Autodesk is acting like they won't renew my free Fusion license. It is over three years now. I'll know for sure after my 30 day free trial is up. I think I missed more than 30 days last year and wouldn't have noticed this process.
I've been poking around and FreeCAD seems to do all I need. It is less helpful in edits and has some quirks, but for $500+ a year, I'll work it out. I have walked away from it a few times in frustration. It does most of the complex operations I want; it's just rigid. The thing that I got stuck on was the fact that a sketch can only pad [extrude] to one body, in one operation. I'm used to packing stuff into one sketch and re-using that sketch for multiple extrusions. You can make multiple holes (pockets) as long as they are in a single body. The "good practice" in Fusion of doing chamfers and fillets last in the process is more important in FreeCAD. Basically, any edit that adds a face to the model will mess up any operations downstream that are attached to a face already. Fusion can sometimes keep up with that, but not always.
This is with v.0.20. If you done Fusion, FreeCAD isn't too far off. The tutorials and documentation seem to make it harder than it really is, mainly because they explain *why*. Once you see the order of things, it's not bad.
Today I found the add-on that calls up your slicer and puts your bodies in it automatically. I can use that when trying to fit something up.
I've been poking around and FreeCAD seems to do all I need. It is less helpful in edits and has some quirks, but for $500+ a year, I'll work it out. I have walked away from it a few times in frustration. It does most of the complex operations I want; it's just rigid. The thing that I got stuck on was the fact that a sketch can only pad [extrude] to one body, in one operation. I'm used to packing stuff into one sketch and re-using that sketch for multiple extrusions. You can make multiple holes (pockets) as long as they are in a single body. The "good practice" in Fusion of doing chamfers and fillets last in the process is more important in FreeCAD. Basically, any edit that adds a face to the model will mess up any operations downstream that are attached to a face already. Fusion can sometimes keep up with that, but not always.
This is with v.0.20. If you done Fusion, FreeCAD isn't too far off. The tutorials and documentation seem to make it harder than it really is, mainly because they explain *why*. Once you see the order of things, it's not bad.
Today I found the add-on that calls up your slicer and puts your bodies in it automatically. I can use that when trying to fit something up.
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