I’ve been using Autodesk’s Fusion 360 for a long time and have grown to love its ease of use, coupled with its powerful features. However, after reading many comments, watching videos, and going through blog posts, it seems Fusion 360 is starting to get worse.
I don’t use it enough to make money from it, so paying for a license isn’t worth it in my opinion. I have no problem paying if it’s worth it. The issue is that the cost is prohibitively high, which makes it a non-option for me.
So, I use the hobbyist license. It lets me access the full power of Fusion 360, with a few limitations.
However, a couple of years ago, those limitations started to become frustrating. The first was the 10-drawing limit, meaning you can only have 10 drawings open and editable at any given time. For my needs, I could live with this. All I need to do is make one drawing non-editable, and either make an existing drawing editable or create a new one. It’s not a deal breaker, as I don’t work with a lot of drawings anyway.
The second limitation is more recent and is a bit worrying. Autodesk is shifting toward a Team system, and as a hobbyist who works alone, I have no need for a team of designers. This makes me concerned that Autodesk might eventually phase out the hobbyist license.
I’ve tried a number of CAD packages and kept coming across FreeCAD. For a long time, FreeCAD was a nightmare to use and much more limited compared to Fusion 360. But now, with version 1.0, it’s beginning to move toward being a solid Fusion 360 replacement—though it's not without its own issues.
For instance, FreeCAD’s workflow seems to favor saving each individual component as a separate file. While not a deal breaker, it’s a bit more of a hassle. Fusion 360, on the other hand, keeps everything in a single file. However, FreeCAD’s individual file system has its advantages, such as building a library of components that can be reused across other projects.
Fusion 360 has a nice feature where you can set variables for dimensions, which means you can call those variables to set the dimensions of parts. FreeCAD has a similar feature, but it works a bit differently. It uses CSV files, which can be edited in any spreadsheet program. This makes it easier to make quick changes without even having to open FreeCAD. Simply open the CSV, make the change, and then everything updates when you open FreeCAD later. It’s a bit more convoluted than Fusion 360’s internal system, but I find Fusion 360’s parameter editor limited. For example, you can’t rearrange variables for better organization. Let’s say you add a dimension later that you missed—using a spreadsheet, you can simply drag that row to group it with other dimensions for that part. This makes it easier to see which dimensions belong to which parts. In Fusion 360, anything added later stays at the bottom, and it can get unwieldy as the project grows. I find this feature in FreeCAD quite useful and plan to make considerable use of it as I learn more.
FreeCAD also offers a BIM (Building Information Modeling) feature for architects, which allows you to create full architectural drawings and collaborate with various parties throughout a project.
The Assembly Workbench is a bit odd, primarily due to my getting used to FreeCAD’s individual files for parts, as I mentioned earlier. I love Fusion 360’s ability to join parts effortlessly, but I think that getting used to FreeCAD’s way of doing things will lead to a more efficient workflow over time.
My biggest gripe, however, is that it took 20 years to reach version 1.0. Will it take longer to progress? I don’t think so, because the development period has been focused on getting it polished. I believe the 1.0 release now provides a solid foundation for rapid development. At least, I hope that’s the case.
Another gripe is the lack of an internal updater. I get around this by using Homebrew on macOS. While it works, it would be nicer not to rely on third-party tools.
All in all, if it weren’t for Autodesk’s unnecessary changes, I don’t think I would have moved from Fusion 360 to FreeCAD. I had tried FreeCAD in the past and didn’t like it, but I’ve given it a real chance now and am starting to get the hang of it. I’ve watched many tutorials by MangoJelly on YouTube and have come to realize that FreeCAD is far more powerful than I previously thought. It’s 100% free. Going forward, this move will protect my designs and allow me to create plans I can sell, as well as build and sell my own creations. In other words, it’s going to help me create my own small business. I can’t say the same for Fusion 360, which has limitations on the "hobbyist" license.