7 ms·

It really saddens me that people are recommending fusion 360 here. Sure, I get it. Fusion 360 is an awesome piece of software. But are people really that eager

by tjoff 8y ago

It really saddens me that people are recommending fusion 360 here. Sure, I get it. Fusion 360 is an awesome piece of software. But are people really that eager to be completely dependent on autodesk? Do people not realize that perhaps the reason for why fusion 360 is so cheap is because they are aiming (and on a fast track) to get complete monopoly? Does that not bother anyone? You wouldn't even be able to stick to an older version of the software. Can you even version control your files? (will you in the future, without buying the premium package?) Yes I know the cloud has your back and everything. But you don't want the files in the same version control system that you use for everything else? What's next, save your python files in another cloud? It's absurd. Can you export your files to be workable in any other software? (aside from very expensive autodesk products) Are you not risking loosing everything you ever produced? It's like python2 -> python3 but instead of compatibility issues your code just disappears or held hostage. How is that OK even for a hobbyist? I'm sure I'm mistaken on some points (please correct me!), because I vomit every time I decide I want to try it and start the download process and start reading their pages (and I don't think I even got to the privacy policy). The whole application is architectured to lock you in. That is the SOLE purpose of it, why do we accept that? It is dystopian, and the devil is being universally cheered upon. Have we really lost all hope?

