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

[jodom4]

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. 

Don’t worry - Fusion 360 for Personal Use is not going away, it will still be free for anyone working on non-commercial hobby projects so you can bring your ideas from concept to creation. 

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

[FrodoLoggins]

Let's hope Autodesk knows what the phrase "grandfathered in" means because I'm "grandfathered in" according to what they said 2 years ago before the pricing model changed. Really not looking forward to not have access to things I am according to them grandfathered in to...

[johnswetz1982]

This was definitely a fresh out of college accountant trying to make a name for themselves at Autodesk that helped make this decision. The analogy that I think of is when you take your car in for a warranty repair for a $90 part and the dealership is like "your car is out warranty by 2 days, sorry" and losses a customer and every car sale for $40,000 from that customer from all time. 

Do me right and I'll tell my friends, do me wrong and I'll tell everyone. Where before I would tell and suggest Fusion to people, I cant do that anymore. I most likely will not be able to help and offer solutions here as well which hurts the other user of the product when they have a problem or are new to the product. Instead they will just get frustrated and try something else.

So if this is to get more money for "Development"  (Autodesk already has 886 million cash on hand) will we be getting machine simulation and the ability to create/import *.stp for tool holders? or are those only considered for extra cost manufacturing extensions.

[seth.madore]

@FrodoLoggins "grandfathered in"? What is your license type, if I may ask? If it's any commercial subscription, at any price point, that should have no effect.

[jodom4]

Hey johnswetz1982,

CAM simulation and .stp import will still be available with the personal entitlement.

[engineguy]

@jodom4 

Apparently no .stp export either, means that I can no longer send a file to a friend to cut on one of his big machines of a part for our old vehicle for an automatic clamping system I am designing to hold my wifes wheelchair in place.

It isn`t that it is particulary complex, just too big for my little benchtop to handle, we go back a long way and he does all my bigger jobs for me, we are not making any money from it, we are actually paying forthe job, I am also part way through a design for a new gantry system for moving her from the wheelchair to bed/bath etc, the current crop of commercial gantry systems are either pretty poor functionality wise or are prohibitively expensive (Thousands and thousands!!), also apprears I won`t even be able to do drawings for him of more than a single page, really, really frustrating, yes, I am a Hobbyist, all the stuff I design and make are for our own use/benefit so where now for us ????

Even making a small part to bolt the clamping system to the floor of the vehicle looks like trying to use say a 3D adaptive toolpath that would have normally have lots of G0 movements in it no longer usable as without the G0 moves the machining time would be many hours, my little machine would just burn out trying to do anything that required that sort of machining time.

Re Tool change command, that could I suppose be placed at the start of each operstion using the "Pass Through" if that is still going to be available, before the operations are copy/pasted together to produce a proper program ?? Yes ??

Very frustrated, very unhappy 😞

Stay Safe

Regards

Rob

[pangloss-paul]

FreeCAD's toolpath capabilities have come on in leaps and bounds recently. No tool change limitations here and 4-axis millin en route.

https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Path_Workbench#FAQ

[seth.madore]

---

@engineguy wrote:

@jodom4 

Re Tool change command, that could I suppose be placed at the start of each operstion using the "Pass Through" if that is still going to be available, before the operations are copy/pasted together to produce a proper program ?? Yes ??

Very frustrated, very unhappy 😞

 As I understand it, the kernel looks at tool type and definition. If it's a different tool, it will flag a warning and only post out the first. Subsequent tools will need to be posted out in separate files. I'm sure something can be improved upon with manual NC and some post edits..

[gerrit36NS2]

Seth, can you clarify if I will or will not be able to post a wrap/engrave using a rotary axis after this change to feature set?

gerrit

[seth.madore]

@gerrit36NS2 

You will not be able to create a new toolpath that has wrapped functionality. However, I believe they are permitting existing projects to be posted. I will play a bit on my dev build (later this afternoon) to see if that is true, so please don't quote me on that, I could be mistaken

[hyperbolicindustries]

@jodom4 CAM simulation is not machine simulation where you can define a machine model and make sure that table and spindles do not collide.

