Changes to Fusion 360 Terms

[IanTParticipant @iant]

[IanTParticipant @iant]

It seems that there are a few changes in the terms that allow Personal Users to access Fusion 360 from 1st October

Details here:

Hackaday – Fusion 360 Changes

My fears about this seem to be realised I'm afraid. I hope Siemens don't respond with changes to Solid Edge for personal use but at least I have SE 2020 Community installed currently and there's no Cloud involved.

Regards,

IanT

Edited By IanT on 18/09/2020 09:26:24

[Roderick JenkinsParticipant @roderickjenkins93242]

Don't give up yet, it's still better than anything else at the price

You can still make STL files for 3D printing and CAM for 3 axis milling. The loss of multi axis milling is a disappointment though, I am preparing a 4th axis for my little mill

I think it is reasonable to assume that professional users have not been playing fair with the personal license.

Rod

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Oh dear, I think F360 is great, but it looks as if the free ride is over.

Not clear how badly the changes will effect me. The product may still be usable for hobby use.

Just another reminder that nothing lasts forever. Autodesk, Inc. are a commercial operation based in the USA whose purpose is to make a profit, not to keep retired British gentlefolk in clover. Predictable that a free trial might end with jaws snapping shut.

Fortunately, FreeCAD covers most of my single-part projects. I wish it did joints and assemblies too, but I can live without them. No danger of FreeCAD's license changing because it's open source, but always possibility the developers might wander off or be eaten by sharks!

Dave

[John CParticipant @johnc47954]

I use F360 as a personal, not for profit user. The 'free ride' is most definitely not over. I spoke to F360 support who pointed me to this blog Fusion 360 Blog which explains exactly what is happening. I was concerned about the reference to 10 documents, but the link above explains that this refers to 10 active documents; when you reach the limit of 10, simply archive an active document – make it inactive – and you are able to work on another document. All documents remain saved as archive documents, always accessible.

As SOD says above, Autodesk is not a charity.  However they will continue to provide a product that will do most of what hobbyists need, for free.

 

Edited for clarity.

Edited By John C on 18/09/2020 11:24:08

[I.M. OUTAHEREParticipant @i-m-outahere]

Won’t bother me one bit

3d printer tried to argue the point and came off second best – doubt if i will replace it .

Had a play with my cnc engraver and while i found fusion nice to work with for what i want to do ( cut gaskets out ) i could use just about any of the other programmes around , free cad and cambam are a couple .

For most of things i make i can use a piece of paper , pencil and a calculator to do what i want and not even strain the mostly useless chunk of dead meat between my ears i call a brain 😂

Don’t blame Autodesk though – they allowed us to use their product for free for so long – unfortunately there are those who rorted the system and ruined it for us hobbyists and students .

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

From the Fusion 360 Website:

What does no rapid moves mean?

Removing rapid moves means that all toolpaths will use High Feed, where the maximum feedrate for linking moves is the cut feedrate. You can still decrease the feedrate of linking moves if you want but you won’t be able to raise the high feed value above the cut feedrate.

For those of you with small consumer grade machines, this will likely not have a significant impact on your total cycle time. If you have a large machine with a high rapid feed, the rapid codes will no longer be in your posted code.

That'll throw a spanner in the works for some jobs.

Martin.

[EmgeeParticipant @emgee]

Pity about losing Rapid moves especially as many hobby machines don't use industrial cutting speeds, this will add a good amount of program run time to many milling programs where the tool is cutting air for 50% of time.

Also no tool changes within the program allowed so you have to make a program for each tool used and stitch them together, not so much of a problem more an inconvenience, at least I guess you can insert lines into a program to add a spindle stop followed by a tool change table position and tool offsets + spindle start before moving to the next active line of code.

Further to this no step file exports anymore so the model can't be saved or shared.

But there will be enough functions left to probably have it working, only time will tell what gets taken off the list next year or even sooner.
Now where's that link to Freecad.

Emgee

[Ron ColvinParticipant @roncolvin83430]

Onshape changed their terms and conditions for non-commercial users from what they were when the product was initially launched some time ago. They did not reduce functionality in any way. To continue to use the product for free, required allowing anything you create with the program to be available for public accessibility.

This did not concern me in any way. As I am only using the program for hobby purposes. If I was creating a product that I wished to make money from, then it would be only right that I should pay to use the professional version of Onshape.

Ron

[Roderick JenkinsParticipant @roderickjenkins93242]

It seems to me that what Fusion and Onshape have done is to try and make sure that commercial users cannot gainfully use the free versions and are trying very hard to keep a free version available.

While there seem to be viable options for 3D CAD for the home user, I am not sure what the options for CAM are.

Most of Jason's comments on using his KX3 have actually been about using the Fusion360 CAM rather than, in his case, Alibre.

