FREE Autodesk Fusion360 Ultimate for hobbyists

[mitchejc]

Maybe its old news but I see the Fusion360 Ultimate version is now available for FREE for hobby use etc.

" But we went one step further, for hobbyists, enthusiasts, makers and startups—in fact, anyone using Fusion whose business makes less than $100,000 per year—Fusion is free. "
Full story here http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/design...n/ba-p/5496355
and on the try or buy page they have the same message.

Not sure its any good but I'm going to install it and have a look...

[mitchejc]

Installed it and played a bit by working through some 2.5D and 3D CAM tutorials and wow, I'm quite impressed. Definitely worth a look for 2.5 and 3D CAM as its got a lot of the high end CAM strategies like Adaptive Clearing, Pencil, Scallop, Spiral, Radial etc. The tutorials worked flawlessly and nothing crashed or broke and its relatively easy to get going, so I like it so far. Its got sort of a Google Sketch-up look and feel. It's also supports something called 3+2 (5-axis positioning) for both 2.5 and 3d strategies which might be handy of you have a 4th axis on your machine. I'll maybe try the CAD functionality this weekend.

After seeing all the fancy features during my cursory look, the "FREE" part sounded to good to be true so I went through the registration process, selected the free option and the "30 days evaluation" part in the title bar disappeared so apparently I'm now the proud owner of a free Fusion360 Ultimate.

Just for the record, I have no affiliation whatsoever with autodesk or any any cadcam software company so I'm not selling anything :-)

Has anybody else tried it and whats your thoughts?

[Ger21]

Maybe its old news but I see the Fusion360 Ultimate version is now available for FREE for hobby use etc.

It's free for 1 year, and they say you can renew after that one year.

But the fine print here is a bit vague, and looks like they can end it at any time?
http://www.autodesk.com/company/lega...s-entitlements

I've seen similar offers before (alibre?), and the free part never seems to last forever.

[JAZZCNC]

I've seen similar offers before (alibre?), and the free part never seems to last forever.

Yep they got me with that one and exactly why I'll never buy or recommend any of there software again no matter how cheap, Even if Free.!!

[mitchejc]

Ah, thanks Gerry, I missed the 1 year part in the fine print. That makes it a bit risky as I would never be able to afford or justify the subscription for the Ultimate version which has the cool 3d strategies. I always wanted to cut a nice set of alu rims for a RC car so maybe I'll do that and move on. Hopefully they are using the free period to gather usage data for hobbyists and come up with some sort of licensing scheme that makes it affordable for such use?

[Ger21]

In November they had an introductory offer to get Ultimate for the standard price of $300/year, supposedly for life.
I locked in for the $300, but haven't used it yet.

[m.marino]

From what I see it limits to either earning over 100K US from a project or one year of usage and that AutoDesk can change that IF they give you e-mail or telephonic notice.

Michael