Fusion360 Price Hike

[PAToyota]

I'm guessing that most of us - including me - using Fusion360 are using the free version for personal stuff, but I got a notice that they're hiking the price of the subscription by nearly 40% annually.

This year at Autodesk University 2023, we further communicated the Fusion industry cloud vision where we have committed to building a future where you can unify data, technologies, and workflows across your entire organization, move seamlessly between Autodesk products, and extend your reach through 3rd party applications, partnerships, and APIs.

As a result, we are rebalancing the price of Autodesk Fusion to represent the value it delivers. Effective January 30, 2024, the annual subscription price will increase to $680 USD SRP.

If you purchase an annual subscription before January 30, 2024, you will receive a renewal price lock at the current price of $490 USD SRP until February 6, 2027. For more information about these changes, refer to the following blog post and FAQ.

Last year I had posted about my disdain for everything going to subscriptions (LINK). When you purchased a copy, if you didn't find value in the latest updates you just didn't have to buy the new version. Now they have you locked in and your current version disappears if you don't keep your subscription. As I said in my other post, the big thing for me is that all of these "improvements" are likely things I'll never use - "you can unify data, technologies, and workflows across your entire organization, move seamlessly between Autodesk products, and extend your reach through 3rd party applications, partnerships, and APIs." Absolutely none of that applies to me.

The other issue is that you have to keep updating - you can only "snooze" an update for 14 days: https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/snooze-feature-fusion-360/

Which becomes a problem when your hardware no longer supports the latest update: https://www.autodesk.com/support/te...s-these-devices-and-operating-systems-OS.html

Again, if you "bought" a copy of the software, you could decide not to update if you weren't ready to upgrade your hardware - or delay the software update until a hardware update makes sense.

As I said, I use the free version. Mostly for "sheet metal" designs to be cut out on a plasma table (or taken to a laser cutter). Yes, I could get away with just a simple 2D CAD program, but I have to admit that Fusion360 makes bending flanges and such easier to calculate, but I'm likely using less than 10% of Fusion360's "power" for what I do.

However, I also know a guy with a small CNC operation and there are some things I design to have him machine on his mill or lathe. Like me, he is never going to use those "improvements" listed above, but he has to pay the subscription both due to their terms as well as to access certain features (multi-axis machining being a main one). So that immediately catapults him into the same category as multi-million dollar businesses from AutoDesk's standpoint. Yeah, an extra $200 a year is a drop in the bucket in the big picture, but it is just another hurdle for the little guy - particularly when you look at the other associated costs of continually updating. There have been days (weeks) where this guy has basically been shut down because an update didn't work the way it was supposed to - or moved things that he had to then find again.

Honestly, for what he (or I) am doing, we could continue to happily use the software from a couple years ago without ever noticing a difference in not having the "improvements." It would be nice if they offered a "legacy" version for a one-time purchase price that doesn't have all the "latest and greatest" updates and minimal support for those who aren't multi-million dollar corporations. Their start-up license is $150 for a 3-year single term access to Fusion per individual for businesses with ten or fewer employees that generate less than $100,000 per year in revenue - after that if you make over $1000 a year you're supposed pay $700 of that for a subscription each year. It's like the IRS wanting to drop the 1099-K reporting to $600 from the $20K/200 transactions for online transactions. Again, it was basically either you aren't making any money or you're lumped in with the multi-million dollar corporations.

Sorry for the rant, but just another example of "the man" trying their best to squash out the little guys...

 

[rockmup]

Its not the "Man" its just how things are evolving.

 

[tsomctl]

JetBrains, for their software, after you've been a customer for 12 months, if you stop paying, you can continue to use the last release that you paid for.

 

[PAToyota]

Its not the "Man" its just how things are evolving.

Yeah, everyone seems to be out to gouge as much out of you as they can.

JetBrains, for their software, after you've been a customer for 12 months, if you stop paying, you can continue to use the last release that you paid for.

Lightburn is basically the same. You buy the software and get a year of free updates. After that you can continue to use whatever the last update was, but you don't get any more updates. If you renew, you get another year of "free" updates.

 

[bgaidan]

I bought my current year at like $300 when they had some special. Doubt I'll renew at that rate.

 

[rockmup]

Yeah, everyone seems to be out to gouge as much out of you as they can.