So, what do we use if Fusion360 CAM becomes un-affordable?

Rod

[Alan Wood 4Participant @alanwood4]

The current offer on licences of 40% discount makes 3 years for a cost of GBP710 a very good price. If you can emotionally reconcile all the years of free use against the going forward cost it is a very small price to pay for the huge depth of capabilities in CAD, CAM and circuit board design.

Lars Christensen has just come back on the YouTube scene and has done a 2 part video on some of the latest Fusion sketch features. Part 2 is particularly stunning.

[IanTParticipant @iant]

Posted by John C on 18/09/2020 11:05:46:

I use F360 as a personal, not for profit user. The 'free ride' is most definitely not over. I spoke to F360 support who pointed me to this blog Fusion 360 Blog which explains exactly what is happening. I was concerned about the reference to 10 documents, but the link above explains that this refers to 10 active documents; when you reach the limit of 10, simply archive an active document – make it inactive – and you are able to work on another document. All documents remain saved as archive documents, always accessible.

I looked at Fusion when I wanted to draw something in 3D that I couldn't (easily) do with TurboCAD D/L or Open SCAD (both of which I still use btw). Fusion 360 was clearly very popular and had one BIG advantage, in that it included a CAM element. However, I deeply disliked (& indeed distrusted) the Cloud based nature of Fusion, so was very pleased to find that Solid Edge 2020 (free Community Edition) was not cloud based and (I'm not sure why) it also seemed to suit me better – I hadn't really enjoyed trying to learn F360.

So I don't know very much about F360. My 3D CAD knowledge is limited to Open SCAD and SE 2020. However, in the later, I design 'parts' (each being a separate file) which then are joined together into 'assemblies' (another file). If I need a 2D drawing, then this is again a new file.

This is very unlike the way I worked in TurboCAD – where I tended to have one large 'model' with parts defined and separated by either page geography and/or multiple layers. I've not made any very complex SE 2020 designs thus far but I can see that if I was limited to just ten "active" parts, that it might be an issue. I don't know if I'm understanding this correctly in F360 terms though.

As an aside, the lack of CAM in SE 2020 did slightly worry me – but in fact I've not made the jump to CNC as yet – and may never do so. 3D Print is another story of course. However, I have noted with interest the increasing use of commercial "printing" sources by other Gauge '3' colleagues. There was a very interesting 3D 'Printed' part shown recently (made with a metal sintering process) that would have required lost-wax casting or some similarly complex to produce not so long ago. Members are also using outside sources to get parts printed in more 'exotic' materials that are not so easy to use at home. So I'll worry about CAM when I have the actual need.

Anyway – Solid Edge 2020 Community Edition seems very capable of meeting my current needs and everything runs locally, still a very big bonus to my mind.

Regards,

IanT

[mattParticipant @matt27093]

As I understand it you can still have assemblies with more than 10 parts. Limitation is that you can only have 9 active components, that you can edit directly. You can have as many inactive components as you want. To edit a inactive part, You would need to come out of the assembly and make one the active parts inactive and activate the one you want to edit. Bit of a pain but not the end of the world IMO. You can also still save as DXF for laser cutting etc, you just can export as dxf anywmore.

Realistically those using more advanced CAM features like toolchanging and rapids probably need to look at paying the subscription, but im guessing a lot of those are using it for commercial purposes so shouldnt have been using personal edition anyway. End of free ride for more advanced hobbyists but £20 a month subscription isnt too bad for people who actively use these features. Whats comparitive cost for a commercial program offering same functionality? Are there any other free alternatives?.

would imagine its only a matter of time until solidedge goes down same route.

Would imagine Solidedge will go down a similar route before long

[IanTParticipant @iant]

"Would imagine Solid Edge will go down a similar route before long"

I guess it's quite possible Matt – but the copy I down-loaded had a "lifetime licence" with it (as I understand it) and that seems much more in line with the way I used (and licensed) TurboCAD DL. I upgraded as and when I wanted to and was able to continue to use my existing TC software version, until I reached a point where I needed to change it (which mostly involved Windows upgrades).

With a cloud-based product – any changes can be made instantly at the flick of switch in some Corporate office somewhere. That was my concern last year and I made a good choice back then as far as I'm concerned.

Obviously, many here have invested a great deal of time and effort into F360 and they may not be greatly effected by these changes – but this may be more of a deciding factor for anyone coming new to 3D CAD (as I was last year).

Regards,

IanT

Edited By IanT on 18/09/2020 13:06:51

[John CParticipant @johnc47954]

Here's another look at what's changing, and what some of the alternatives are: Fusion 360 changes . No connection etc. I don't think the changes will affect me, and if they do then the paid version at £22/month (over 3 years) is not outrageous, in my opinion.

