Fusion 360 Free version - work arounds

[Muzzer]

I've used Solidworks and Inventor professionally and Alibre (first), then Solid Edge, Onshape and Fusion (now) as a hobby user. They are all very similar "mid range" CAD systems and very capable in their own right.

I stopped using SW because the licence was eye wateringly expensive (plus an eye watering "maintenance" fee). It's good to see them offering a sensible price for amateurs finally. They used to offer HSMworks 2.5D as a free plugin but I think that may have gone away now that Autodesk owns it.

I loved Solid Edge but dropped it because of its limited popularity and the fact I only had an educational licence with no legal means of extending it beyond its official usage, rendering any work potentially inaccessible. It's now free for ever, which might have tipped me in its favour back then. However, there's no CAM option.

I was a beta user for Onshape. I liked it and its online model but I dropped it when Fusion came along, as all the plugins were so expensive.

FreeCAD was pretty buggy. It may be better now but when I looked at it again last year, the CAM workbench was still pretty limited and pretty buggy. It's developed by a small team of well meaning softies but there's no proper budget or roadmap, so I wouldn't want to rely on it any time soon.

Not sure why you'd use Alibre CAD with or without CAM, given you have to pay for both and it's a bit of a minority sport. Nothing wrong with it as such.

I was really pissed off when Fusion did the dirty last year, as they had promised not to charge for hobby users. This didn't sit well with my Scottish / Yorkshire blood. I got Tim Paterson's ad-in working with my free Fusion system after some messing about (my motive was mainly to get the rapids back) but it's not very user friendly and while it's certainly not a criticism of the work he did, he's not planning to make any further updates.

In the end, I've swallowed my indignance and coughed up the £360 per year for Fusion. In return I get the full CAD and CAM with the exception of the damned manufacturing "extensions". It has to be said that Fusion is now pretty much fully featured and compares well against the other CAD systems. It's also got a very active and well funded development team as well as excellent support and an active community. I can live with and just about tolerate the likes of Microsoft, Apple, Google, Autodesk etc without developing an attitude problem.

I'd say that if you want free or very low cost but fully featured CAD, then Fusion 360, SE and SW are excellent options. But if you use or plan to use CAM / CNC, there's little to challenge Fusion 360. The free version is pretty darned good and you can always use the workarounds mentioned above if you can be bothered. You can also turn the subscription on and off as far as I am aware.

That's my view although as with a lot of things in life, there's no right or wrong.