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

[jodom4]

 UPDATE Sept. 25, 2020: STEP Export stays in Fusion 360 for personal use

STEP export will remain available for Fusion 360 for personal use. This removal of STEP export was previously announced as part of the changes to curb misuse of Fusion 360 for personal use by commercial users. This change had unintended consequences for the hobbyist community. For this reason, we have made the decision to continue to allow STEP export for personal, non-commercial users. It remains in product unchanged and will not be removed as other announced changes roll out this October and January.

We want you to know, while the changes to the personal use entitlement were necessary, we remain committed to our community. You will continue to see development and investment in Fusion 360 for personal use.

UPDATE: There have been lots of discussions on social media and on our forums. We understand the emotions you’re all going through, so in the spirit of clarity, I want to break it down for you with the most accurate information about what is changing, directly from our team. 

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Here are 8 quick answers to the most common questions we’ve seen in the community.

1 – Is Fusion 360 for Personal Use still free?

Yes. Fusion 360 for Personal Use remains free. It’s not going away.

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2 – What does the 10 active documents change really mean?

You still keep your data and can have unlimited number of documents (3D design, drawing, PCB) as well as projects (top level folders in your data panel) in your account. 

• Today all your designs and documents are active by default. You can open any design no matter how old or new and they will open. 
• What this change means: 
  • 10 active documents means that you have 10 spots for any document to open and be editable at any given time. All your other documents will be stored in your projects in a new inactive state. They will remain yours, saved in your projects. 
  • When you reach your 10 document capacity, and you want to revisit an older design and open it up, you can do so by deactivating an active document and activating the inactive one to swap places with. Again, you continue to keep all your designs and projects with no limits on how many you can have in inactive state.  
  • PDFs, images, presentations, spreadsheets, etc do not count towards the 10 active document allowance.
  • If you have an assembly with referenced designs in it, the assembly and each reference (if opened) will count as 1 document each. Assemblies can reference active and inactive documents. You will still be able to edit the referenced designs as long as they are also active. If your referenced designs in the assembly are inactive, you can still open your assemblies, but the references will be read only.
  • Electronics Design Library, schematic, 2D PCB count as 1 document.

• How would this work?
  • The interactions of how you do this is still being worked on, and any existing experience around archiving projects from Fusion Team is not indicative of what this new interaction may be, that’s why it’s slated for January 2021. We hope that you understand that we are trying to put limits in place to stop commercial mis-use, while still enabling the vast majority of hobbyists to continue to design and make with little to no impact.

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3 – Can I still machine parts?

Yes. 2, 2.5 and 3 axis milling will still be available in the new Personal Use offering. 

• More advanced manufacturing functionality such as 3+2 axis, 4 axis, and 5 axis milling will only be available in the paid subscription. 
• Toolpath simulation in the Manufacture workspace is not going anywhere and will still be available. 
• Automatic tool change capability will not be available, and rapid feedrate are limited to cutting feedrate.

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4 – Can I still 3D Print?

Yes, STL Export will still be available in Fusion 360 for Personal Use.

• You can still use Fusion 360 for 3D printing with File > 3D print > send to print utility of your choice, File Export > STL or Save As STL

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5 – Can I still laser-cut or do 2D routing?

Save As DXF is still available from sketch. 

• DXF will not be a supported file format from File > Export, but you will still be able to right click on a sketch in the browser and select Save As DXF for your laser cutting and routing needs.

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6 – Can I still export my designs as STEP?

Yes, STEP export will still be available from the in-product File > Export dialog as well as Fusion Team.

Export of STEP will be not be available from the in-product File > Export dialog on Oct. 1, 2020. After Oct. 1,  You can still export your designs as STEP file formats via Fusion Team in your browser. This workflow will remain until Jan 19, 2021. 

• To get to your Fusion Team page, open the data panel, go into one of your projects, and click on the “Open on the Web” icon.

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7 – Does Extension Access mean Scripts and Add-ins?

No, you still have access to scripts and add-ins downloaded from the Autodesk App Store, there is no change here. 

• You will still be able to leverage our API as well as the add-ins available on our App Store.
• Extensions in this context refer to the Manufacturing Extensions available to purchase. These are the capabilities like Probing, 4 axis Rotary, 5 axis Steep & Shallow Strategies that extend your manufacturing capabilities with more convenience, faster machine times, and higher quality finishing.  

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8 – Are there changes to Education, Startup, Trial & Paid Subscriptions?

There are no changes to these offerings.

• Just to clarify, this change does not impact the trial, Education offering, Startup offering, or the Paid subscription. Product updates will continue to be delivered to all of our offerings, additional advanced functionality may be excluded from the Personal offering moving forwards.
• We will continue to support the Personal Use offering with product updates, improvements, fixes, as well as new features moving forward.

