purpose.  But the WAY they are going about it seems to border on literal extortion of pretty much every maker and small shop that has entrusted Autodesk with their designs and data for the last half-decade.  

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@chrisplyler wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

It's a shame people are still doing this same scam CON. 

Give it away free to the user then when there is enough free user we silently restrict it and sell it to them.

Shame on AutoDesk. Shame on you to hell.

Nothing in this existence last forever and the desk will be broken soon from its greed.

Today your up, tomorrow you shall fall flat on your bottom.

GREEDY 

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This really disappoints me. Too many people are spoiled and entitled.

If someone gives you FREE stuff for a while, essentially doing you a favor, then it's extremely bad form to crap on them once the free stuff stops. It isn't a scam or a con if I buy you dinner every day for a year and then stop. I friggin bought you dinner for a year, you ingrate.

Now, I'm one of the free users. And I'll be sad about the new restrictions. But I hope I never catch myself acting like you've acted here. I would be ashamed of myself. You want free crap forever, yet you call those who gave you free crap (and still will, just a little bit less) the greedy ones. Pathetic.

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Hey, I get it. I will be frustrated too. But calling it some kind of scam or con is ridiculous. Complaints of greed coming from greedy people are also ridiculous.

Hobby makers can go back to whatever they used before if they like. Commercial outfits OUGHT to pay a little something if they find the product useful. Anyone who thought the free gravy train would last forever ought not be an entrepreneur, as they don't understand business very well, and might explain why they're angry over $400.

So yeah, frustrating. Acting like some kind of victim is just wrong.

[DavidNeuf]

After years of common use in our local hackspace community, most users and former F360 evangelists, are now in the process of extracting their designs from F360 and exploring other options. A common theme in our local discussions as well as this blog post, has been the willingness to pay a subscription rate comparable between 1 and 2 Netflix subscriptions. ADSK is about to lose a load of users and more importantly user sentiment, which will translate up into the commercial market as job candidates will lose F360 proficiency. Therefore, the use of F360 as an entry point to the commercial sector will diminish. And face it, that's the real market vision for offering a product like F360 for free to the masses; it's the loss leader that gets ADSK greater commercial market share. Which is all fine. 

Losing the subscriber base, which this move will do, also impacts Add-on development, which is one of F360's market strength. Add-on development will evaporate even faster than the F360 user base, leaving both commercial and personal use customers looking to leave not just F360, but ADSK. 

If ADSK continues with this plan, their user base will evaporate as folks transition to other platforms. Consequently, their commercial share will decrease in the long run. Dumb business move.

However, if ADSK introduces a Netflix comparable priced tier for pro-sumers and enthusiasts that offers what F360 does now on its personal plan, while keeping the crippled free version for learners and dabblers, then ADSK will retain its user base, get more income (a few $M/month) and likely improve it's long term viability and profitability. 

This business move spells the end of F360 and will hurt ADSK, not just the user base it is betraying. Give your heads a shake, and fix it. The user base has clearly stated its willingness to pay a reasonable price. But the current license for a workable copy of F360 is far, far too steep. 

[Anonymous]

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@fulcrumusa wrote:

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The "soup" and "cheese" is also not it. They are removing all options for exporting in standard formats. Effectively, they are holding your data hostage. So, again, to re-use your metaphor: The dinner is still free but you only get eat the bread. You can look and smell the rest of the food but if you want to eat it, pay me.

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If you need that feature consider paying for it, or hope they change their mind on that single feature. I could use STEP export very well. But if I don't get it for free in a wonderful software helping me to fulfill my hobbyist stuff in a very easy way ... I guess I can deal with it. If you are afraid saving your data in a cloud, don't use it. If the software of your choice does not offer (anymore) a certain feature you need, find another one. Have fun using freecad, as example.

This whole ranting about a company trying to earn money and protecting theirselves from abuse is just ... childish.

[eric_csuf]

Overall, I have little quarrel with the changes as free software. I think a lot of thought went into the decision, but some of the results might exclude serious hobbyists who do sophisticated but not commercial work.

Maybe there's room for an Advanced Hobbyist level for a reasonable price. I pay $10/month for Adobe Photoshop/Lightroom. I would be willing to pay a similar amount for F360 if I could keep:

• Unlimited Project Space
• full Drawing workspace
• .STEP file support. 

The most onerous changes for me are the 10 active document limit, and the loss of Edit in Place which I'm now seriously hooked on :). The active document limit is going to be a continual annoyance on a par with nag screens.

I suspect there are a lot of serious hobbyists using F360 that are going to find the changes crippling in many ways. We can't justify a temporary cost of $297 which no doubt will go back to ~$500 next renewal. But we can justify less if we can lock it in for a few years. 

Eric

[chrisplyler]

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@fulcrumusa wrote:

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@chrisplyler wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

It's a shame people are still doing this same scam CON. 