Adirael 8y ago
I've tried to like Fusion 360, but the login screen the first time you boot it up turns me off. It's also slow as hell on a top of the line iMac, and that's with very small projects. I like OpenSCAD a lot, but being productive there outside of very simple (squarish) designs is hard.
Double_a_92 8y ago
Because for a hobbyist, that just wants to get things done, there sadly aren't really any alternatives. Otherwise could you reccommend any?
- RossBencina 8y ago
  Rhino 3D looks to be similarly priced.
- tjoff 8y ago
  It is similar to the old days of piracy and photoshop. Every kid had photoshop. Which killed the market for the software that was actually aimed at regular people. Autodesk had excellent timing in capturing the market before it had time to mature. OpenSCAD is great, but a bit limited. Also latest release is almost 4 years old, could do with some further development. FreeCAD is very capable, but it is a bit buggy and not very user friendly. Solvespace looks really neat, but also a bit limited and from the looks of it isn't actively being developed. Those two points make me hesitate to invest too much time in it but someday I think I will play around with it some more. Blender isn't CAD software, but it is the gold standard in my opinion. Sacrificing nothing and a really good UI. But it is more free-form than architecture and technical modelling. So wouldn't recommend it if that doesn't align with your purpose (look up blenderguru donut tutorial for an excellent start). All the mentioned applications are pretty odd in how they behave though. It requires that you commit to learning it. Personally I've used OpenSCAD quite a bit and I've now committed to learn FreeCAD. I had trouble creating maintainable code for OpenSCAD for anything but small projects, and also it takes some effort to create visually pleasing parts with it. It is hard to find good material on all the software above (except for blender), I really liked this (hard to find) 3-part tutorial for FreeCAD. I have had huge help from it and it is what helped me to grok enough of FreeCAD to start actually attempting to do anything on my own. If you are curious about FreeCAD maybe it will give you a better idea of it than only playing around with it yourself. Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dJEPg06G-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dJEPg06G-o Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PESZxM_eSqY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PESZxM_eSqY Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkNkpPxb8W0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkNkpPxb8W0
  - helb 8y ago
    > Also latest release is almost 4 years old, could do with some further development. There's a "2019.01-RC1" tag on github, so we can probably expect a new release soon.
- jononor 8y ago
  FreeCAD is quite workable, I've constructed some 100 parts for 3d-printing, lasercutting and CNC in it. There are some warts in the UI for sure, but once you get to know them not that hard to deal with. Quite a bit fewer learning resources online compared to Fusion360, but enough videos on Youtube to get started, and the FreeCAD Forum is pretty helpful. For programmers, one can also use Python to define more complex parts or workflows.
StavrosK 8y ago
We accept it because it's pretty much the only choice for a hobbyist. Even OnShape (which is even more proprietary) has closed its free tier, as far as I can see, and any FOSS alternative is just light years away from Fusion.
- tjoff 8y ago
  Yes, OnShape did exactly the crazy thing that no one wants to think of. And in response people flock to fusion 360? OnShape should have been a deterrent.
  - StavrosK 8y ago
    You keep decrying how proprietary and horrible Fusion360 is, but you propose no viable alternative. OpenSCAD is much, much harder to use, SolveSpace is very good but nowhere close to Fusion (or even OnShape), last I used FreeCAD I couldn't make heads or tails of it and it liked to crash a lot, and those are the best options. What would you suggest? Complaining is easy.
    - tjoff 8y ago
      Fusion 360 is excellent, but I feel people don't recognize the true cost of it. I have a long post (not more than 3 cm under yours currently) in this very thread about alternatives. But yes, one will have to make compromises.
      - StavrosK 8y ago
        > I feel people don't recognize the true cost of it That's a bit patronizing. > I have a long post in this very thread about alternatives. I did read that post, and it comes to much the same conclusions as mine. For the two-hour hobbyist projects I dabble with, the cost is acceptable.
    - jandrese 8y ago
      Have you tried SketchUp[1]? I moved off of it to OpenSCAD awhile back, but it seemed to work ok for what I needed. [1] https://www.sketchup.com/ https://www.sketchup.com/
aequitas 8y ago
I understand your sentiment and feel it every time I choose to start Fusion, the lock-in is just plastered all over the place. I have used OpenSCAD for a while and coming from a DevOps world I greatly value the Everything-as-code mantra that OpenSCAD enables. But as a hobbyist 3D printer looking for the tool to just get my idea out in an evenings work Fusion is just the best/cheapest out there for me at the moment. I have now adapted a mentality to not create anything I'm not willing to loose. And if Autodesk ever decides to change their license, which they inevitably will, I'm willing to just take that loss and find something else at that time. Maybe by that time some open source developer has implemented Fusions idea's in sketching/modelling (and hopefully improved on some parts). For me the choice is just accepting Fusion for what it is now or get sidetracked in all kinds of stuff and never finishing a hobby 3D model anymore. OpenSCAD is nice, but for me it is to easy to lost in perfecting the coding when trying to get the model the way I want. And other 3D modeling tools (eg: Blender) are just not fit for engineering work like Fusion is.