____

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 

[teknoel]

I find it very difficult to understand how Autodesk justifies charging for a "commercial" licence for a product that is still in public beta? I do not know anyone, nor any company who has bought a commercial licence. F360 is still in development?! F360 forces all users to update to the latest development version with no exceptions. There is no option to not update when you launch the application. There are many bugs and odd things which keep knocking me off my feet every update. I wish Autodesk would rule out feature cheap and just focus on stability, performance, and UI/UX bugs.

This week, I was forced to update as usual. Now, I've lost more core functionality, the Navigation Bar is gone. I'm sure the Nav Bar is hiding in the same place, along with the History Timeline marker, which has been AWOL for over a year.  If anyone spots them, please say "hi" for me.

[charliex2]

>F360 forces all users to update to the latest development version with no exceptions

the lab version of Fusion360 would be the exception

[vex]

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@pangloss-paul wrote:

• (New) Maker/Hobbyist license - A happy middle ground for non-professionals. Somewhere around $10/month, $100/year. Available for personal use and for those generating less that $8000/year in income. (Asking someone who makes $1000 a year in profit to pay $495 of it for the use of the software is too much.). Included STEP and DXF export, more active document slots (50 or 100?), 5 sheet limit in drawings and 4th axis manufacturing.  (+ toolchange and rapids) but can happily drop analysis, rendering and generational design
  

A lot of people make this exact point.  But this isn't on offer.  The Fusion 360 offer goes:

1. Basic non-commercial Maker (Free)
2. Advanced non-commercial Maker (no offer)
3. Startup & Educational License (Professional features, Free)
4. Professional ($500/yr)
5. Advanced Professionals ($ more)

As an advanced, non-commercial maker, I am baffled as to what AutoDesk expects me to do.  It would be cheaper to register a company every three years and take the startup license than to pay their full price. 

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I feel this in my soul. An alternative pricing scheme that I would entertain would be an a-la-cart approach on a month-to-month basis subscription:

Make the modeling environment free with no restrictions on import or export of file types, or number of documents open. Everyone get's that and uses it day-in and day-out. Want to use fancy features or capability in the Design environment like sheet metal? Fine! No problem. It's included. Design to your hearts content.

The manufacturing environment could be subscription based for the most part. $10-20/month and  you get the whole shebang for a single seat user. Want 2.5, 3, 3+1, 4, 3+2, and full 5 axis machining? It'll cost you in the subscription, but you get all that capability. I would draw a line and allow the additive portion of the environment to remain unlocked and open. It is relatively new feature and is not mature enough, in my opinion, to be part of the subscription at least for FFF machines (the vast majority of fablabs, hobbyists, and makers use that style machine--but more are starting to get in to SLS too--so something to consider). When a major improvement happens or a new feature is added and AD wants to drum up excitement about that functionality--make the environment free for a week or so. Get people exposure to it so there would be incentive to pick up the subscription if it starts to meet your needs.

Breakout the Drawing environment into a $10-20/month subscription service with a free week or two when a major update drops to provide preview capability for those, like me, who think it has potential but is not mature enough.

Simulation environment: Same deal $10-20/month with preview weeks strewn through out. To me this is the weakest link in the environments. If you're not big on FEM it's 'good enough' and may get you in trouble if you don't know what you're looking for--but it doesn't have the tools necessary (see previous post) for that to be anything but Beta to me. Truthfully I'd probably drop coin for a subscription if the following two conditions were met: 1) Mesh manipulation tools were available and implemented. Multiple element types, direct node dictation, various 1D element types, and the ability to do orthrotropic and ansitropic materials. 2) CFD. I have been waiting for CFD capability ever since I jumped on to Fusion 360 years ago. If that capability were there and polished. I'd invest in a full year's subscription without question.

I'm not keen/big on the rendering environment so I can't speak to it's readiness level, but again: $10-20/month with preview weeks.

Structural generation environment, again, I have never used so can't speak to it's readiness level--and maybe this is where AD could make a premium because it's fairly unique from what I see in CAD programs: $25-50/month.

Factor in all the extra costs on top of such an approach with cloud credits to get more work done efficiently and quickly it becomes more profitable for business to purchase a year's subscription. For us makers, advanced makers, and the like it's much more palatable and cost effective. Working on a design? Great! Nothing changes and it's no cost out of pocket. Ready to start working on the machining portion? Pay $10 and get that environment for 30 days. Need it longer, extend it or spend more cash up front and get a year's subscription for less. For comparison: Rhino is dang near a one-time cost $1000. That's a bit pricey for me for a non-parametric based surface modeler--but I don't have a recurring cost associated with a SAS approach. If AD offered a $100/year subscription that price point is really tempting.