Not at all, that was designed to be this way. it was free up until everyone worked the bugs out for them and we all enjoyed it up to that point. For FREE
Then they made it pay to play and people got mad, people are still mad. Its capitalism at its finest

 

[SomeGuyFromOlympia]

this is why I use the old stuff that came on a disk

 

[PAToyota]

Not at all, that was designed to be this way. it was free up until everyone worked the bugs out for them and we all enjoyed it up to that point. For FREE
Then they made it pay to play and people got mad, people are still mad. Its capitalism at its finest

It's still got bugs - and you get new bugs with each update.

My SOP had always been to wait at least a month until I installed an update to let others work out the bugs. Now they force it on you and you're screwed until they figure out how to "fix" it - if you're lucky.

this is why I use the old stuff that came on a disk

I have Adobe Creative Suite CS6 (last non-subscription) and SketchUp 2021 (last non-subscription). I've mostly moved to Affinity's Suite from CS6 and will continue to use SU21 until there is another option for me that replaces it.

 

[CarterKraft]

Whoever suggested OnShape in another thread I owe them a beer.

Fuck Fusion and AD

 

[SomeGuyFromOlympia]

Whoever suggested OnShape in another thread I owe them a beer.

Fuck Fusion and AD

Why?
Serous question, I haven't used either

 

[bgaidan]

Whoever suggested OnShape in another thread I owe them a beer.

Fuck Fusion and AD

Too bad it doesn't do CAM. Their site does say it's coming soon though.

 

[CarterKraft]

Why?
Serous question, I haven't used either

Because it is free/free (for now i'm sure)
It loads faster, doesn't crash and just works better, for my use.
No jumping through hoops to prove my use, my designs are shared with the public is the downside but is not an issue for me.

 

[CarterKraft]

Too bad it doesn't do CAM. Their site does say it's coming soon though.

I just bought Sheetcam, happy to support him, same with Cris and Bendtech.
I

Re: The SheetCam story?​

by Les Newell » Fri Feb 21, 2020 12:48 pm
I'm sorry, I've been meaning to get around to replying to this for a while.

As this is a one man business I guess you want to hear about my history. I was interested in electronics and engineering from a very early age. OK, let's face it obsessed is probably a closer description

One of my earliest memories is of taking a torch apart and the eureka moment when I figured out how to make the bulb light with a couple of wires. I always took my toys apart to see how they worked so in the end my parents admitted defeat and resorted to giving me pre-disassembled toys in the form of Meccano and Lego

I still have a big box of that meccano.

Later when home computers became available I was in nerd heaven. All of my peers with computers used them for gaming but I was much more interested in controlling stuff with my trusty Dragon 32. Unlike the much more popular ZX Spectrum it had a proper keyboard and a parallel port. I ended up hanging all sorts of things off that poor machine, everything from a home made scanner to a sonic rangefinder. It's funny to think that now my mouse has quite a bit more processing power than that computer did.

After school I ended up in Stafforshire Polytechnic (now Staffordshire University) taking an HND in electronics. HND was a 2 year course in parallel with the degree course. The degree students took a third year. I didn't try very hard at it and couldn't see the relevance in a lot of the stuff they were teaching. To be fair most of it I've never needed. I struggled with the maths. Trigonometry and algebra is not too bad but the more abstract stuff like calculus just doesn't sink in. In the second year I visited one of the degree students. He had a bread board and some components. We'd just spent weeks learning about transistor H parameters (which even the tutor admitted we'd probably never need) and he was really pleased to turn a light bulb on with a transistor and a resistor. I did that when I was 8. I obviously didn't know all of the theory behind transistor operation at that age but I still knew enough to build such a simple circuit. That was the point where I completely lost interest in the course and dropped out.

After a couple of years unemployed a scheme came up that paid for training as long as it was part time. I regretted dropping out of the HND and the local college offered a 3 year one day a week HND course. The scheme was only for one year so I ended up doing year one of the course on Mondays, year 2 on Wednesdays and year 3 on Fridays. With some rather creative accounting we managed to get the hours just under the limit for the scheme. One of the conditions of the scheme was that I needed to keep looking for work and if I got a job offer I had to take it. Near the end of the course I got a job offer so I never finished that HND. We were very poor at the time and even coming up with the money for fuel to get to the college was a struggle so I really didn't have much choice about the job.

