I've been waiting for years to have better tool path generation and editing in 360. It's looking like they will leave the base "Startup" (hobbyist) package as a 3 axis CAM with good functionality, but not include any of the features to support what I consider common home shop hardware - basic probing, 4th axis stuff, 3d printing, etc.
I also won't be writing any plug-ins, since I will have to spend so much time writing custom code to do what the software can't do without that extension.Īutodesk is putting some things into the manufacturing extension that would have previously been in the base package, based on their imagined target market. I won't be posting help for other people using the features on reddit or elsewhere, and I won't be able to recommend them to anyone. That also means I won't test them, provide any feedback, provide a customized post processor, or otherwise help with the development of my favorite CAD/CAM. However, with the present pricing, I won't be able to afford any of the features in the extension.
Autodesk deserves to have people who use this software to make money pay for it. I've been using Fusion 360 for about three years, planning on some day making enough money to turn my "hobby" into a real business, and planning on upgrading Fusion 360 to a "real" license at the same time. The cost of a commercial license is $500 annually plus the extension would be (presently) about another $100 per month. Startups can't, and there's no "hobbyist" license with free or discount cloud credits. Educational users have free cloud credits, so I presume they can use the extension. You can't buy cloud credits if you don't have a commercial license. They're putting features that before would have been in the base package into a "manufacturing extension" that will require "cloud credits" to license per month. They think that only students in college are "educational" users learning CAD/CAM. It feels a lot like they've hired a new management team in sales and that team is applying the standard 1990s business school playbook to increasing revenue from Fusion 360 - subscriptions per seat per year, cloud pricing with no alternative, tiered software with commonly desired features at a tier above what a hobbyist can pay.īasically, they're setting up to increase revenue based on an imagined view of the users of the software - they seem to think we're all either home hobbyists with clunky DIY mills or startups with VC funding, or larger companies for whom the costs are acceptable because they're still lower than the competition and CAD/CAM is supposed to be expensive, anyway. It looks like Autodesk is taking a step backward, now that Fusion 360 is getting more mature (relative term). Bit of a rant here, hopefully I have my math and facts correct.
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