It’s just so rough to switch away from the one major CAD suite that doesn’t tar and feather UX devs on sight. Seriously, I like solidworks and solidedge and etc etc, but holy cow those interfaces are just unpleasant to use if you haven’t been steeped in them for the last 30 years. Even Rhino is more intuitive.
This and the online-only are the reasons I no longer use onshape. While I don’t mind for a majority of my stuff to be public it just doesn’t make sense for everything and then you can’t even use it e.g on longer train rides without internet.
I did a quasi-deep dive into licensing terms of the various suites. OnShape’s free tier is particularly clumsy, and on a facial reading bars you from using your own designs commercially, but allows you (and literally every other user) free rein on other people’s designs. It’s quite odd and will probably need litigation to sort out. Then they have nothing between the free tier and the $1800/year tier.
Fusion gives you, IIRC, a grace zone of a thousand bucks of revenue a year before it counts as commercial and you have to get the $600/year paid plan, which seems suspiciously close to how much profit a no-overhead side hustle might pull from $1000 of sales. Solidworks hobbyist gives you $2k of profit grace per year, and when combined with a Titans of CNC discount, makes it a pretty good option for the “let me sell a couple of things on Etsy crowd,” but it’s a much bigger price jump than Fusion if you need to get a commercial license (basically about $2000 a year, I think… sensing a pattern here).
Solid Edge keeps it simple and just says that the free version is for non-commercial use only, though as a locally installed app I’m surprised it’s not more popular.
I was continuing to struggle with FreeCAD, though it’s getting better with every weekly release, and they have a little bit of outside money coming into the project now. Still, I “treated” myself to a $700 permanent Alibre license. I like the workflow and the focus on the workbenches I actually use, and after ten payments I’ll be able to use this particular version however I like for as long as it runs. Not perfect, being closed source and Windows, but they’re a responsive small company in a crowded space, so I don’t think they’re going to fuck over the paying customers too badly.
The free versions of solid edge are buggy as hell, unfortunately. Like, “I can’t zoom in because the text grows to fill the whole screen” buggy. It’s very odd.
Damn them too? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised they’re both in the enshittification olympics. I moved away from F360 in favor on Onshape a while ago but started muddling my way through FreeCAD when I heard about Onshape.
Yeah I’ve been meaning to try FreeCAD in anger but every time I try it out I find it clumsy, awkward and limited. I’m hoping the new organisation will allow them to get more funding, I’d really love an actually good open source CAD.
Having tried Fusion 360… It’s interface and design paradigm is utter trash. NX, Creo, and Solidworks are all far ahead. Can’t speak for catia, I’ve never used it but the versions I saw looked worse than Fusion
UX isn’t universal. What intuitively clicks for one person might be unusable for someone else. Good UX is adequate for as many people as possible, but it can’t be perfect for everyone at once when some people work best with large labelled buttons with big, clear icons that have to go into submenus to fit on the screen, and other people prefer lots of small buttons whose purpose and location they’ve memorised which all fit on screen at once to save them needing to click into submenus.
Solidworks has the most intuitive interface I’ve seen so far. I may be biased from using it for like 15 years at this point but I’ve also tried Fusion 360, SketchUp, Ondsel and FreeCAD with varying degrees of success in creating designs and assemblies more complicated than a nut and screw.
I mean I learned it in a few days and found it very intuitive as well. Far more intuitive than I found fusion when I tried that years later. Inventor and onshape also feel more pleasant to use.
The issue seems to be that the fusion interface is very non-standard when compared to other cad suites, so people that get used to it first find everything else unintuitive.
It’s just so rough to switch away from the one major CAD suite that doesn’t tar and feather UX devs on sight. Seriously, I like solidworks and solidedge and etc etc, but holy cow those interfaces are just unpleasant to use if you haven’t been steeped in them for the last 30 years. Even Rhino is more intuitive.
I found Onshape to be quite nice. It was relatively easy to translate skills from Fusion to it after a few YouTube videos.
How is this better?
