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Comment by criddell | Hacker News Reader

There's also Fusion 360 that's free for personal use. SolidWorks is better and worth $50 / year if you use it a few times, but for a one-off project, Fusion 360 is pretty good.

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The issue I found with Fusion360 is that I don’t own my files. You used to be able to export locally but last I used it (a few years ago now) I was unable to export a file in a native fusion format with saving to the Autodesk cloud being my only option. This is hazardous as not only am I now at the mercy of Autodesk but they also expire files after just under a year so in need to ensure I’m logging into my account regularly just to keep some things that could happily live on a local disk.

You can export locally. I'm pretty sure you could a few years ago too. They really push you to the cloud, but I use Fusion360 completely locally.

Really wish there was a non-subscription Solidworks though.

They are on your disk somewhere. Search for files with an f3d extension and you will should be able to find them.

You should also be able to export an f3d archive as long as it’s a standalone design (ie not linked to other designs).

However true that might be, I’d rather try to avoid wrestling with software for my data. If that’s really the case then even if it’s free I’m pretty sure you’re not getting your money’s worth.

I actually agree. If having copies of your files is important, subscribe to SolidWorks. It's inexpensive and better than Fusion 360. Most of what I use Fusion 360 for is ephemeral stuff that I print once and never need the design again.

Sure, I'm just slightly biased against Fusion since I was trained using Solidworks in high school and it became second nature for a while.

Give me a copy of SW 2012 and I can model anything technical I can imagine.

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