Or really any professional software users
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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I saw the writing on the wall a few years back, it was so painfully obvious. I started switching to KiCAD early, and feel so bad for ever recommending Eagle to people who will now have to learn yet another new tool in order to find something usable.
Fusion360 is so bad, I had to explain why SolidWorks was different earlier today and they were shocked by things like "if I move the case the board I say is attached to the case moves to" and "I don't have to align it by eye, it's a computer".
And I'm definitely not starting VMWare to run Fusion360 with nonsense online components that slow it down to uselessness and integrate it into a tool that doesn't need to be on at all... it's just not possible. It was obvious once they stopped updating the version. It's pathetic nonetheless that they cannot think beyond the one-true-way of integrating a dozen mediocre tools into one extra-mediocre product.
This is a perfect rant in that it is so specific it loops back around to universality. I have no experience with any of the programs you mentioned - I'm only in the comments because I thought my husband, who uses SolidWorks sometimes in his day job, might find this thread entertaining - and yet I totally related to everything in your comment. I have felt all those same frustrations, just with different software; stuff that was perfectly fine getting "improved" to the point of uselessness for my situation.
You're a great writer! It takes skill to rant so well about niche stuff that anybody can relate.
Any recommendations on what to use beside Fusion? I hate that the files created in it are only stored in the cloud while I would like to use git for version management.
I would say that if you use CAD at home as a hobby then F360 is the best because it is hard to beat free. If you want a little more, and a more familiar set up, then you can have SolidWorks a year for $100 as a hobbyist. Which isn’t a bad deal.
I absolutely recommend FreeCad. It can be pretty hard to learn because it feels unfamiliar at first if you come from Inventor (Like me Back in the day). But it is FOSS and that alone is a big plus. Also it's pretty versatile, you can notl only do 3d CAD, but also architecture, structural Analysis (FEA), or CAM if you are into that sort of thing. Give it a try, and dont be discouraged by the steep learning curve!
They definitely just don't know how to use mate connectors. I don't prefer fusion over other CAD, but it's not that fundamentally flawed as you say.