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Autodesk Fusion 360

Leo Voisine

Leo Voisine

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East Freeetown, Massachusetts
As some know, I am a Vectric Aspire user.

I am also a Solidworks user. I have a legal copy of Solidworks at home because I have it at work. That is in the $10,000 plus range. I have this seat at home as long as I am employed at the job I have. That is not so good because I use it - a LOT - and after I retire I will no longer have access to it.

I also want more full 3D ability and to be able to do full 3D 4 axis stuff. Aspire cannot do that.

I have been eyeballing Rhino and RhinoCAM but we are talking $5-6k -- maybe a retirement gift - maybe - but maybe not.

HOWEVER - I contacted Autodesk about a LEGAL and free seat of Fusion 360. They said YES, as long as you are a hobbyist or small business making less than $100,000 annually. SOOOO - I set it up.

I will be keeping Aspire and I now have Fusion 360. Both have their plusses & minuses.

FUSION 360 has some really positives in rendering, modeling, and assembly, that Aspire will never have. I think with practice it is by far better than sketchup. PLUS - it has a CAM side to it with "some" multiaxis capability. It have some really decent 3D capability.

Additionally it can handle laser and it also has a module for 3D printing

Best of all - FREE

It is certainly worth a look see.
 
Short answer is, no. But there is always more to the story.

It's not an apples to apples comparison.

Autodesk is still going to be a vector based package the same as Vectric.

Vectric's 3D "display" is raster based (little square blocks), where Autodesk "display" is digital.

Vectric is very user friendly and with Cut2D desktop at I think around $100 it's a really good deal.

Fusion 360 is FAR more powerful as a CAD tool, with some CAM built in.
Vectric is primarily designed to be a CAM tool with some CAD built in.

Vectric has done more to be easier to use for the hobbyist, but that come with some limitations to the professional.
Fusion give about all of the user"ness" to the operator, but more understanding of CAD is necessary.

Vectric is slanted more towards the artistic - Fusion 360 is a bit more slanted towards the mechanical, though I have seen some nice artistic stuff.

Fusion 360 will have a steeper learning curve on the CAD side because 1) it IS a full 3D package and you can do rendering and simulations. It is designed more towards the engineer. It's free to a hobbyist, but the pro's must pay more than the cost of Vectric Aspire.

Overall, Fusion 360 vs Vectric Aspire is not comparable as they both function differently.

I will NOT dump Aspire and convert to Fusion 360. I will use both.

Autodesk now owns ArtCAM which is a more direct competitor to Vectric. Overall in my opinion, Vectric is a better bang for the buck than ArtCAM, which I reviewed several years ago when ArtCAM was still with DelCAM.
 
Thanks, Leo.

What you may not know is that AutoCAD was my first cad program. Had to leave it after I quit teaching. I couldn't updates for free any longer and escalating hardware made continuing to use my antiquated AutoCAD impossible after time. Enter SketchUp.
 
Darren, I am a Solidworks user and to me the Fusion 360 is a good fit. I can easily understand Fusion being a steep curve to learn.

Carol - I am an AutoCAD user as well. I started on R9 and worked up thru R14 for windows. I bought R11 when I was in college getting my engineering degree. I even used Mechanical Desktop. I had an "E" size HP pen plotter at one time in my home and did a little drafting on the side.

My advantage is I to this for a living all day every day. On Solidworks not only on the job every day but I use it at home also. That much exposure is a bit of an advantage

For simple 2D stuff, and I don't use that much, I use Draftsight. It is FREE and as close to AutoCAD as you can get - even the HOT keys work.

We have a lot of Cadkey drawings at work and I have to sometimes edit them - MAN - that is horrible software.
 
I still pretty much default to using sketchup for quick drawings since I know it so well, but my growing frustration with finding plugins that will import dxf files and a desire to do more bezier curves and such has led me to spend more time on Fusion 360. I also don't want to spend $299 a year for the pro subscription of sketchup when the Fusion 360 offers so many more options for the type of design I desire to do.

I had stepped away from Fusion 360 as my one year free subscription had expired. I did not realized that all I had to do was click the buy/renew button and go through the questions again that I qualified as a "hobbyist", so now I'm back in business for another year, then will repeat after that if they are still offering it. :thumb:

I came across this playlist for using 360 as a woodworker. I'm really liking the idea of the environment variables for setting up materials and boundaries in the design, which he covers in the first video.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIAY4op1UapiGFRIWbn-cHUMnc5aUx-Km

Autocad also has a wide array of videos for learning it's features, here is the basic playlist, click on their user name to see the rest of the videos.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmA_xUT-8UlL23teEbhgeU4-3FE8pprpK
 
I had gone through a few tutorials a couple months ago on it. Was starting to get it, but got distracted and went back to Sketchup.

Those videos looke like they could help me bridge the gap. Thanks Darren.
 
I have not been back to Fusion 360 in a while. Not because I don't like it or need it, but because I have so much on my plate right now I have not had time to continue learning it.

1) I am definitely slowing down as I am getting a tiny bit older. That is REALLY putting a REAL time dilemma on getting projects done.

2) I really bit off more than I can chew with building my kitchen from scratch. See note #1. If I was 10-15 years younger it would have been done by now.

3) I am also trying to finish siding my house. See note #1

4) I have been trying to get my retirement business ramped up. See note #1

there are many more things to add to the list.

Sooo - bottom line is - I think I am out of my mind. But, hey, We are having fun at it.

Fusion 360 WILL happen, of that I am certain. It's a lot like Solidworks.
I am comfortable with Solidworks as I use that pretty much all day every day right now.
I really like that is has at least "some" CAM features to it. There are a few characteristics to it that Aspire does not have.

Fusion 360 is going to be a retirement thing. ~18~ months and counting.
 
I've been doing tutorials and learning the interface/terms the past couple of days. I was able to draw up a simple nut and bolt with threads, then join them and do an animation to show how they would assemble. My goal is to draw and test mechanical assemblies and ideas, so this is a big step in that direction for me.

https://youtu.be/4AbvxOaNNu8

Sent from my SM-T710 using Tapatalk
 
Darren Wright said:
I've been doing tutorials and learning the interface/terms the past couple of days. I was able to draw up a simple nut and bolt with threads, then join them and do an animation to show how they would assemble. My goal is to draw and test mechanical assemblies and ideas, so this is a big step in that direction for me.

https://youtu.be/4AbvxOaNNu8

Sent from my SM-T710 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Awesome. Doing threads would be an incredibly useful skill.
 
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