This and the online-only are the reasons I no longer use onshape. While I don’t mind for a majority of my stuff to be public it just doesn’t make sense for everything and then you can’t even use it e.g on longer train rides without internet.
Whilst this is fair criticism, I was responding to complaints about the UX in other CADs.
It is but you can’t sell any models you design on the free version because “TeRmS oF sErViCe”.
That’s on the free license. Fusion360, to which this thread is offering an alternative, has the same limitation.
https://www.autodesk.com/support/technical/article/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Do-I-qualify-for-free-use-of-Fusion-360.html
I did a quasi-deep dive into licensing terms of the various suites. OnShape’s free tier is particularly clumsy, and on a facial reading bars you from using your own designs commercially, but allows you (and literally every other user) free rein on other people’s designs. It’s quite odd and will probably need litigation to sort out. Then they have nothing between the free tier and the $1800/year tier.
Fusion gives you, IIRC, a grace zone of a thousand bucks of revenue a year before it counts as commercial and you have to get the $600/year paid plan, which seems suspiciously close to how much profit a no-overhead side hustle might pull from $1000 of sales. Solidworks hobbyist gives you $2k of profit grace per year, and when combined with a Titans of CNC discount, makes it a pretty good option for the “let me sell a couple of things on Etsy crowd,” but it’s a much bigger price jump than Fusion if you need to get a commercial license (basically about $2000 a year, I think… sensing a pattern here).
Solid Edge keeps it simple and just says that the free version is for non-commercial use only, though as a locally installed app I’m surprised it’s not more popular.
I was continuing to struggle with FreeCAD, though it’s getting better with every weekly release, and they have a little bit of outside money coming into the project now. Still, I “treated” myself to a $700 permanent Alibre license. I like the workflow and the focus on the workbenches I actually use, and after ten payments I’ll be able to use this particular version however I like for as long as it runs. Not perfect, being closed source and Windows, but they’re a responsive small company in a crowded space, so I don’t think they’re going to fuck over the paying customers too badly.
Thank you so much for this!!
The free versions of solid edge are buggy as hell, unfortunately. Like, “I can’t zoom in because the text grows to fill the whole screen” buggy. It’s very odd.
Thanks for the detailed report! 💪
Damn them too? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised they’re both in the enshittification olympics. I moved away from F360 in favor on Onshape a while ago but started muddling my way through FreeCAD when I heard about Onshape.
Yeah I’ve been meaning to try FreeCAD in anger but every time I try it out I find it clumsy, awkward and limited. I’m hoping the new organisation will allow them to get more funding, I’d really love an actually good open source CAD.
I’d say that it’s probably helping already. I am relearning CAD after near 20 years and it’s much improved over the last time I tried it around 2018.
That’s great! I’ll give it a go again soon.
Having tried Fusion 360… It’s interface and design paradigm is utter trash. NX, Creo, and Solidworks are all far ahead. Can’t speak for catia, I’ve never used it but the versions I saw looked worse than Fusion
We all have our preferences, although some people’s are clearly more insightful than others…
UX isn’t universal. What intuitively clicks for one person might be unusable for someone else. Good UX is adequate for as many people as possible, but it can’t be perfect for everyone at once when some people work best with large labelled buttons with big, clear icons that have to go into submenus to fit on the screen, and other people prefer lots of small buttons whose purpose and location they’ve memorised which all fit on screen at once to save them needing to click into submenus.
Solidworks has the most intuitive interface I’ve seen so far. I may be biased from using it for like 15 years at this point but I’ve also tried Fusion 360, SketchUp, Ondsel and FreeCAD with varying degrees of success in creating designs and assemblies more complicated than a nut and screw.
Yes, yes you are extremely biased.
That was the point the commenter you replied too made.
I mean I learned it in a few days and found it very intuitive as well. Far more intuitive than I found fusion when I tried that years later. Inventor and onshape also feel more pleasant to use.
The issue seems to be that the fusion interface is very non-standard when compared to other cad suites, so people that get used to it first find everything else unintuitive.
If that’s the case I might try it some day. I’m guessing it’s expensive as fuck though.