Restrictions in the Hobbyist Version

[Anonymous]

The overview page for Fusion 360 for Personal use lists the following restrictions:

But it seems the PCB part is also size and layer restricted? This feels very odd as no such arbitrary restrictions exists in the Rest of Fusion 360. Is this a bug from the Eagle to Fusion transition or is this intentional and that restriction is just missing from that page?
It would be rather disappointing though if Fusion would start making such restrictions to the personal use version. I think it would be hard for Fusion to convince people to use it vs. alternative like KiCad or CircuitMaker.
I always felt that Fusion understood that people often start as hobbyists or students before they grow into commercial use and reflected this in their licensing.

[RichardHammerl]

Hi @Anonymous 

the Fusion Personal license actually has a restriction in its Electronics capabilities.

The limits are a maximum of 2 pages for a schematic and in the PCB a maximum number of 2 layers (Top and Bottom) and a limited board area of 8000 mm^2 (half a Euro card board). 
This equals the same limits as it is in the EAGLE Free edition. 

Best regards,

[Anonymous]

Ok, thats rather disappointing. Any plans that will change or will Fusion continue to start restricting features like that in the personal edition?

[noscere1978]

I'm getting into 3d printing as a hobby, and I've downloaded Fusion 360 free trial (hopefully I can get a student licence as I'm still enrolled with the Open University, although that has to go through verification). Otherwise I'll be stuck with the limited hobbyist licence - which for modelling purposes doesn't seem to affect what I want to do...

However, I've noticed that the software also has PCB/electronics design! This was unexpected, and electronics is something I've been tinkering around with for some time now and having software to design with is something I will definitely be using. My question is, at the risk of bumping an old topic, how limiting is the hobbyist licence? It has been 2 years almost since the original poster asked this question, so I wanted to ask what people's thoughts are now that they've (presumably) had plenty of time to play around and use the limited features.

Is the 2 layers and limited surface area enough for hobbyist purpose? Have the limitations affected your project(s) and how did you get around this (if you even did). What are the (free) alternatives?

Thanks!

[silvio3105]

2 layer PCB only, 2 schematic sheets and restricted PCB area(I guess 100cm2, not sure)

[macdarren1]

This is an old post but it appears the 8000mm^2 limit is still in effect for the personal edition.

I personally think maybe making it 10000 mm^2 might be a better limit as it allows hobbyists to take

full advantage of economical board sizes from places like PCBway and common enclosures.

I know I have some KiCad PCBway boards I would like to redo in Fusion360 but I generally used that 100x100 limit as my design standard.

Moving to another size board brings mechanical issues not so much electronic layout limits.

Thanks

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @macdarren1 ,

I hope you're doing well. Thanks for the feedback, I'll pass it up to our product managers.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,