- ioquatix 8y ago
  After using OpenSCAD for several years, the more you use it the faster you get with it. I can easily whip out quite complex designs in a few hours. Visual CAD tools eventually start to feel very limiting.
  - jandrese 8y ago
    I've hit some real walls with OpenSCAD though. Trying to create a 1000x1000 point mesh for example will blow up pretty much any machine. That's not an outrageous size for a large textured surface.
  - rspeele 8y ago
    What sorts of things do you model with OpenSCAD? I love the "WYSIWYM" paradigm for the lack of surprises. You know what you can and can't change without having to mess things up, and you know what you need to come back to and adjust manually if you break things. And since there's no hidden state, you never find yourself wanting to just CTRL+Z back to the last "good" state, without knowing why. But all that said, I really wouldn't know where to start modeling something like this in OpenSCAD. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/BTXktw5yJfw/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/BTXktw5yJfw/maxresdefault.jpg
pasta 8y ago
Because the workflow CAD -> CAM is very very good in Fusion 360, people just take it for granted. Sometimes locked(in) software is just better than open alternatives. It's like Photoshop vs Gimp. Yes, Gimp can do most of what Photoshop does but it will take you more than double the time to do it.
- tjoff 8y ago
  I don't mind paying for software. And though I prefer open source software I don't mind closed source. What I do mind is lock-in.
  - pasta 8y ago
    My comment was a little unclear. But I think sometimes people just take lock-in for granted. As for Fusion 360: once your producted is manufactured you can just export the 3D data. This will loose all steps to create the model but I think people think this is a nice trade-off for the lock-in.
    - tjoff 8y ago
      That's like keeping the binary but removing the source code. I don't find that acceptable.
thatsaguy 8y ago
Fusion 360 has the better pricing model, it's that simple. 500$ is not too expensive even for a hobbist: you'll likely spend more on consumables in a single year. And there's simply nothing else of that value for that price point. There are no OSS solutions that can offer reasonable CAD design yet. I'm not a fan of Fusion: it's UI is not really well designed. It's slow and clunky. It forces "cloud" on your throat for ABSOLUTELY NO GOOD REASON. Seriously: wtf? I frequently need to work offline, and Fusion doesn't really seem to get out of my way. Onshape, which is 100% web based, is better is several ways: it's actually faster to booth, which is scary! (not in everything, but for most things it is!). Starts in a 1/10 of the time. The interface is much more streamlined and efficient to work with. For my purposes, Onshape is only lacking in "variable" management (there's no substitute for a simple spreadsheet here -- even FreeCAD is superior in this regard). Am I recommending Onshape? No. I hate cloud-based solutions. The lock-in is absolutely obvious here: if you're offline you're doomed. Import/export is read-only. However, for ~500$ a year, with Fusion you get a complete CAD/CAM solution with decent CFD. Onshape starts at 1000$+ and only gets you a (good) CAD system, and you still need $$$ more for CAM. If you're starting, Fusion is the better deal. It's that simple. I'm not sure why Onshape is squandering the opportunity here to provide a slightly cheaper offering to promote their solution. Their CAD is good, but not good enough for the fusion offer. They could capture a nice maker segment if they provided a slightly cheaper solution. Now, why not FreeCAD? The problem I see is that FreeCAD is quite a bit behind to be usable for day-to-day work. I use it for toy projects, and it's pretty limiting by itself. I wrote and recommended before that FreeCAD starts to really shine only when combined with Cadquery or OpenSCAD. With parametric sketching, "visual" interfaces only get you so far. Cadquery gives FreeCAD a considerable edge for complex designs. The problem though still stands: even if you just start with 3D printing you realize consumables and electricity are not a zero cost anymore. 3D printing and hardware design in general is expensive. Investing some money into 3D design tools is logical, but you want something that works reasonably for your hardware. It's a chicken-and-egg problem. I'm a developer, there's no way I could work on a 3D CAD in the size of FreeCAD in my spare time and get anywhere useful. All being said, FreeCAD 0.17 passed SolveSpace for all my purposes this year, which is a great achievement. At some point FreeCAD will become viable enough and will in turn start to attract enough money to staff full-time people.
tsmarsh 8y ago
Lock in AND provide a low friction way to generate models. As a developer the learning curve and life cycle of OpenSCAD sang to me and I picked it up very quickly. I have still modeled more things with OpenSCAD than I have with Fusion. But... Fusion is the better tool in a lot of places. Meshes being the most obvious, then CAM. I still find Fusion weird to work with. Not only did I have to spend hours learning the basics (as opposed to minutes with OpenSCAD and Sketch-up) it falls out of my head faster than Ruby AND I found the only way to be really productive with it was to invest in a 3D mouse (which is a lot of fun).
blopp99 8y ago
If there's an option which is as good and user-friendly I wouldn't have any problem using it.

