Fusion 360 Defunctioning

What will move FreeCAD forward faster is donations.
 
Things like this are going to hurt the software rental system the big companies are pushing. People see this sort of thing and push back. It's nice to be able to pay a smaller amount per year and get updates for many people.

MS Office used to run $500 or so for the bigger versions. Home users couldn't justify that, so pirated or used something else. It's currently $70/year, which is pretty reasonable for what you get. I still wouldn't have it if my wife didn't insist on it. She uses it at work a lot, so using something else is irritating for her. I use that sort of thing rarely, so I just use OpenOffice on my computer. When I don't just use a text editor. I rarely use the fancy formatting tools for the stuff I do.

I think I'm going to try to use FreeCAD and if I can get it to work for me, I'll send $ I would have used on something else to them. I really dislike the attitude some of the companies have with this stuff. It's a little like Darth Vader.. "I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it further." And as a paying customer for F360, I think I have the right to be irritated. And for hobby users, $400/year is a big ask. For a business, it's a good deal though. Other than the issues with them possibly altering that deal as well.

I've heard pirated Solidworks is out there. If I wind up going that way, maybe I'll run that version on an isolated VM so they can't mess with it and pay for the $40/year club. But I'd rather support the open source guys if it will do the job.
 
As a Mac user Solidworks is a non-starter so it will have to be FreeCAD for me.
 
Flyinfool said:
What will move FreeCAD forward faster is donations.
Click to expand...

If you read their donation web page, they say donations will help some, but donating time to help would be better.

But, I agree and I'm going to donate myself!
 
I'm too invested in this with my projects. I was looking at my active projects and I have well exceeded 10. Also, I can see some of them being "commercially" viable at some point in the future so I bit the bullet. Ransomware? I just relented and forked over the money. Color me a hostage.
 
I don't see a problem paying for it if you use it frequently. Particularly if you make money using it. Perhaps just make copies of your designs in STEP or similar just in case you need them. The default is cloud storage, so if they shut down the servers, your data is inaccessible.
 
It's difficult as a software vendor: You offer a free version, you find that many of your customers that should pay don't, because the free version gives them all they need. A hobbyist and a pro need the same features, really. Step file export is an excellent example.

OnShape is fairly cunning in this respect. The free version does not allow you to keep and edit private documents. Everything you draw is public. As a business, that's not something you can get away with. As a hobbyist, I really don't care.

As for web apps, subscriptions and software as a service... Like it or not, that's the way the commercial world is going. The advantages are numerous: It's truly cross platform. You can't lose data. There's nothing to install. It's never out of date. Your work is not tied to any local storage.

FreeCAD, I expect to feel just like Blender: great, powerful features with the most pointlessly clunky, migraine inducing interface. I'm keeping an open mind and hoping to be pleasantly surprised.
 
Lo-Fi said:
It's difficult as a software vendor: You offer a free version, you find that many of your customers that should pay don't, because the free version gives them all they need. A hobbyist and a pro need the same features, really. Step file export is an excellent example.

OnShape is fairly cunning in this respect. The free version does not allow you to keep and edit private documents. Everything you draw is public. As a business, that's not something you can get away with. As a hobbyist, I really don't care.

As for web apps, subscriptions and software as a service... Like it or not, that's the way the commercial world is going. The advantages are numerous: It's truly cross platform. You can't lose data. There's nothing to install. It's never out of date. Your work is not tied to any local storage.

FreeCAD, I expect to feel just like Blender: great, powerful features with the most pointlessly clunky, migraine inducing interface. I'm keeping an open mind and hoping to be pleasantly surprised.
Click to expand...
Your description of OnShapes public approach is what I thought Fusion 360 was heading towards and quite frankly I was good with that even if some of my designs did go "commercial" but at that point I planned on paying anyway. But that seems to be a change in direction or I completely misunderstood them from the beginning. With that said, I really like Fusion and I suppose that I was overdue for paying. I haven't used the CAM capability but am looking forward to it in the future.

In other threads about FreeCAD, I have given my opinion already. While it appears to be very powerful, I found the construction methods and user interface to be on a very steep learning curve - to steep in fact for me to make progress that I felt was going somewhere. While Solidworks and Fusion are similar in how they operate, the construction methods are well documented on their site, YT, etc. and I found the learning curves to not be as steep as FreeCAD.
 
And at any moment they can lock you out of their cloud and all YOUR work is gone. Same goes for a business, THEY still own all of YOUR work.

Is there really any guarantee that Autodesk or any other computer can not be hacked or even just go down because things can fail. I still stick by my belief tat if it can be accessed by any means it can be hacked.
 
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