[EmgeeParticipant @emgee]

Posted by matt on 18/09/2020 12:37:31:

Realistically those using more advanced CAM features like toolchanging and rapids probably need to look at paying the subscription, but im guessing a lot of those are using it for commercial purposes so shouldnt have been using personal edition anyway. End of free ride for more advanced hobbyists but £20 a month subscription isnt too bad for people who actively use these features. Whats comparitive cost for a commercial program offering same functionality? Are there any other free alternatives?.

You don't seem to understand Rapid moves and Tool changes in a program are quite normal in many operations on a cnc mill and do not point to commercial use, even a simple profile part could use a roughing cutter and a finishing tool, I have 1 program that uses 7 tools to complete the part.
The same as when using the lathe, using a turning and facing tool then changing to an external thread cutting tool, then another change to the parting tool so you can see using multiple tools in a program is very common,
in fact I believe you are more likely to use multiple tools on the lathe.

Emgee

[Roderick JenkinsParticipant @roderickjenkins93242]

Posted by Emgee on 18/09/2020 22:41:18:

You don't seem to understand Rapid moves and Tool changes in a program are quite normal in many operations on a cnc mill and do not point to commercial use…

I think the point is that you can't do commercial work without them. Sadly, the hobbyist is collateral damage in the war against the freeloaders.

Rod

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

I can't imagine being happy using my little CNC lathe without rapids. The thought of watching the tool endlessly trundle its way back to the start point of a long part at around 100mm/min feed rate, when I know it could easily zoom back at 1500mm/min is more than I could stand.

I've got Fusion 360, but I prefer to program my lathe with eCam, even though it cost €150.00 rather than being free. It seems like a reasonable purchase now, given this news.

Martin.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

I could live without the rapids as I don't have the max on the KX-3 set that high and if using "both ways" cutting when roughing out at least you are removing metal on he return cut. The multi axis "steep and shallow" would be missed as I do a fair bit of work that has compound curves and it's the ideal finishing tool.

Not having a quick change tool holding system I already break the program down into what each tool can do and set the next tool height before running the next lot of code. This is fine for the one off things that I do for my models and as I usually only do a few hours a month on it not much of a problem as it would be when doing batches.

I'll wait to see how limiting I find the changes and then decide if I want to pay for what is really only the CAM side for me as I still design in Alibre and their CAM is expensive.

[IanTParticipant @iant]

The G1MRA 3D 'Circle' have been discussing this issue and some members have started to export and locally store their Fusion drawings as 'STEP' files as a precaution. One member has successfully opened these files with Solid Edge and reports that they seem to be fine and can be manipulated at the component level. They think FreeCAD will be OK with them too.

Regards,

IanT

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

I have been told some very interesting news for anyone who wants an integrated 3D CAD/CAM solution but I can't say more… yet!

Neil

[Brian HParticipant @brianh50089]

I'm not knowledgeable enough to know if the changes will affect me. I've only just about grasped the basics thanks to Lars Christiansen and I'm toying with the idea of learning the CAM side of things but am now unsure as to which system to go for as there is no guarantee that there will be no further changes in the future.

Personally I would find £22 a month unaffordable given the amount of time the program would be in use.

Brian

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

Posted by JasonB on 19/09/2020 07:14:37:

I could live without the rapids as I don't have the max on the KX-3 set that high and if using "both ways" cutting when roughing out at least you are removing metal on he return cut. The multi axis "steep and shallow" would be missed as I do a fair bit of work that has compound curves and it's the ideal finishing tool.

Not having a quick change tool holding system I already break the program down into what each tool can do and set the next tool height before running the next lot of code. This is fine for the one off things that I do for my models and as I usually only do a few hours a month on it not much of a problem as it would be when doing batches.

I'll wait to see how limiting I find the changes and then decide if I want to pay for what is really only the CAM side for me as I still design in Alibre and their CAM is expensive.

Occasionally, I have wrongly set something in CAM and produced gcode with long lead-ins or lead-outs… …just that is painful to see in action, so don't underestimate how you might feel when one of your jobs has the tool jumping all over the place.

The other bad news is that the Steep & Shallow milling strategy appear to be for the chop in the free version come October.

Martin.

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 19/09/2020 10:40:23:

I have been told some very interesting news for anyone who wants an integrated 3D CAD/CAM solution but I can't say more… yet!

Neil

Unless it's very exceptional integrated (expensive) software then I tend to find one side is better than the other.

Because of that, I have gone down the route of finding a CAD system I can get along with, and secondly having a selection of CAM systems that have strengths in various areas, because I haven't found one that does, or is strong, in everything.

However, I'm certainly interested in what you have to show us.

Martin.

[Brian HParticipant @brianh50089]

I think you have some of us salivating Neil, when can you tell us?

Brian

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