by tjoff 8y ago

Adirael 8y ago

I've tried to like Fusion 360, but the login screen the first time you boot it up turns me off. It's also slow as hell on a top of the line iMac, and that's with very small projects. I like OpenSCAD a lot, but being productive there outside of very simple (squarish) designs is hard.

Double_a_92 8y ago

Because for a hobbyist, that just wants to get things done, there sadly aren't really any alternatives. Otherwise could you reccommend any?

RossBencina 8y ago
Rhino 3D looks to be similarly priced.
tjoff 8y ago
It is similar to the old days of piracy and photoshop. Every kid had photoshop. Which killed the market for the software that was actually aimed at regular people. Autodesk had excellent timing in capturing the market before it had time to mature. OpenSCAD is great, but a bit limited. Also latest release is almost 4 years old, could do with some further development. FreeCAD is very capable, but it is a bit buggy and not very user friendly. Solvespace looks really neat, but also a bit limited and from the looks of it isn't actively being developed. Those two points make me hesitate to invest too much time in it but someday I think I will play around with it some more. Blender isn't CAD software, but it is the gold standard in my opinion. Sacrificing nothing and a really good UI. But it is more free-form than architecture and technical modelling. So wouldn't recommend it if that doesn't align with your purpose (look up blenderguru donut tutorial for an excellent start). All the mentioned applications are pretty odd in how they behave though. It requires that you commit to learning it. Personally I've used OpenSCAD quite a bit and I've now committed to learn FreeCAD. I had trouble creating maintainable code for OpenSCAD for anything but small projects, and also it takes some effort to create visually pleasing parts with it. It is hard to find good material on all the software above (except for blender), I really liked this (hard to find) 3-part tutorial for FreeCAD. I have had huge help from it and it is what helped me to grok enough of FreeCAD to start actually attempting to do anything on my own. If you are curious about FreeCAD maybe it will give you a better idea of it than only playing around with it yourself. Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dJEPg06G-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dJEPg06G-o Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PESZxM_eSqY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PESZxM_eSqY Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkNkpPxb8W0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkNkpPxb8W0
- helb 8y ago
  > Also latest release is almost 4 years old, could do with some further development. There's a "2019.01-RC1" tag on github, so we can probably expect a new release soon.
jononor 8y ago
FreeCAD is quite workable, I've constructed some 100 parts for 3d-printing, lasercutting and CNC in it. There are some warts in the UI for sure, but once you get to know them not that hard to deal with. Quite a bit fewer learning resources online compared to Fusion360, but enough videos on Youtube to get started, and the FreeCAD Forum is pretty helpful. For programmers, one can also use Python to define more complex parts or workflows.

StavrosK 8y ago

We accept it because it's pretty much the only choice for a hobbyist. Even OnShape (which is even more proprietary) has closed its free tier, as far as I can see, and any FOSS alternative is just light years away from Fusion.

tjoff 8y ago
Yes, OnShape did exactly the crazy thing that no one wants to think of. And in response people flock to fusion 360? OnShape should have been a deterrent.
- StavrosK 8y ago
  You keep decrying how proprietary and horrible Fusion360 is, but you propose no viable alternative. OpenSCAD is much, much harder to use, SolveSpace is very good but nowhere close to Fusion (or even OnShape), last I used FreeCAD I couldn't make heads or tails of it and it liked to crash a lot, and those are the best options. What would you suggest? Complaining is easy.
  - tjoff 8y ago
    Fusion 360 is excellent, but I feel people don't recognize the true cost of it. I have a long post (not more than 3 cm under yours currently) in this very thread about alternatives. But yes, one will have to make compromises.
    - StavrosK 8y ago
      > I feel people don't recognize the true cost of it That's a bit patronizing. > I have a long post in this very thread about alternatives. I did read that post, and it comes to much the same conclusions as mine. For the two-hour hobbyist projects I dabble with, the cost is acceptable.
  - jandrese 8y ago
    Have you tried SketchUp[1]? I moved off of it to OpenSCAD awhile back, but it seemed to work ok for what I needed. [1] https://www.sketchup.com/ https://www.sketchup.com/

aequitas 8y ago

I understand your sentiment and feel it every time I choose to start Fusion, the lock-in is just plastered all over the place. I have used OpenSCAD for a while and coming from a DevOps world I greatly value the Everything-as-code mantra that OpenSCAD enables. But as a hobbyist 3D printer looking for the tool to just get my idea out in an evenings work Fusion is just the best/cheapest out there for me at the moment. I have now adapted a mentality to not create anything I'm not willing to loose. And if Autodesk ever decides to change their license, which they inevitably will, I'm willing to just take that loss and find something else at that time. Maybe by that time some open source developer has implemented Fusions idea's in sketching/modelling (and hopefully improved on some parts). For me the choice is just accepting Fusion for what it is now or get sidetracked in all kinds of stuff and never finishing a hobby 3D model anymore. OpenSCAD is nice, but for me it is to easy to lost in perfecting the coding when trying to get the model the way I want. And other 3D modeling tools (eg: Blender) are just not fit for engineering work like Fusion is.