Fast forward a few years and I was working for the same company doing electronics design, assembly, programming and operating a couple of CNC machines. I was getting bored, especially with the assembly work, so when they wanted to increase my workload and reduce my pay I decided enough was enough and left to start out on my own doing freelance design. As by that point I was their only designer I carried on doing some work for them and their customers. In fact I still do some work for them now. It was a win win situation really. I got a ready made customer base and they got to save money by not employing me full time. The house I lived in at the time was called 'The Stables' so my business name became 'Stable Design'. Yeah, I'm good at imaginative names

Around that time I built myself a 8x4 CNC plasma for a home project. It was very crude and due to the lack of space in my workshop I had to winch it up into the ceiling when it was not in use. The only software I could find at an affordable price was pretty basic and I decided I could do better. How hard could it be? As it turns out quite a lot harder than I expected! Hobby CNC was just starting to become popular so I thought I had a good chance of selling my software and kept plugging away at it, probably spending 60% of my time on it and the rest on paying work.

6 months later I had something that was beta but mostly worked. The software was mainly aimed at plasma cutting and routing sheet materials so I used my incredible skill at coming up with names and called it SheetCam. The GUI was very roughly styled on the workflow of the software I'd used on the CNC router belonging to my previous employer. At this stage I didn't consider it to be a polished enough product do sell so I offered it for free for about 6 months and asked for feedback. Customer feedback has always played a big part in SheetCam's design. After a year in development it was finally ready for sale. Sales started off a little slow but when resellers and OEMs got interested sales got much better.

SheetCam was originally written using a GUI toolkit called Borland C++ builder. Borland discontinued the toolkit so a few years later I moved over to the open source wxWidgets toolkit. This involved pretty much a complete rewrite and SheetCam TNG was born. TNG is a Star Trek The Next Generation reference and was originally just my reference for the project until I came up with a better name. Well, I didn't really come up with a better name

When TNG was released I also increased the price slightly with a 50% discount for users of the old version. In the last 15+ years that was the only time the price has changed.

These days SheetCam is my main source of income. I still do some design work for my old customers and a few CNC repairs. Most of the repair work is sub contract for a local machine maintance company. They call me in when they need hand with their more complex and difficult jobs.

 

[bgaidan]

I just bought Sheetcam, happy to support him, same with Cris and Bendtech.
I

Re: The SheetCam story?​

by Les Newell » Fri Feb 21, 2020 12:48 pm
I'm sorry, I've been meaning to get around to replying to this for a while.

As this is a one man business I guess you want to hear about my history. I was interested in electronics and engineering from a very early age. OK, let's face it obsessed is probably a closer description

One of my earliest memories is of taking a torch apart and the eureka moment when I figured out how to make the bulb light with a couple of wires. I always took my toys apart to see how they worked so in the end my parents admitted defeat and resorted to giving me pre-disassembled toys in the form of Meccano and Lego

I still have a big box of that meccano.

Later when home computers became available I was in nerd heaven. All of my peers with computers used them for gaming but I was much more interested in controlling stuff with my trusty Dragon 32. Unlike the much more popular ZX Spectrum it had a proper keyboard and a parallel port. I ended up hanging all sorts of things off that poor machine, everything from a home made scanner to a sonic rangefinder. It's funny to think that now my mouse has quite a bit more processing power than that computer did.

After school I ended up in Stafforshire Polytechnic (now Staffordshire University) taking an HND in electronics. HND was a 2 year course in parallel with the degree course. The degree students took a third year. I didn't try very hard at it and couldn't see the relevance in a lot of the stuff they were teaching. To be fair most of it I've never needed. I struggled with the maths. Trigonometry and algebra is not too bad but the more abstract stuff like calculus just doesn't sink in. In the second year I visited one of the degree students. He had a bread board and some components. We'd just spent weeks learning about transistor H parameters (which even the tutor admitted we'd probably never need) and he was really pleased to turn a light bulb on with a transistor and a resistor. I did that when I was 8. I obviously didn't know all of the theory behind transistor operation at that age but I still knew enough to build such a simple circuit. That was the point where I completely lost interest in the course and dropped out.

After a couple of years unemployed a scheme came up that paid for training as long as it was part time. I regretted dropping out of the HND and the local college offered a 3 year one day a week HND course. The scheme was only for one year so I ended up doing year one of the course on Mondays, year 2 on Wednesdays and year 3 on Fridays. With some rather creative accounting we managed to get the hours just under the limit for the scheme. One of the conditions of the scheme was that I needed to keep looking for work and if I got a job offer I had to take it. Near the end of the course I got a job offer so I never finished that HND. We were very poor at the time and even coming up with the money for fuel to get to the college was a struggle so I really didn't have much choice about the job.

