According to this survey, Fusion 360 has a bigger market share than SolidWorks. This makes me very happy!
GO FUSION 360!!!
Here's a link to the results and interpretation to that survey.
Market share seems to be interpreted on number of users alone, regardless of industry and regardless whether hobbyist or professional or whether on perpetual license, paid subscription or free.
I can see that within the "market segment", which heavily revolves around CAM that Fusion 360 is popular as it offers pretty mature and full featured functionality for very little money. Not a surprise result given the CNCcookbook site is heavily biased toward that clientele!
However in any real mechanical and machine design environment this is clearly not the case.
I started my career ~30 years ago designing manufacturing automation equipment. Nowadays my day job involves developing concepts for such automated systems. With Fusion 360!
In this sales related position (which I also held prior for 2 of the worlds largest automation companies) I frequently get to visit customers in very different industries. Usually these are organizations with 200+ employees and often much larger. The other 10 years I've done (odd) product design.
In the manufacturing automation industry Fusion 360 plays no role.
In most of the general manufacturing machinery industry Fusion 360 plays no role.
In fact I've not encountered a single customer who uses Fusion 360 in manufacturing or in product design.
In those areas SolidWorks occupies 90% of the market. The company I work for currently uses SolidWorks and 95% of "my" industry uses SolidWorks. The Automotive/Vehicle and Aerospace industry are dominated by CATIA.
I don't see that changing any time soon either.
@andre.nel wrote:
Also, the reluctance to change may be in a large part due to legacy inertia - lots of stuff and experience in the old CAD system.
"May" , True, and often that's the case. I trust that many people only need a fraction of the features offered in Autodesk Inventor or SolidWorks or any of the other midrange to higher end packages.
But based on my rather substantial experience here on the forum a lot of those that change from say SolidWorks to Fusion 360 were more driven by marketing fueled enthusiasm and did not properly analyze their needs.
However, Fusion 360 does not offer nearly the engineering and modeling tools and productivity enhancing features available in SolidWorks or Inventor.
Not even close!
Trying to efficiently create technical drawings say according to ASME is difficult and often impossible.
A simple hole callout is still missing.
There are clearly areas where Fusion 360 is a good alternative and a joy to work with.
Concept development is one of these areas.
@andre.nel wrote:
... and bugs.
You'll encounter a good number of those as well, depending on what areas in Fusion 360 you work.
But It does seem to get better!
@andre.nel wrote:
Agreed on some of the productivity tools, especially in the drawing areas.
However, a lot of the productivity tools in SolidWorks come at a very high price.
For the last 10 years or so I have worked with small companies that the current owners inherited.
They seem not to understand or care about efficiency. All they notice is the price. Every year, I had to go hat-in-hand to get approval to renew or add tools.
Although Fusion 360 is lacking in some areas it has more breath - simulation, generative design, CAM... etc. And it is relatively cheap.
Later,
Yes, that form of incompetence never dies and is the perfect prey for the marketing gurus at Autodesk.