Give it away free to the user then when there is enough free user we silently restrict it and sell it to them.

Shame on AutoDesk. Shame on you to hell.

Nothing in this existence last forever and the desk will be broken soon from its greed.

Today your up, tomorrow you shall fall flat on your bottom.

GREEDY 

---

This really disappoints me. Too many people are spoiled and entitled.

If someone gives you FREE stuff for a while, essentially doing you a favor, then it's extremely bad form to crap on them once the free stuff stops. It isn't a scam or a con if I buy you dinner every day for a year and then stop. I friggin bought you dinner for a year, you ingrate.

Now, I'm one of the free users. And I'll be sad about the new restrictions. But I hope I never catch myself acting like you've acted here. I would be ashamed of myself. You want free crap forever, yet you call those who gave you free crap (and still will, just a little bit less) the greedy ones. Pathetic.

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To be honest, the way it was worded is not best and it does come across as a bit entitled.

However, your response to it completely ignores the motivation behind the outcry. Calling users "pathetic" because, in your opinion, they shouldn't complain when something that the got for free is no longer free is not helpful.

The point is that Fusion360 was initially promoted as the free, full-featured, parametric, CAM package targeted at hobbyists. As others have said, this was the primary reason why it gained such a wide-spread adoption. You can't go anywhere dealing with CAD without hearing about Fusion360.

Now that virtually the entire hobby CAD/3D design/3D printing community has gone to Fusion360, they are slowly cutting off features and pushing everyone into a paid license. This is in contrast to what Autodesk was initially saying about the Personal license of Fusion360.

Furthermore, the main reason for this switch stated by Autodesk is the "bad apples" that abuse the Personal license. They are punishing the entire hobby community because of them. Yet, they fail to state why those "bad apples" could not be made to switch and leave every one else who uses the product as it is licensed and in good faith. Presumably, Autodesk knows who the "bad apples"/abuser are and can revoke their license.

In another thread, they state that they did extensive research and according to it the majority of hobby users won't be affected by the changes. That still does not address why they are punishing those same hobby users. Again, if Autodesk knows about the abusers, they can target only the abusers.

This leaves us to conclude that they are just after money, pure and simple. This is why people are upset. After getting invested into the software, Autodesk is pulling a bait-and-switch.

Let me use your own example as an illustration: I told you that I'll start buying you dinner for free. Furthermore, I'll keep buying you dinner forever. After I bought you dinner for a year, now I'll stop. In fact, now that you've come to depend on my free dinners, if you want to keep eating, you'll have to start paying me. How would you respond to that?

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Your analogy fails when you say you'll keep buying me dinner forever. Autodesk never said the free version would be full featured forever. And I only have to pay you if I want to keep eating YOUR food. There are certainly other sources of food, even free food, that I could choose instead. And either way, I wouldn't call you bad names if you had bought me dinner for a year. Sure, I might be upset about losing the free meals, but I wouldn't badmouth you. If you bought me dinner for a year, regardless of the circumstances, I would thank you. Because you don't owe me a dang thing and I don't feel unjustifiably entitled.

And I don't get mad about a corporation wanting to earn money either. That's what the heck they're supposed to do. Maybe now's the time to buy a little bit of Autodesk stock, and use the capital gains to pay the subscription fee?

[Anonymous]

I would call it more closely akin to a property issue, myself. 

Autodesk, in this variant, offered home shops and small businesses a plot of land, leased at a dollar a year, to build their shops and businesses on, with the lease to be renewable into perpetuity.  And, because it was an extremely good deal, very many moved in, built their buildings, established themselves in that space.

And, all of a sudden... that dollar lease that EVERYTHING was built on has now been increased in price to a very extreme degree.  But the buildings are all built, the folks have all established themselves there, and this leaves them with the option of either paying whatever price is demanded, or having to start all over again somewhere else, if they can.

And they would never have built there or even tried if they had not believed the promise that the land would be available on that lease indefinitely. 

[kevinPTMMY]

Not a bad analogy - and with the elimination of the STEP file export they also have said that you can't even take the furniture you put in your houses with you if you leave.  The are being far to glib in claiming that you data will be preserved fine with this change.  My data is not preserved usefully if I can't do anything with it. 

[mnoreke]

Jonathan (@jodom4 ),

First off, thank you for the clarification on how linked documents will be treated.

Regarding your statement of "If your referenced designs in the assembly are inactive, they will be read only.", can you confirm that we will be able to adjust visibility of linked items that are read only? If not, can you ***please*** kick that up the chain as a small feature request from those of us that sometimes have linked items with lots of components in them.

Thank you in advance,


Martin

[jodom4]

Hey mnoreke,

I'd be happy to kick that up the chain, but to be honest I'd be surprised if that feature wouldn't be available with a read-only linked design. I'm not on the architecture side of the product, but my understanding is that your experience wouldn't really be any different from the behavior you're used to (you can reference the geometry in new sketches and construction object, you can change the opacity, hide / show, etc.), you just wouldn't be able to edit-in-place or open the read-only linked design unless you swap it for another active design.