Fast forward a few years and I was working for the same company doing electronics design, assembly, programming and operating a couple of CNC machines. I was getting bored, especially with the assembly work, so when they wanted to increase my workload and reduce my pay I decided enough was enough and left to start out on my own doing freelance design. As by that point I was their only designer I carried on doing some work for them and their customers. In fact I still do some work for them now. It was a win win situation really. I got a ready made customer base and they got to save money by not employing me full time. The house I lived in at the time was called 'The Stables' so my business name became 'Stable Design'. Yeah, I'm good at imaginative names

Around that time I built myself a 8x4 CNC plasma for a home project. It was very crude and due to the lack of space in my workshop I had to winch it up into the ceiling when it was not in use. The only software I could find at an affordable price was pretty basic and I decided I could do better. How hard could it be? As it turns out quite a lot harder than I expected! Hobby CNC was just starting to become popular so I thought I had a good chance of selling my software and kept plugging away at it, probably spending 60% of my time on it and the rest on paying work.

6 months later I had something that was beta but mostly worked. The software was mainly aimed at plasma cutting and routing sheet materials so I used my incredible skill at coming up with names and called it SheetCam. The GUI was very roughly styled on the workflow of the software I'd used on the CNC router belonging to my previous employer. At this stage I didn't consider it to be a polished enough product do sell so I offered it for free for about 6 months and asked for feedback. Customer feedback has always played a big part in SheetCam's design. After a year in development it was finally ready for sale. Sales started off a little slow but when resellers and OEMs got interested sales got much better.

SheetCam was originally written using a GUI toolkit called Borland C++ builder. Borland discontinued the toolkit so a few years later I moved over to the open source wxWidgets toolkit. This involved pretty much a complete rewrite and SheetCam TNG was born. TNG is a Star Trek The Next Generation reference and was originally just my reference for the project until I came up with a better name. Well, I didn't really come up with a better name

When TNG was released I also increased the price slightly with a 50% discount for users of the old version. In the last 15+ years that was the only time the price has changed.

These days SheetCam is my main source of income. I still do some design work for my old customers and a few CNC repairs. Most of the repair work is sub contract for a local machine maintance company. They call me in when they need hand with their more complex and difficult jobs.

I'll have to try out it. By the name, I alwasy assumed it was just for 2d plasma....didn't realize they got in to 3d CAM.


I don't need anything fancy. My Fadal doesn't have the memory to run crazy new toolpaths. My Linux machine will, but it's not worth the cost of the fusion just for that.

 

[CarterKraft]

I'll have to try out it. By the name, I alwasy assumed it was just for 2d plasma....didn't realize they got in to 3d CAM.


I don't need anything fancy. My Fadal doesn't have the memory to run crazy new toolpaths. My Linux machine will, but it's not worth the cost of the fusion just for that.

I am way out of my league to be able to tell you what it can or can't do, I am sure F360 is better in capability but the games they play with pricing and fucking with their "free" users who have never used the software to directly build a product is annoying as hell to me...
I have been using CAD for 20+ years, until recently (3d printing) none of those designs were direct to product, I just created drawings I used to turn into some dimensions for weldments. I really only use CAD to keep my skills, I could easily just do paper drawings on graph paper.
As someone else said all of us helped them develop their paid project so they could turn back around and charge the guys trying to 3d print drawer organizers....

I hope to get confident enough I can start using freecad, it might have the best chance of staying open source.

 

[bgaidan]

I am way out of my league to be able to tell you what it can or can't do, I am sure F360 is better in capability but the games they play with pricing and fucking with their "free" users who have never used the software to directly build a product is annoying as hell to me...
I have been using CAD for 20+ years, until recently (3d printing) none of those designs were direct to product, I just created drawings I used to turn into some dimensions for weldments. I really only use CAD to keep my skills, I could easily just do paper drawings on graph paper.
As someone else said all of us helped them develop their paid project so they could turn back around and charge the guys trying to 3d print drawer organizers....

I hope to get confident enough I can start using freecad, it might have the best chance of staying open source.

Nobody should be surprised at all that the "free" software turned paid. It's Autodesk, after all. And I see some of the issue they have with keeping a lower cost version - the guys with a $500 micro desktop 3 or 4 axis CNC need pretty much the same exact CAM ability as someone with a $2m machining center and there's probably no good way to separate the two types of users. I ended up having to buy a license this year because they neutered the "free" version so much that it was almost useless for my little mill.



