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Comment by jwr | Hacker News Reader

I read the limitations carefully. I think only the lack of STEP export is a showstopper. The rest seems pretty much OK for hobby use.

Also, as a side note, I would be happy to pay a subscription fee, just perhaps not $499/year, for "advanced hobby use". Autodesk could look more into separating hobbyists from businesses, I'm sure it's possible.

The problem is that after OnShape went full commercial, this is the only relatively inexpensive option with history-based parametric modeling.

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Save the 10 model limit. The recent addition of the tools to help with "bottom up" design provides a nicer workflow for a lot of cases, but would prevent you from having more than nine components in your assembly (the assembly being the 10th) which seems too little even for the smallest of hobbyist projects. It would be reasonable if there is an exception for models included in an assembly. Apparently that restriction is not coming until next year, so time will tell.

Agreed. Based on my (admittedly limited) usage of Fusion 360 for 3d printing related hobby use, I don't see my personal usage of it being affected by any of the changes.

But I've definitely benefited from other people using those features, and it seems likely they were on the same hobbyist license.

> this is the only relatively inexpensive option with history-based parametric modeling.

Not true, there is Houdini (sidefx.com). It's main target audience is obviously VFX professionals, but it's history features are much better than F360. Modelling toolset is also excellent. The issue is that it's missing any engineering stuff, you need to hunt down or make plugins for those. It's apprentice edition is free, and their limitations don't affect the modelling capabilities (free edition are mostly gimped at realistic rendering and can't be used by companies)

Houdini doesn't appear to be a solid modeller, so it'll have the same problem(s) that Blender has. eg: The models it creates aren't exportable to any solid based format (STEP, IGES) that a CAM system could use for making parts with.

https://www.sidefx.com/products/compare/

That being said, if people are just doing 3d printing then there are probably "good enough" workarounds, as Blender does.

The free "Houdini Apprentice" version seems like it might fulfil that need:

https://www.sidefx.com/products/houdini-apprentice/

Looks like it also runs on Linux, unlike Fusion 360:

https://www.sidefx.com/Support/system-requirements/

The compare page doesnt list every format it can export to. I've successfully exported STL from the free version, here are the supported geometry formats. https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/io/formats/geometry_form...

and to add to my previous comment, it can export geometry in IGES (but not STEP). Here are all the geometry formats it can export https://i.imgur.com/RnQ82mX.png This is the free version

Thanks, that's good info. :)

It doesn't appear to be a solid modeller, but for 3d printing it should still be workable.

$8-10 a month would be awesome, and they would probably make a ton of money using that subscription model. It's short sighted that they don't do this.

That would probably be sufficient for light industrial use as well though. And those are the customers they are trying to "shake down". No judgement, but that's the problem with hobbyist stuff that is professional grade... cheap professionals use it.

For someone like me who would use it for a week, wait two years, then use it for another week, $8-$10 per month is prohibitory. I would happily pay for quality software, and I do pay for the Jetbrains tools which I use daily, but for software that I use very intermittently I need a buy-once-use-forever model.

So pay as you use. They already save all your stuff. You just can't have a lot open at once, IIUC.

Actually, they don't "save all your stuff". They require "your stuff" to be in their cloud, with no local download option, and if you do not use the service for N months, your account is purged.

And I don't care if N is 3 or if N is 36 or if N is 86400. I don't trust a single storage place for any data I care about. Having it only in their cloud is absolutely not an option, even if there weren't danger of them deliberately erasing it if I don't pay regularly.

Eesh. Man I wish freecad was better. I got my daughter up on F360 in a matter of minutes (and that was after I used the app myself for about that long).

If they had some $100/yr family maker plan, I'd be all about that. Same for any reasonable competition.

The case where you need something one week every two years is precisely when "pay one month to use it now" makes more sense than "pay to use it without limits and do not use it".

OnShape what now? I'm still on the free-but-everything-is-public plan. Is that going away?

Isn't that limited now? I remember being excited about OnShape when they were getting started, and then they limited the free plan quite a bit.

So far.

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