I'll confirm this and get back to you.

[Knelf]

So, a few things...

Just reading this thread illustrates clearly how much confusion has been created over the 10 "something or others" and I can see that is already causing a lot of upset with the handful of people who already know about the change (thanks to your most excellent lecturer Brad, I'm here too, but otherwise wouldn't have had a clue this was coming!). Even reading it through I'm not sure I follow.

Example: I have a robot I've been designing together with a friend (the proverbial "guy with the printer" - and yes, I too have been using "Sneakernet" since the collaboration lockout [allowing one person only would have been nice...]) in Fusion and I've used a bunch of imported screws and nuts and bolts to hold 3D printed parts together together with a handful of electronic component models I found online (sonar, ESP32, pi-zero etc, you get the idea). Is working on this now going to be impossible if [I'm fairly sure there are] there are more than 10 things I've brought into the project? Sorry, you'll have to forgive me for not remembering the exact terminology for what is a folder/project/design.

Can I propose maybe you ask Brad or someone to do a video on how the restrictions will work? I think it would be far better for everyone all round, including/espectially AD, if we could all be crystal clear on this. You'll probably get less bad press.

Another thing I'm not clear on is this STEP file export restriction. From what people seem to implying here, STEP export is the only platform independent file format that can used to export models as something other than STL (which I've found horrible/impossible to edit).  I note that you can still export in a Fusion format, but isn't that a bit like saying someone can only save Word files in .doc format, then charging a prohibitive amount for MS Office?

As has been noted here by others, it sounds a bit like this would prevent people from open sourcing their designs unless they stay in the Fusion format, or make a "hard to edit" STL.

Another one that feels a bit of a shame is the inability to use extensions. I don't personally use any yet but had it in mind to get the Cog generator one for use in a model I was making for a friend. I'm guessing that will have to be done the more difficult way now? Again it seems a shame to deny them entirely... perhaps allowing just one extension might have been a fairer compromise?

As for the other stuff, personally I'd say it all sounds fair and I totally get you need to encourage some more paid subscriptions and indeed, I'm sure there are companies out there that are very likely taking the Micky. This said, Fusion being a cloud based service, isn't it obvious who they are? Just a thought...

Final point though. I did expect this to happen which was why I took the time to fill in the survey some time back and make it clear that I'd be in favour of low level paid tier as, quite frankly, I think you guys have been far too generous in your offering to date.

I quite like the Netflix subscription ball park suggestion someone made here. I mean, heck, if I can afford to pay to watch Stranger Things, or pay to go Bouldering at the local climbing Center, I'm pretty sure I can pay for a design hobby too. I appreciate not everyone can do this though... but it would be nice to have options without paying the same as a company with a huge annual turn over.

Anyhow. I hope this is useful/constructive feedback

All the best with Fusion

[Anonymous]

I'm curious. Do you have a Startup license, if not why? Because of your content creation, you should qualify. I may be wrong but I believe this option is still intact.

[Anonymous]

so time has come to look for alternatives, well not gonna lie it was fun while it lasted. see you all on the boat sailing to other alternatives.

[jodom4]

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to let you know that the blog post has been updated with some clarifications that should answer some of your questions. https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/changes-to-fusion-360-for-personal-use/?_ga=2.1924...

[daniel_lyall]

@fulcrumusa this

Furthermore, the main reason for this switch stated by Autodesk is the "bad apples" that abuse the Personal license. 

There is a workaround to haveing multiple computers on one license, which makes it hard for ADSK to detect it, it is one where you have to be on sight to see it and not be under a NDA if you are and work for ADSK you can not say anything about what X company is doing same goes for the resale teck support guys.

[Anonymous]

Realistically, the TL;DR -

You'll note the extremely strong resemblance to most software's "limited trial version" and "full version."  Yes, I would argue that the free version IS being removed, in that we no longer have a free version of the software.  We have a separate piece of software that is heavily crippled.  I just noticed that for some unholy reason I can't even use rapid moves on my CNC router any more.  What the hell? 

[mroek]

Well it clarifies what we already know by now, the new personal license is crippled to the point where it is way less attractive. And this 10 document limit seems just to be an artifical nuisance. You're just making personal users jump through hoops to be able to swap documents in and out of the active state, but there's still unlimited storage for inactive documents? It makes absolutely no sense, except designed to be annoying.

Can you please clearly state if there is even a chance that you will introduce a middle tier that stays below the full product but retains at least the most important functionality that is now being taken away from the personal license? Personally, I am grateful for having had the opportunity to use F360 for free, and I would very much like to pay money to continue using it, but for a pure hobby usage, the full price isn't justifiable. And as I said before, in many countries we pay a heavy VAT on all purchases, and in my country that is 25%. That makes for a rather hefty price tag in the end.