Funny thing, I really haven't used it for anything since I paid for it because both of my mills have been down for several months. I finally fired it up last week to make a part and it's changed so much in the last year that I had to relearn half of what I wanted to do for a very simple part.

 

[CarterKraft]

Nobody should be surprised at all that the "free" software turned paid. It's Autodesk, after all. And I see some of the issue they have with keeping a lower cost version - the guys with a $500 micro desktop 3 or 4 axis CNC need pretty much the same exact CAM ability as someone with a $2m machining center and there's probably no good way to separate the two types of users. I ended up having to buy a license this year because they neutered the "free" version so much that it was almost useless for my little mill.



Funny thing, I really haven't used it for anything since I paid for it because both of my mills have been down for several months. I finally fired it up last week to make a part and it's changed so much in the last year that I had to relearn half of what I wanted to do for a very simple part.

I understand that completely and that's an issue for sure a "Cam Credit" solution might resolve it but honestly from their point of view if everyone just pays the money why offer a free option...
The guys on LinuxCNC seemed to think the plasma table specific features of sheetcam,nesting etc. where worth the money and with the paypal option to split in 4 payments its a no brainer for me.

 

[bgaidan]

I understand that completely and that's an issue for sure a "Cam Credit" solution might resolve it but honestly from their point of view if everyone just pays the money why offer a free option...
The guys on LinuxCNC seemed to think the plasma table specific features of sheetcam,nesting etc. where worth the money and with the paypal option to split in 4 payments its a no brainer for me.

Looks like the base price is around $150? If it's mostly works, you really can't beat that. I need to take some time and dig in to what features it has for 3/4 axis milling.


Looks like these guys sell a Mach4/Sheetcam license combo for $338. I may upgrade my router from Mach3 to 4 if I start using it more. Good excuse to buy both.

CNC Software Archives - Geek's CNC

 

[CarterKraft]

Looks like the base price is around $150? If it's mostly works, you really can't beat that. I need to take some time and dig in to what features it has for 3/4 axis milling.


Looks like these guys sell a Mach4/Sheetcam license combo for $338. I may upgrade my router from Mach3 to 4 if I start using it more. Good excuse to buy both.

CNC Software Archives - Geek's CNC

That's how I went down this path in the first place because LinuxCNC is free, just buy MESA card if you want to go that way and Sheetcam makes for a pretty cheap way to get going, the THC board is only $65, that is really cheap for a industrial quality THC.

 

[bgaidan]

That's how I went down this path in the first place because LinuxCNC is free, just buy MESA card if you want to go that way and Sheetcam makes for a pretty cheap way to get going, the THC board is only $65, that is really cheap for a industrial quality THC.

My mill is running LinuxCNC with mesa cards. I like the software, but I hate troubleshooting the hardware when it has issues....which for me has been fairly often.

My router runs Mach3 with Gecko drives. Wouldn't make sense to convert it, other than just upgrade to Mach4 without touching the hardware.

And of course the Fadal is a Fadal....so that's a 3rd post processor I need for whatever CAM I'm running. Oh wait, I forgot about the Mazak, whenever I get it up and running.

 

[CarterKraft]

My mill is running LinuxCNC with mesa cards. I like the software, but I hate troubleshooting the hardware when it has issues....which for me has been fairly often.

My router runs Mach3 with Gecko drives. Wouldn't make sense to convert it, other than just upgrade to Mach4 without touching the hardware.

And of course the Fadal is a Fadal....so that's a 3rd post processor I need for whatever CAM I'm running. Oh wait, I forgot about the Mazak, whenever I get it up and running.

I don't think I have capacity to learn 1 more control let alone 3

 

[PAToyota]

Funny thing, I really haven't used it for anything since I paid for it because both of my mills have been down for several months. I finally fired it up last week to make a part and it's changed so much in the last year that I had to relearn half of what I wanted to do for a very simple part.

That's the other part of it - in the drive to constantly make it "new and improved" they just keep pushing out stuff and you lose time trying to figure out the "new" way of doing things that you used to be able to do without thinking. Not to mention the constant bugs in it that you spend additional time trying to force things to work.

I get that they have to make money on a product, but it is sort of like Dollar Store and WalMart coming in and forcing all the little guys out of business and then raising prices when they're gone. AutoDesk puts a ton of money into a "free" program, gets users to do all their beta testing, starts charging for it when it is viable, and then starts raising prices once everyone is hooked. People keep using it because it is the "standard" and a lot of the time the little guys like SheetCam aren't making enough to keep going.

