Solidworks vs F360
@TimelesslyTiredYouth wrote:
... I've seen a lot of people transition from solidworks to Fusion and which is better in those people's opinions.
What industries are those people working in and what work do they do with Fusion?
Depending on what work a user does, Fusion provides great bang for the buck, or lacks essential capabilities.
For a user beginning with CAD IMHO the differences are not that big, as the main concepts around modeling are very similar.
@John_Wright , thanks for the insightful post!
The main difference starts with "access". As a student who can use the educational version for free, you may not care about pricing. For many individuals, CAD is a tool provided by their employer, so pricing may only play a secondary role for them, or none at all.
SolidWorks is substantially more expensive than Fusion.
Unfortunately, many people cannot look past the price tag and then become frustrated when the realities don't quite match marketing hyperbole.
Once you have looked at pricing, the features of the tool need to be evaluated. My advice is to execute a complete project representative of 90% of a company's business in parallel using both tools. Then make an assessment!
The first thing that SolidWorks users often find confusing is the sketch engine. SolidWorks and many other CAD software use the D-Cubed sketch engine. 2D only, but very fast and very robust. Referring to external geometry works a little differently in SW.
The next thing is ( or was before external components were a thing in Fusion) the top-down design and modeling approach in Fusion, where you can design all components in a single design. That does not exist in S in that form, although with virtual components, that can also be done in SW.
The biggest hurdle at the beginning for SW users changing to Fusion is the Joint system. SW and all other mainstream CAD systems use geometric mates, and for reasons that escape me, that presents a challenge for many people.
Once a user has successfully navigated around the first obstacles, they might want to create manufacturing drawings. I cannot speak to that extensively, as I rarely needed to create manufacturing drawings; however, generally, SW has a much more mature toolset.
Once you've created drawings, you may want to send parts to manufacturing and order OTS (off-the-shelf) components. In my opinion, Fusion's BOM feature set is so underwhelming that, in football (soccer) terms, I would have to give it the red card and send it off the field.
In SolidWorks, you have a weldments and a frame generator that make designing welded frames a breeze. That frame generator also works well for frames made from aluminium extrusion.
SolidWorks also has a module to create electrical schematics and BOMs for building control enclosures.
It sounds like I'm bashing Fusion, but that's not the intention!
There is a reason for the price tag associated with SW!!!
Many users don't need all of that functionality and are happy with a subset of it. they don't mind occasionally having to work around missing functionality, sometimes laboriously.
What I like about Fusion is that all my data is in the cloud. I can access it from any computer I can install Fusion on. I use Fusion mostly on two computers, one at work and one at home. When I occasionally travel to present concepts to customers, I take my old MacBook Pro. I don't need to check out a license from a server or drag a dongle around with me. I always run the latest version of the software.
I can send customers a web link with the 3D model:
1. They don't need to create an account and provide their email address. That means they won't receive incessant advertising emails from Dassault Systèmes when installing their latest eDrawings viewer for SW files.
2. They don't need to install anything. That webviewer works nicely on a phone!
In Fusion, almost everything (99.9% of features) can be driven by user parameters. It always catches me off-guard when trying to re-create a model I started in Fusion in SW.
In Fusion, you can use a sketch for more than one "thing". You get used to that so quickly that it becomes quite a nuisance when that ability isn't present.
In Fusion, you can design Electronics alongside the mechanical design.
Not a super complicated design, but it works like a charm!
T-Splines are very well-integrated into Fusion's modeling workflow.
Pick your poison 😉