I think my preferred pricing scheme is still a Plex pricing model: Offer monthly subscription rates and a one-time life-time pass. You're a business and need technical resources subscribe for a monthly or yearly subscription. Hobbyist or a business that doesn't need the technical resources or support staff: Buy the lifetime pass.

[holger_t]

I have been using F360 for almost five years now. What bothers me most about it: Fusion360 has only become large, versatile and stable because of the vibrant community. Now that the software has reached a certain maturity, Autodesk no longer needs the (free) users and is dropping them. At least that's how it seems to me.

And yes,
* with my self-built CNC a rapid movement is also for me as a hobby user more than reasonable.
* Even if I only want to design and then build a simple cabinet, I need more than one sheet of drawing.
* After this bad news, I have put my planned tool changer on hold until I have thought about how to deal with this situation.

And surprise: I am only a hobbyist and don't earn a cent with my CNC.

Let's take a look at the prices/complexity of other manufacturers' software in the subscription model:

* Microsoft takes 10 EUR/month for their Office package.
* Adobe takes 10 EUR/month for Lightroom and Photoshop.

Both software packages are in no way inferior to a Fusion360 in terms of complexity.

* Autodesk is charging 25 EUR/month for F360 - on special offer. Otherwise 494 EUR per year, that's a relaxed 41,67EUR/month tip.

hmmm...

On the other hand: Actually the whole thing is a very cool strategy.

You develop an agile product. This ensures that you bring new functions as MVP (Minimal Vaible Product, google it) on the road in short intervals (e.g. simulation, generative design, etc). The users are the beta testers and get the product for free of charge. In the coming sprints the errors are eliminated, which occur on the infinite hardware combinations.

That is fantastic!

Because without the help of the community you would have to pay your own, very large test team. This is what you get for free with this method!

Now that the product is mature, it is time to actively earn money with it, because the evil community is not honest after all and abuses the trust AutoDesk has placed in it. This evil, evil community.

And because you are called AutoDesk, who only knows industrial customers well and you think you are something very special, you cannot sell the product like other software manufacturers (such as Microsoft, Adobe with their 10$-Subscription, etc) do. Because a good product has to cost a lot.

From my point of view the calculation will not work. Surely some subscribers will be added. But AutoDesk will not fill its pockets, because in my opinion, the sediment of the users (= hobby users), who in my opinion make up the majority of the community, will not be able to afford this subscription. And so, little by little, the community will break away and AutoDesk will have to expand and pay its test team.

This restriction of the functionalities can only have been an idea of a controller from another field or a consulting company.

But what do I know? I am only part of the sediment.

Sorry for my negative words, but I am really frustrated.

[manuel.fr]

i fell almost cheated now, 2 years ago somebody told me about an free CAD with cloud etc and the best, for mac. I laught at him and said don't make such jokes. He also said it is free for startups and still thougt his joking, and all this should be from Autodesk, a Company i did not have a good opinion from.

But Fusion changed my mind completly, i told everbody how cool and great fusion is, even it felt like a toy compared to my 13 years of CATIA work with realy huge machines.There was so many thins lacking, and are still missing. Most in the drawing enviroment. there i so much still missing to make professional drawings.

It was all i ever wanted at home, i bought a space mouse too and started to make all kind of things. i did a lot private projects for garden and home. Things that required more than one sheed and more then 10 parts. also dxf and stp export to laser cut things etc. this times it was easy to get a start up licence, becaue i had a small side business running i registerd to such a licence and made a few hundred € in a year. but it was fun to play with fusion and became an active member in the forums.

i was blinded that all this could be a trap. i never thougt of this, that one day they will take all this stuff away from me and say... hey, give us 400 per year or youre done. But this day has come, and so the anger in me, being so blind and spendig so much time learning fusion, now for nothing. I would be way to expensive for such a small hobby.

its useless for me now and all i can do is export everything as stp and dxf and go somewhere else. Thanks.

i think this was all the strategy. Gather people, bind them to fusion and than strip away everything usefull and place it behind a paywall. I think a lot of people will pay it because they spend much more time into it then i. Rather pay now then start by 0 at a new programm.

[autodesk7ZMZY]

Hobbyist since 2017, have shown Fusion 360 to several friends who also joined and I guess there might be some enterprise licences having emerged from that.

And as a hobbyist, of course i have more than 10 documents in my account - which is a ridiculous limitation. I get that some advanced features are pulled from a free version, not providing complex manufacturing tools is fine for me. But seriously, 10 documents?

