I think we all knew this day was coming. I may pay a month just to finish my couple projects & move onto another CAD/CAM myself.
Also Pre-360 we used Inventor because we had 10 licenses for it.
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It would be free just waitIng on Infrastructure to do it. They have offered a new one every year to my knowledge but nobody to install it.
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First Iām hearing of new versions / more licenses outside of the one for home use
https://talk.dallasmakerspace.org/t/jump-server-license/67696
Here is the last conversation on it to my knowledge (Sorry itās a restricted PM)
Ultimately I can reach out to them and get a 2020 license when I was originally talking with them they wanted to partner and for us to utilize SolidWorks I have no doubts they would provide us a new license.
I have pretty much stepped away day to day management but I can reach out to my SolidWorks contacts if that is what yāall want.
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FreeCAD is like going from a smart phone to a flip phone feature and usability wise. Like yeah it does the same basic functions pretty well, but anything else is going to take more work/effort.
Thatās just the way I see it as someone that uses CAD software nearly every day.
There is also Onshape which is an online Cad program that is free for use by makers. It is made by the folks who started Solidworks. The free version is the same as the professional version. The catch is that your projects are available for the whole Onshape community to look at (or even copy). Of course the upside to that is you can copy anyone elseās design as a starting place for your work. So unless one is doing proprietary designs, that should not be a big concern to most makers.
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I love FreeCAD, but itās definitely ugly as sin and not as full featured (I was pretty stoked about a new emboss feature for instance in Fusion360).
It is however very usable for a huge amount of things, especially āfunctional partsā.
Another thing about Onshape is that it has incredible tutorials, even whole courses online to train with. With even tests if you want to take themā¦
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For sure. Functional parts, but want a complex loft or sweep around an object, make a mold, or design an organic shaped wing tip, and it is super limiting.
I use Inventor at work, have messed around in FreeCAD, know Solidworks and Creo from school, and have used Onshape and even Blender. And really Solidwoks, Autodesk Inventor/Fusion and maybe Onshape, are the only ones that have all the functionality that I need from a CAD program. But I am a power user for CAD programs so I might have to bite the bullet and start paying for one for personal use.
But boy do I hate the subscription model that everything is moving to.
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Ah that thread never ended up saying we actually had any 2020 licenses just that 2020 was released, it was just the personal licenses and clarification if that could be installed on our shared computers.
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Do you expect Onshape to stay āfreeā, especially given this move by its competitor, Fusion? They already made a slew of changes in the academic product offering a few months agoā¦
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For me? Itās got to be an offline perpetual license. Iām willing to learn something and spend my time to work around the bugs we find in it, itās got to be something I can stick with forever.
Iām not getting tricked by the online-only itās free for now model ever again.
Edit: Piracy is bad, you should give the corporations money, they need it more than you do.
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I do. They have a small base. Free users are great publicity. It costs them probably very little. But, if things change then so be it. Itās not like anyone deserves free professional grade CAD.
I wonder if they are going to continue supporting OnShape now that they have XDesign? With just my cursory look they seem to duplicate each other. I am sure everyone who works on ONShape does get paid and their user base is about to explode with Fusion cutting everyone off. I looked into XDesign but like all SolidWorks products there is not a listed price which means I cannot not afford to ask the price.
Iām considering paying for a license of Fusion 360 anyway. Design Spark Mechanical 5.0 can do a lot of this stuff for free, but it annoys me with it not doing parametric modeling. I guess I should get use to Solidworks since the student license just watermarks stuff. I actually used Vcarve more than F360 CAM for most of my projects because most of my projects are 2.5D sheets.
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Quoting Slaid Cleaves:
Everything you love will be taken away.
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Edit: Piracy is bad, you should give the corporations money, they need it more than you do.
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FreeCAD may not be perfect, but it is free and open source.
Iāve been thru three different CAD learning curves at this point. ( Creo, Fusion, and now FreeCAD. )
Iām sticking with FreeCAD at this point.
I started tinkering with it in 0.14. Everything has improved a great deal since then. If any of you have not tried it lately, it might be worth another look.
The āmakerā version of Solidworks license we get for our personal computers includes their CAM package as well as their CAD package.
I have no idea if itās a perfect substitute for Vcarve and Fusion 360, but maybe someone knowledgeable could chime in here?
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Yep I donāt think anyone reached out.
Unless someone says donāt I will plan on reaching out tomorrow.