No, no - they're not raising the price; they're rebalancing it to reflect the value it delivers!!1!

And since they've reduced the free version functionality significantly, I believe I'm due a substantial rebate.

The problem is that there is no real competitor to fusion. If you think about usability/learning curve

Just in case anybody doesn't know, if you're a US or Canada veteran, solidworks is $20 a year

I'm sticking to FreeCAD.

So if you make 1000$ in a year from modeling, 680 goes to fusion360

Solidworks (Education version) for US and Canadian Active Duty and Veterans is US $20 or CAD $40 / year.

I am on my 7th or 8th year of it. I don't use it for making money, but use it for making 3D printed things for around the house, then upload them to Thinginverse and Printables for everyone else to use.

It looks like Solidworks for Makers is US $48 / year.

A couple of answers from the Q&A at the bottom of the page:

"3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS for Makers is meant for personal projects and non-commercial use. Per our terms and conditions, you may sell items you make for a profit up to and not exceeding US$2,000 a year. If you are interested in building your business with SOLIDWORKS tools, check out our start up program or our commercial offers."

"Currently this offer is available for purchase with a billing address within the following countries: Algeria, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Morocco, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. More countries will be added soon."

"Files and data created with your Maker account are digitally watermarked and can only be opened up in another Maker platform. You cannot open up files created with your Maker account within a commercial or academic platform. This digital watermark is added to native 3D file formats, such as .3dxml, .sldprt, .sldasm, and .slddrw. Neutral 3D file formats, such as .stp or .iges can be opened on any platform."

It's one of the biggest problems of the whole 3d printing ecosystem that so many people are relying on software like fusion or tinkercad that could shut down, lose its free option, and see massive price increases on subscription software.

I wish I could wrap my head around freecad, but we're just not there yet and we may never be. I feel like it or something like it must be our future because until we have a full libre software chain we're living on borrowed time.

I used to use a lot of Autodesk software as a hobby by abusing their student versions but they've really tightened their belt on those lately. I always thought if I turned a dollar on one of those old projects I'd absolutely want to give Autodesk their fair share but if they're going to be greedy then fuck em.

I've been using Solid Edge for a while -it's very solid once you learn it, just a less mature UX compared to 360. But no bullshit, it just works, I love not losing work because half the system is in the cloud and randomly forced you up to log in.

And they make it tricky as hell to find the hobbyist license. I really hate this exploitative shit. Same for Adobe.

Lol that's worse than Adobe pricing

Fusion is still the cheapest CAD software out there

Is it thou?

I was looking at Solidworks and it looks like I can sub for $99/year

https://www.solidworks.com/solution/3dexperience-solidworks-makers

Come, join us: FreeChads

Makes me glad I still have access to my old university email and credentials.

I switched to Shapr3d a few years ago, but I follow the work of the FreeCAD team with great interest.

IMHO, I think Autodesk should provide a free/limited version of Fusion360 for the people who only want to design and 3D print small pieces

So my educator free subscription isn't changing?

So most of the big packages have a cheap or free tier for hobbyist/maker use, and I think they all do for educational use. The rub with most of these is that they are either not for commercial use (OnShape, Solid Edge CE), or they have "gotcha" thresholds ($1000 revenue for F360, $2000 profit for Solidworks).

Now if you wanted to go completely free-as-in-beer and still retain full commercial rights, you really have to go open source. Then there's also DesignSpark Mechanical, which is Windows only and not truly parametric, but is much more advanced than something like TinkerCad. They've got their own issues with feature erosion in the free tier, but because the company's main business is selling components, they haven't removed commercial use from it yet.

What do you guys use fusion for? I was told to learn it but idk its uses. Im into 3d art and I was gonna use plasticity instead of fusion.