Re: Fusion360 Is free for startups, but does it work ?
If your doing this for a hobby or as a small business thats making less than 100k then it's pretty hard to beat fusions price of nothing . even still it's well worth the $300/year for the paid subscription . Bobcad wants $350/year for support and "free updates" , the bigger softwares are $1000+ for support . Fusion is free , so it's worth giving it a tire kick because theres nothing to lose but a bit of time on the side .
Ive used bobcad v25 for quite some time , and not too long back I spent a few months working with fusions cam with the plan of migrating away from the bobcad software . Fusions cam portion is a pain to get used to but it's a very functional software once a guy gets the hang of it , I never bothered with the cad portion because I already have my preferred cad program . If I hadn't been using bobcad already then it would have been a no brainer to use fusion for the mold work that I do . Recently I upgraded to the new version of bobcad due to a lot of improvements in the cam . Plus I wanted to see to see if my "hardware" issues would go away which they did , though there are some new issues that are pissing me off . The cad is a good thing to avoid altogether .
I don't know how bobcad works in your solidworks but the cam portion of v28 seems to be more solid and robust than in the past anyhow . If you can get your issues ironed out - then the software can put out some pretty good work . These are words from an accused bobcad basher , but seriously aside from some avoidable bs with the software I can always trust the code that bobcad puts out .
If you can't get the issues ironed out then fusion may be the way to go . Otherwise the next step in software is an expensive one
BTW doesn't your solidworks offer free integrated cam
A poet knows no boundary yet he is bound to the boundaries of ones own mind !! ........