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.

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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 

[charliex2]

Is "extensions access" plugins, c++, python etc? 

[borland123D]

Why shouldn't this only apply to new Personal Use users?  Long time users helped make Fusion 360 a much better product today with feature recommendations and bug reporting help?  

[JeromeBriot]

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@charliex2 wrote:

Is "extensions access" plugins, c++, python etc? 

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@keqingsong wrote in the comments section of the blog post:

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no limits to scripts and add-ins in the new Personal Use offering moving forward.

[keqingsong]

Extensions access means Manufacture Extensions like advanced probing strategies, steep and shallow strategies, etc. 

https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/manufacturing-extension

[charliex2]

ok thanks, i was wondering if they were disabled since you could say write a .step or .dxf exporter (or missing personal feature)

[lee9966]

 If you are putting together a document to make things clear to people you could at least proofread it.  Perhaps it is just me who doesn’t understand this sentence, if so I apologize.

“Fusion 360 is personal use if available for a 1-year term for qualifying users.”

It is personal use if it is available?

[shawn3WMTV]

Looks like the end of the personal use to me. With the limitations put Manufacturing and a document limit (10 docs only) its basically usless to me.

I guess its back to Solidworks.

[keqingsong]

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@lee9966 wrote:

 If you are putting together a document to make things clear to people you could at least proofread it.  Perhaps it is just me who doesn’t understand this sentence, if so I apologize.

“Fusion 360 is personal use if available for a 1-year term for qualifying users.”

It is personal use if it is available?

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Sorry for the confusion - it should read Fusion 360 for personal use is available for a 1-year term for qualifying users.

We get that updated asap, thanks for spotting it. 

[jesasinowski]

How, if at all, do the changes in this announcement affect Early Adopter licenses?

Thanks.

John

[Y0tsuya]

Still confused about what will happen to my files on their servers after enforcing the 10 document limit.

[keqingsong]

Hope this helps: 

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. You can have as many document tabs as possible. 10 active documents means that you have 10 spots for any document to open and be editable at any give time. All your other documents will be stored in your projects in a new archived state. They will remain yours, saved in your projects. Even if you leave Fusion 360, the data stays in your account. We can not do anything with it. You can have unlimited number of archived documents (designs) as well as projects (top level folders in your data panel) in your account. If you are at your 10 document capacity, and at any point you want to revisit an older design and open it up, you can do so by archiving an existing active document and activating the archived one to swap places.

[Anonymous]

I understand that free things can't be free forever, but removing step Export from the personal license just killed it for me, also it will have a huge impact on the open source community who mainly shares it's 3d models as a step file.

And 60€ a month is to much to justify for me and I think for many others, so unless you get something out with the needed features like step Export and cam stuff for open source and makers. Let's say for 10€ a month (think the Netflix for makers). I will be moving away from fusion and use solid edge or something similar.

[schack.lindemann]

I really do hope AutoDesk listen and listen hard.

We're getting to a crossroad here where they have the option to grow their userbase significantly by allowing a broader price range with a granular feature set. Or locking it in behind a steep paywall, making it a pro-only tool somewhat like SolidWorks. To me one of the best arguments for Fusion was the availability for at wide set of users. I could recommend it to almost any user/student/maker and they would be able to download and use the program with an almost equal feature set, no matter their monetary situation.

We are slowly but surely getting to a point where I can no longer recommend Fusion to our FabLab students and users. Even though its still an amazing tool. If Autodesk alienate the maker/startup users they will looses future userbase and revenue.
What I especially dislike is the loss of export options like DXF and STEP, and automatic tool-change in manufacturing. Also I can't understand what they gain from removing Simulation and access to buying extensions.

Most makers/artists/casual users cannot justify $60/month.

The next 2 weeks I'll be teaching a workshop on Digital Production for 40 students. The main tool and subject will be Fusion 360. But given this new and rather deplorable attitude from autodesk we migth look into other options for the next semester. 

[Anonymous]

Will we be permitted to move back and forth between the basic monthly subscription license and the personal use license?

For example, if I signed up for the basic monthly subscription so that I could get these features back for a single month.  Would I be permitted at the end of the month to downgrade back to personal use?  I realize all of the limitations would return once I downgrade.

Basically, can I subscribe for the 1 or 2 months out of the year when I get the itch to actually build things but then revert back to personal use when I am not tinkering with anything?  

[lee9966]

Is archiving or un-archiving a project going to happen immediately?

  If so it sounds like we working on more than 10 projects just means an extra few clicks when changing what we are working on. 

I don.t think I have ever needed 10 projects active at once anyway and it is not like those of us with this license have urgent demands from customers.

[keqingsong]

As mentioned in the blog post - this change is still being worked out and is slated for Jan 19, 2021. We want to talk about it now so you are all aware of what is happening and when it's happening, so that you know about the whole plan and not find out later. 

[wmhazzard]

"Looks like the end of the personal use to me. With the limitations put Manufacturing and a document limit (10 docs only) its basically usless to me.

I guess its back to Solidworks."

You are hilarious. You are going back to Solidworks and you are going to spend $3995 for a license and $1295 a year fee because Fusion 360 is useless for you in the free version instead of spending about $300 a year for the paid version of Fusion. I can't stop laughing.

[schack.lindemann]

Depending on "shawn3WMTV" situation it might be a viable option since SolidWorks is going somewhat in the opposite direction of AutoDesk here. If he qualifies as a Startup/Entrepreneur it might be completely free: 

https://www.solidworks.com/solution/organization-type/entrepreneurs-startups

Also, the $300/Year is a time limited offer only. Normal price is $495

[timonsku]

The way this change is communicated cause a major turmoil the in the maker community. Autodesk should really take better care in their communication of such major changes which affects an enormous amount of users. The email that was send around about this change in many ways contradicts the statement on the website.

Though remaining is the question about STEP export. Is Autodesk seriously removing that option? That would render the tool completely useless for open source and hobby work outside of 3D printing.

In this table that you link in the announcement it still states that step is available for export in all license types: https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=Fusion_Import_designs_supported_file_formats_html
Though the language everywhere else says otherwise.

It is very understandable that you are trying to find ways to cut down on abuse of the free license and for the Manufacturing workflow I think you have found a good balance but step export is crucial for any user, free or pro.
With this practice Autodesk will loose its biggest draw to Fusion which is that you could naturally grow with the tool without any initial investment.
At best this change has cost a lot of trust in the product as a huge community is and was relying on you for your support and has given back in tremendous ways by creating a huge amount of resources for people to learn Fusion and being a huge advertisement machine for the product. I can't see how this synergy can continue if you restrict crucial file exports like that.
I find it hard to continue to recommend to people to learn Fusion if there is a chance that the free version will be cut back even more in the future at any time.

I am also a commercial user of the software at my day job and the only reason for that is that it had a very accessible and marginally cut down free version that I could use in my hobby work and start learning and working with before introducing it at my workplace. Though that means that you can use all the crucial features and step export is and was a major feature that I use in almost every design I make.
I really hope you reconsider this and listen to feedback from the maker community.