[worknstuff]

i began my fusion/cad journey nearly a year ago.

i ran personal for some time to figure out if fusion had enough functionality/stability as my workflow evolved.

i purchased a license at work a few months back. i guess i'll have to move the files across to that account now... 

How to transfer Fusion 360 projects from one account to another 

i hope that many others become paying users, so that the product continues to be worthwhile for AutoDesk to invest in, and that AD work more with real world projects to shape their roadmap.

i have ran a couple of small software projects (<10,000 hours), and appreciate that no product is viable without a good size paying base. 

[drhenderson]

"And as a hobbyist, of course i have more than 10 documents in my account - which is a ridiculous limitation. I get that some advanced features are pulled from a free version, not providing complex manufacturing tools is fine for me. But seriously, 10 documents?"

You probably need to go read the FAQ again.  You aren't limited to a total of 10 documents.  You are limited to 10 "active" documents.  Only active documents can be edited, but _all_ documents can be viewed and included as components in other documents.  10 is still low, but it's not nearly as restrictive as you might believe.

[alan.jonesXHXUF]

Can anyone confirm what will happen to the export of Flat Patterns for sheet metal?

[Anonymous]

I agree with most of the other commenters here. The 40% sale offer is still a bit pricy for me. I dont make any money at all using Fusion 360. I mostly use it to make odd things around my house to entertain my kids with, and I have an active cnc project that i'm working on to learn and have fun. While I feel like I will be able to use the personal addition with those limitation I dont think I will enjoy it as much. I would rather pay for the product, but why would I pay 25 dollars a month for a product I spend about 10 hours a month on. Every other software as a service I pay for cost less than 1/2 of that , some are more complex and some benefit my whole family and not just me. 

Fusion 360 team I am a software engineer and I get it. You wanna make money with your product. Sell it for 10 dollars a month for the full featured product to hobbist.  The free version can be limited to 10 docs and have limitaitons on simulation and all that but , the maker community will absolutely abandon your product if they feel like thier is a better alternative that is catering to thier needs. Your purse strings are definately attached to us too. Who do you think works at these engineering firms? People working at engineering firms dont want there personal design linked to thier work accounts. 

You need to put a better price model in place. 

[manuel.fr]

now i've exported all projects, at least the top assys as a stp file and the pdfs. send mails to the few people i've done things with fusion that i am forced to quit at 1.10. the missing stp export and dxf export of files is a total killer for me. also the rendering feature. i liked to do some nice renderings helping them out with their projects. That was pretty cool. a licence would never pay out. i used fusion sometimes no even 2h a month. At the best months maybe 10-15h. it was a hobby, nothing more, nothing serious. and i've got more hobbys which are more fun and a looooot cheaper, like drawing.

So today's the day i say goodbye to the community here and this is my last post. Fusion was a cool experience, and the community here was great and i’ve done a lot for my english skills. I onlny regret spending so **** much time into learning fusion and discussing things here.

So stay well and may come better times for your hobbys 😊

[GeekFieldGuide]

I have to echo most of what's been said here. 

I've advocated F360 to many people over the years, ESPECIALLY this year, while people have looked to expand their skill sets while stuck at home. To make this change now, while the world grapples with employment issues and a change of how the economy functions, is incredibly poor customer relations and optics.

I'm stunned at the removal of STEP export. 

The open source hardware community relies on the use of STEP as a safe intermediary between developers and users.

The 10 active document limit is a major issue for assemblies, especially things like 3D printers, which I'm sure you know how big a part of your community 3D printer users are. These users also happen to be some of your more tech-savvy users, who are providing you good feedback on the product, and helped you get to where it is today. 

What I really don't understand is the limitation to local-only rendering and the complete removal of simulation.

With the introduction of the electronics tools, as well as the cloud simulation of electronics cooling, you've enabled makers to work in new, better ways. Removing the local simulation options is questionable, but removing the cloud options makes no sense. If these were free cloud services, that would be one thing (are you planning on making cloud services free for Professional users? I suspect not.) But cloud simulation and rendering services are how you MONETIZE the free users. It's almost like it's not about the money, but some sort of executive committee decision that people are getting too many options for free, regardless of whether they're using them or not.

The appearance so far is that your mind is made up and no changes will be made, but I strongly encourage you to reconsider how this is being handled. 

Thank you for reading.