While you can import .STP files you cannot import *.STP files to define tools, example if I want to run a simulation that you are referring to I can not use the Kennametal KM lathe tool holders to check for collisions. I can only use the stick tools that have to be defined (I know there are example tools). 

[seth.madore]

@hyperbolicindustries 

Machine Simulation is being worked on, but there is still much work to be done before it's available in public Fusion.

.STP import of tools would be awesome, especially in the Lathe/Mill-Turn environment, but AFAIK, nothing has been started on that, as it's quite a large project, as I understand it.

[johnswetz1982]

The above was me, I just forgot to switch names. As I mentioned the whole license change doesn't affect me for the most part other than helping here. If I need the commercial license for commercial work I will buy it (under the above name). But If I wanted to mess around for something when I dont have side/freelance work "oh well" I guess. 

[pangloss-paul]

So essentially you've removed the ability for hobbyists to generate toolpaths for one of the standard fablab machines - a small 4 axis  CNC available in most fablabs around the world. (Roland Modela).    Did you actually talk to any personal users?

[seth.madore]

We've only removed 4 axis support for the free entitlements. You can process any 2 and 3 axis toolpaths.

[gerrit36NS2]

Thank you Seth. Off to raise some cash 🙂

[gerrit36NS2]

So a fablab has US11k to spend on a small mill plus accesories but can't come up with the license fee for Fusion360. Interesting.

[pangloss-paul]

Well there's supposed to be a free license for the fablab given there's an Autodesk partnership with the Fab Foundation (they had to as Solidworks offers some 10 full licenses per fablab). 

But I'm actually more concerned about the members of the fablab.  Hobbyists using shared machinery. They each need a copy of CAD/CAM software on their personal computers so they can work on their projects away from the lab.  I've encouraged them to use the Design workspace and to explore the Manufacturing workspace so they can work out different strategies to fabricate their designs.  Exploring the CAM Simulation workspace, often with multiple tools and rest machining to obtain the results they are after.

To be useful, that just went from free to $500/yr. Times say 100+ fablab members.  Bear in mind this is a non-profit as the vast majority of fablabs are.  a cost uplift for the same functionality from zero to $50k/yr is simply not feasible in a zero revenue scenario.  Yet these are the very people that form part of the sales funnel for Autodesk.

What we've done up till now is recommend that they use Fusion 360 to learn 3D Design and CNC CAM.  It was free to do this, and those that managed to turn their hobby projects into businesses took a startup license and then a commercial license. 

If we're forced to, we will switch to alternatives, as will many hundreds of other makerspaces and fablabs around the world and we'll teach them.  It's a pity, as Fusion360 has grown up from a quirky half on/offline tool into something quite usable over the past few years.  I personally will lose about 5 years of muscle memory but I won't have the choice about changing for the sake of my members,

[DarthBane55]

I hear you, it's a pity choice made by Autodesk for the hobby community.  That said, what other options would you have to switch to?  Are there any free CAM softwares out there?  Short of freecad which someone put a link above, and doesn't have 4-axis yet, which you need, I don't know of any cheaper alternatives! (that doesn't mean much tho).  Not trying to be mean, I'm honestly curious to know, what alternatives would be cheaper.

Fusion comes at 50% off from time to time, something to keep in mind.  But it really does suck to have something removed, when so much time and effort have been invested in it 😞

[pangloss-paul]

Alternatives?  Well at this point FreeCAD's CAM looks like Fusion's CAM did 3 years ago (at least for hobby use).  It feels a lot like KiCAD was about 4 years ago in level of polish and functionality.  What happened to KiCAD was a few large PCB CAD users got together and decided to invest a few years license fee costs to improve the functionality to a professional level.  The result is KiCAD, today, is usable by professionals with functionality far beyond the dreams of the original development team.  The same could well happen to FreeCAD.   This might be just the push the hobbyist community needs to fund it.  

[pangloss-paul]

Of course we can come up with one license fee.  But we can't pay for 1 per member, which is what would be needed.  As it's even hard for personal licenses to share files now we'd be better off staying with the Roland software which came free with the machine, and supports multiple tools and a 4th rotary axis.