Fusion360 too expensive

[Dana 2]

Hello All, I have been using Fusio360 for years, last year I paid for a years subscription and only used it a few times, they renewal is up and they want £380+ for another year (£500 for a new subscription) 

I am just not going to pay that for what little I use it

what alternatives do people use? a bit of googling found DesignSpark Mechanical, Solid Edge Community Edition and FreeCAD

I am really not looking forward to a new learning curve, fusion was hard enough to transition from the other Autodesk software I used (cant remember what it was or why I had to move to Fusion)

 

Thanks

 

Dan

 

[Enigma_M4 105]

Hi Dan,

that a bit reminds me to myself. I was a strong user of DesignSpark Mechanical 5 as long as it worked, and the learning curve was pretty flat, for designing projects of your own or for modifying existing STLs; a really nice program for free. But the RS-Guys changed their politics and made three subscription lines: one for free, one for little money and one for much money. In the free subscription, importing STLs or STEP-files no longer is possible.

So, heavy-hearted, I decided to switch over to FreeCad. It's open source and community-developed, compareable to linux.

No cost, no restrictions, and a very powerful program, parametric like Fusion.

BUT: the learning curve is as steep as Mt. Everest (at least coming from the non-parametric Designspark), with a wiki-dokumenation and a lot of youtube tutorials.

I've gone this path anyway; I guess, FreeCad will never charge it's users any money, and if they will some day, old versions never expire. So this change might be worth the effort.

Regards

[Dana 2]

@Enigma_M4 thanks for your reply I will look into FreeCAD

 

Its a shame really I was just getting proficient in Fusion360, I would have paid the £380+ if it was a one time payment but not every year

[Dana 2]

oh boy FreeCAD seems like a much steeper learning curve, going through the tutorials but keep having to go back, even joining objects seems more difficult