-Warren

[TopHound]

AutoDesk doesn't seem to understand the impact on their Personal Use customers and the likely long term consequences. For many (most?) of us we can’t justify an expensive licence for what is casual use. I like Fusion 360 and am finding more and more applications both for personal (hobbies, etc.) and public (I contribute free technical articles to online groups) benefit. Like many I’m relatively time rich, cash poor… or at least what I’m prepared to spend on software that doesn’t generate a financial return to pay commercail rates. The pending reduced functionality and direction of travel suggest that it is probably time to cut my losses.

As several have already commented, AutoDesk gets a terrific amount of software testing and bug reporting from the personal use customers who are understandably hurt by our long term support being disregarded. Looking at what has happened in similar situations should serve as a warning.

Microsoft’s dominance of the operating systems’ market and lack of attention to low-level customers has encouraged the development and spread of Linux. Now their market is shrinking and it is suggested that Windows 10 may be their last release. Similarly their dominance with MS Office has led to the development of open source alternatives (LibreOffice) with whole countries moving from commercial to open source solutions. Being locked in to one supplier’s proprietary file format eventually forced open document formats for office use – the pressure for CAD to follow is obvious.

In the GIS market, ArcGIS could cost $10,000 per seat so QGIS has grown as a viable open source alternative, totally replacing the commercial product in many parts of the world. Having used QGIS in anger, it was every bit as good as the commercial alternatives and runs under Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems.

AutoDesk’s changes meant that I’ve now seriously looked at FreeCAD. Currently Fusion 360 is clearly a much more polished product and the how-to information online (contributed in a large part by personal use customers) makes the learning process easier. However, if the users shift to FreeCAD (or some other alternative) and provide equivalent support, AutoDesk’s behaviour could lead to the likes of FreeCAD becoming a serious mainline competitor. Similarly KiCAD could become even more of a competitor to Eagle for the electronics design.

To date, Fusion 360 has been the obvious choice for home, hobby and maker type applications where both AutoDesk and customer have benefitted. Losing the support of this community will encourage and assist the development of open source alternatives with the eventual replacement of the majority of AutoDesk’s market.

[marcin_szczurowski]

@TopHound spot on.
I'm migrating from Eagle to KiCAD because of massive restrictions and I'm doing exclusively personal projects.
Likewise I'm migrating from Fusion to SolidEdge for now and probably elsewhere also just to check my options. Now I'm trying to be a bit smarter in my choices and recommendations.

[stevsmar13]

Decisions, decisions... I was thinking of getting a one year subscription but now I'm not sure.

Fusion360 is primarily a wintertime hobby for me. I have lots of other hobbies this winter so I'm wondering if I'll even even use Fusion360 much this winter?

The one year license is of a cost where I'll need to think about it. If it was less, I'd probably just get the license, and if I didn't use it I'd be happy knowing I was supporting AutoDesk to develop a product I've really enjoyed using.

[keqingsong]

Hey all – thank you for taking the time to share your stories, experiences, and feedback. None of them have gone un-noticed. Based on everything we’ve gathered from you and the community, we’d like to share this news with you:

STEP export will remain available for Fusion 360 for personal use.

This removal of STEP export was previously announced as part of the changes to curb misuse of Fusion 360 for personal use by commercial users. This change had unintended consequences for the hobbyist community. For this reason, we have made the decision to continue to allow STEP export for personal, non-commercial users. It remains in product unchanged and will not be removed as other announced changes roll out this October and January. We want you to know, while the changes to the personal use entitlement were necessary, we remain committed to our community. You will continue to see development and investment in Fusion 360 for personal use.

[angrdnsr]

Why is there only one pricing option? I use Fusion360 for personal use, and can't justify the cost to subscribe. But I only use a small section of it, mainly the 3d modelling, so why is there not the option to buy the different packages? For what I do, or intend to use Fusion360 for, is to design something (mainly in metal) and then make it, so the main components of interest to me are the design and CAM components. If I bought a subscription I would be wasting a lot of money as I would only be using a small part of the package

[keqingsong]

@angrdnsr thanks for your question! Yes, much like the idea of offering functionality a-la-carte, offering another tier is a very complex problem to solve when it comes to how we handle account creation, differentiation, pricing model, support for a new tier, back-end infrastructure to support a 5th offering (we already have Personal, Student, Startup, and Paid). We hear many of you are willing to pay for a less expensive tier, and we're taking your feedback and internalizing it to see how we can continue to grow together.

[timonsku]

Very glad to see this change happen and thank you for listening to the Community.
You might also want to look for a solution for all the carpenters and generally "manual" makers who were depending on the drawing workspace. Maybe remove the limit but add a watermark that a hobby version was used to print the drawing?

[GeekFieldGuide]

Thank you for taking this step. It's a good first sign, and I'd hope that you continue to evaluate the other statements made about alternatives to the current plans in this thread.