No step exports anymore for private users? How should we archive our projects?

[lichtzeichenanlage]

Hey Fusion 360,

that you're removing simulation, collaboration and extensions it's not that hard, because of the pricing model it wasn't accessible anyway. But removing STEP exports is a real slap in our face, because now you're removing the ability archive our little things. 

Any solution to this problem?

[Anonymous]

Yeah... losing STEP and DXF exporting basically seems to remove any actual utility of the program aside from making pretty pictures for a home shop? 

[lichtzeichenanlage]

I missed DXF. That's even more a slap in our face. 

[lichtzeichenanlage]

Looks like DXF is possible for sketches. 

[Anonymous]

Yeah, just saw that!  Woot, Fusion stays useful for me for the time being!

Honestly, might be worth starting to look around, though, with the increasing amount of crippling they've been adding on the non-commercial licenses.  I'm going to be looking, anyway, because if next time they DO decide to take away sketch DXF...  It's already kinda marginal with no STEP, but I can work around that.

[jodom4]

Hey guys,
 
I know these changes are frustrating for some hobbyists, especially those who use export to DXF. Keep in mind that although you won’t be able to use Fil > Export, you’ll still be able to save a sketch out as DXF.
 
We’re making these changes so that we can continue to offer Fusion 360 free for Personal use, clearly differentiating between what’s available in which offering. We hope this will reduce confusion, misuse and abuse, whether intentional or unintentional. 
 
Our intent was to make a change that would be effective in preventing abuse of Personal licenses for commercial use, while inconveniencing the vast majority of hobbyist users as little as possible, and export to DXF was one of the features we found that’s necessary for many professional applications, but not used by many hobbyists.
 
The video on the blog post explains why we’re doing it pretty well, if you haven’t watched it already.

[Anonymous]

You can't honestly say that hobbyist users don't need more than ten parts, or the ability to export industry-standard formats to use in... well, *EVERYTHING * you would use a solid model for after modeling, though.  Ability to export STEP is absolutely critical to most anyone who needs to be able to move a model from one program through an agnostic layer to another.

I understand clearly needing to prevent misuse of the free licenses, obviously, but it seems that you've cast quite a bit too tight of a net here, and removed functions that are heavily used by everyone, not just commercial entities. 

[lichtzeichenanlage]

Sorry - that's marketing talk. Last license change you basically removed the ability to use cloud functions (pricing), now you're removing the functionality to export in useful and independent data formats... Watching this trend means, that you kick the private license with the next change.

If you really think that so many accounts do abuse the license, do some data analysis and close the accounts. 

[jodom4]

I hear you. Keep in mind that we knew some hobbyists would be affected by this. We did a lot of research and spent a lot of time trying to find the best way to make the distinction between licenses clear, and tried to find an optimal solution to preventing misuse and abuse while keeping a free license available.

We found that the vast majority of hobby users don’t export solid geometry- they export meshes for 3D printing- while solid geometry output is a critical feature for professional use. 

The 10 active design limit also won’t affect the vast majority of hobbyist users. We know there are exceptions, but again, the vast majority don’t even have 10 active designs at a given time. Professionals, on the other hand, usually have more than 10 at a time.

[fulcrumusa]

Honestly, this is the most bull****, money-grab reasoning ever! If you stand behind your original intention of supporting hobbyists then support them. The abuse is part of that equation. What this reasoning tells me is that the actual intent was to get people to buy into your product and then convert them to paid licenses.

Please don't hide behind "we are just trying to continue offering the product for free" because that has nothing to do with abuse. You can continue offering the product for free even if *everyone* was using it freely. What you are saying is that those abusers are the reason why the economics doesn't work. So, lets shaft all of the Personal licenses users who helped you make the product what it is today in order to get rid of the abusers.

How many "abusers" are there compared to the actual hobbyists who are spending time and effort to make your product better?

[Anonymous]

I wonder if it occurred to the "expert analysis" that a lot of users that would chose to use solid modeling for their design work might also use practices and methods similar to what they were doing, say, at work earlier the same day.  I'm sure there are some users, for sure, that don't do more than the most basic kind of design work.  But, say, as a *very* common example of something I see people doing, let's say I want to design a cabinet for my kitchen, or a chair for my patio, so I can work out my cuts and sizes before I go to wood.  I'm not aware of really ANY designs for that kind of thing that would use less than ten components.

I'd challenge a flip-around - How many BUSINESS customers do you have with less than, say, a hundred designs?  Just because not everyone uses a feature doesn't mean it's not **** important.  The changes here attack your prosumer base, the folks that are probably most likely to some day end up using a business version.  And there's no middle-ground option for them to chose, which seems terminally short-sighted to me. 

[lichtzeichenanlage]

I'm not saying that you don't know what you're doing. I'm just saying that this wouldn't be the only solution. And to be honest: OnShape did pull the trigger once and got a bad reputation for this. Autodesk told us to never do this. This might be true, but Autodesk right now pulls many small triggers unless the software isn't usable anymore for ambitious hobbyists. This looks pretty much like a marketing strategy. sry. 

[lichtzeichenanlage]

Another thought: Not everyone is archive the projects locally as STEP because they trusted Autodesk that they could do it at any point in time if they decide to use a different software. 

[xer00]

a workaround would be to export it as .ipt / .iam upload it to grabcad workbench and download it as a step file from there.