 

[bgaidan]

That's the other part of it - in the drive to constantly make it "new and improved" they just keep pushing out stuff and you lose time trying to figure out the "new" way of doing things that you used to be able to do without thinking. Not to mention the constant bugs in it that you spend additional time trying to force things to work.

I get that they have to make money on a product, but it is sort of like Dollar Store and WalMart coming in and forcing all the little guys out of business and then raising prices when they're gone. AutoDesk puts a ton of money into a "free" program, gets users to do all their beta testing, starts charging for it when it is viable, and then starts raising prices once everyone is hooked. People keep using it because it is the "standard" and a lot of the time the little guys like SheetCam aren't making enough to keep going.

Nothing new and I was kind of surprised at how many people were caught off guard when they started charging, or charging more. It's pretty much the same in every industry - most companies push to get their product in to schools by offering free or super cheap educational programs. Students learn it and nothing else and employers are compelled to use it because that's what the new talent pool knows.

 

[snivilous]

My issue is similar to a couple of you it sounds like. I already have multiple seats of SolidWorks, but I need Fusion to do the CAM for my plasma table or my little 3 axis mill. I also decided to just pay for fusion a few years back so I didn't have to justify to them why I needed the free version in the event my professional work bled over. I just need something to run a simple CAM path, the rest of fusion is useless for me.

On a similar note of price spikes, there's a program called Draftsight that was identical to old school 2D AutoCAD that Dassault (SolidWorks) released a few years ago and it was 100% free since it's the most basic program. Time goes on and now it's subscription and a few hundred bucks to use.

 

[GLTHFJ60]

So, I just read up about the price hikes, and it is not going to impact me. I'm a free user, and will continue to be. It doesn't look like there are any more restrictions being put on us free users. The 10 editable document limit doesn't restrict me. The convenience of doing all CAD+CAM in one software suite, with integrated post-processors means I only have two pieces of software to touch, fusion and my machine control. I don't see how it can get easier than that.

 

[bgaidan]

So, I just read up about the price hikes, and it is not going to impact me. I'm a free user, and will continue to be. It doesn't look like there are any more restrictions being put on us free users. The 10 editable document limit doesn't restrict me. The convenience of doing all CAD+CAM in one software suite, with integrated post-processors means I only have two pieces of software to touch, fusion and my machine control. I don't see how it can get easier than that.

Does the free version still take away rapid moves? I thought they were limiting rapids to match cutting speeds...which on my little mill can put in the single digits. I also remember something about the free version not allowing tool changes.

 

[GLTHFJ60]

Does the free version still take away rapid moves? I thought they were limiting rapids to match cutting speeds...which on my little mill can put in the single digits. I also remember something about the free version not allowing tool changes.

How fast is rapid in your eyes? My cnc plasma only does 300ipm rapid, and it still hits that between cuts.

Tool changes are not a thing I need, so maybe that's the difference.

 

[bgaidan]

How fast is rapid in your eyes? My cnc plasma only does 300ipm rapid, and it still hits that between cuts.

Tool changes are not a thing I need, so maybe that's the difference.

Unless you're on some legacy version that hasn't converted yet, you shouldn't be getting rapids at all.

No rapids thing is annoying, but I could deal with it. The no tool change was kind of a deal breaker as the only way to get around it was to post each tool as a separate program. My Fadal obviously has an auto tool changer. My bridgeport has manual tool changes, but it use fixed tool holders and is set up with a tool table so it's effectively treated like an automatic tool change in the post, the tool holders are just swapped out manually.

 

[GLTHFJ60]

Unless you're on some legacy version that hasn't converted yet, you shouldn't be getting rapids at all.



No rapids thing is annoying, but I could deal with it. The no tool change was kind of a deal breaker as the only way to get around it was to post each tool as a separate program. My Fadal obviously has an auto tool changer. My bridgeport has manual tool changes, but it use fixed tool holders and is set up with a tool table so it's effectively treated like an automatic tool change in the post, the tool holders are just swapped out manually.

I see. Last program I built and ran was a month ago, so I'll keep an eye on the next one I do.

Another couple things about my setup that makes those features less important for me; I'm mostly doing prototyping and one-offs so not a lot of rapid moves across the field, and my whole field is only like 32x48. If it takes another minute then eh.

 

[CarterKraft]

IMO the problem is for the CAM portion you are then beholden to F360...
I like the idea I own the cam piece of the puzzle, I won't have to learn a new platform for the foreseeable future.

Fusion could stop free cam tomorrow then you are over a barrel.