ioquatix 8y ago
After using OpenSCAD for several years, the more you use it the faster you get with it. I can easily whip out quite complex designs in a few hours. Visual CAD tools eventually start to feel very limiting.
- jandrese 8y ago
  I've hit some real walls with OpenSCAD though. Trying to create a 1000x1000 point mesh for example will blow up pretty much any machine. That's not an outrageous size for a large textured surface.
- rspeele 8y ago
  What sorts of things do you model with OpenSCAD? I love the "WYSIWYM" paradigm for the lack of surprises. You know what you can and can't change without having to mess things up, and you know what you need to come back to and adjust manually if you break things. And since there's no hidden state, you never find yourself wanting to just CTRL+Z back to the last "good" state, without knowing why. But all that said, I really wouldn't know where to start modeling something like this in OpenSCAD. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/BTXktw5yJfw/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/BTXktw5yJfw/maxresdefault.jpg

pasta 8y ago

Because the workflow CAD -> CAM is very very good in Fusion 360, people just take it for granted. Sometimes locked(in) software is just better than open alternatives. It's like Photoshop vs Gimp. Yes, Gimp can do most of what Photoshop does but it will take you more than double the time to do it.

tjoff 8y ago
I don't mind paying for software. And though I prefer open source software I don't mind closed source. What I do mind is lock-in.
- pasta 8y ago
  My comment was a little unclear. But I think sometimes people just take lock-in for granted. As for Fusion 360: once your producted is manufactured you can just export the 3D data. This will loose all steps to create the model but I think people think this is a nice trade-off for the lock-in.
  - tjoff 8y ago
    That's like keeping the binary but removing the source code. I don't find that acceptable.

thatsaguy 8y ago

Fusion 360 has the better pricing model, it's that simple. 500$ is not too expensive even for a hobbist: you'll likely spend more on consumables in a single year. And there's simply nothing else of that value for that price point. There are no OSS solutions that can offer reasonable CAD design yet. I'm not a fan of Fusion: it's UI is not really well designed. It's slow and clunky. It forces "cloud" on your throat for ABSOLUTELY NO GOOD REASON. Seriously: wtf? I frequently need to work offline, and Fusion doesn't really seem to get out of my way. Onshape, which is 100% web based, is better is several ways: it's actually faster to booth, which is scary! (not in everything, but for most things it is!). Starts in a 1/10 of the time. The interface is much more streamlined and efficient to work with. For my purposes, Onshape is only lacking in "variable" management (there's no substitute for a simple spreadsheet here -- even FreeCAD is superior in this regard). Am I recommending Onshape? No. I hate cloud-based solutions. The lock-in is absolutely obvious here: if you're offline you're doomed. Import/export is read-only. However, for ~500$ a year, with Fusion you get a complete CAD/CAM solution with decent CFD. Onshape starts at 1000$+ and only gets you a (good) CAD system, and you still need $$$ more for CAM. If you're starting, Fusion is the better deal. It's that simple. I'm not sure why Onshape is squandering the opportunity here to provide a slightly cheaper offering to promote their solution. Their CAD is good, but not good enough for the fusion offer. They could capture a nice maker segment if they provided a slightly cheaper solution. Now, why not FreeCAD? The problem I see is that FreeCAD is quite a bit behind to be usable for day-to-day work. I use it for toy projects, and it's pretty limiting by itself. I wrote and recommended before that FreeCAD starts to really shine only when combined with Cadquery or OpenSCAD. With parametric sketching, "visual" interfaces only get you so far. Cadquery gives FreeCAD a considerable edge for complex designs. The problem though still stands: even if you just start with 3D printing you realize consumables and electricity are not a zero cost anymore. 3D printing and hardware design in general is expensive. Investing some money into 3D design tools is logical, but you want something that works reasonably for your hardware. It's a chicken-and-egg problem. I'm a developer, there's no way I could work on a 3D CAD in the size of FreeCAD in my spare time and get anywhere useful. All being said, FreeCAD 0.17 passed SolveSpace for all my purposes this year, which is a great achievement. At some point FreeCAD will become viable enough and will in turn start to attract enough money to staff full-time people.

tsmarsh 8y ago

Lock in AND provide a low friction way to generate models. As a developer the learning curve and life cycle of OpenSCAD sang to me and I picked it up very quickly. I have still modeled more things with OpenSCAD than I have with Fusion. But... Fusion is the better tool in a lot of places. Meshes being the most obvious, then CAM. I still find Fusion weird to work with. Not only did I have to spend hours learning the basics (as opposed to minutes with OpenSCAD and Sketch-up) it falls out of my head faster than Ruby AND I found the only way to be really productive with it was to invest in a 3D mouse (which is a lot of fun).

blopp99 8y ago

If there's an option which is as good and user-friendly I wouldn't have any problem using it.