We are shutting down Ondsel

What's wrong with Solidworks for Makers?

50$ a year sound perfectly reasonable to me.

There's also Fusion 360 that's free for personal use. SolidWorks is better and worth $50 / year if you use it a few times, but for a one-off project, Fusion 360 is pretty good.

Sure, I'm just slightly biased against Fusion since I was trained using Solidworks in high school and it became second nature for a while.

Give me a copy of SW 2012 and I can model anything technical I can imagine.

Note: This is a bit of a "secret menu item" (not really but not well advertised).

It's available to people making less than $2k/yr from projects.

If you make more than $2k/yr, you need to pay standard prices, which start at $2.8k/yr.

"If you make $1,999 you owe us $50, if you make $2,001 you owe us $2,800" seems so obviously ridiculous it has to be wrong. Right?

Well, it's a non-commercial license. The $2000 limit is already kind of generous, especially since it's a profit limit and not a revenue limit.

Without having read the fineprint you could make a lot of revenue as long as you keep reinvesting the money into stuff related to your solidworks side-hustle (buying 3D printers, material, CNC machines, workstations, whatever).

Alibre (1) seems pretty popular with makers (good cnc support?). Not OSS but its a one time $200 purchase - sorta surprising you can still buy software these days :-P Alibre is more of a professional tool like Fusion 360, so there is some learning curve.

1. https://www.alibre.com/

The issue I found with Fusion360 is that I don’t own my files. You used to be able to export locally but last I used it (a few years ago now) I was unable to export a file in a native fusion format with saving to the Autodesk cloud being my only option. This is hazardous as not only am I now at the mercy of Autodesk but they also expire files after just under a year so in need to ensure I’m logging into my account regularly just to keep some things that could happily live on a local disk.

Their Workshop CAM module is a re-badged MeshCAM v9 as of current versions.

There is also a higher-end option I believe, but it's way out of my price range.

They are on your disk somewhere. Search for files with an f3d extension and you will should be able to find them.

You should also be able to export an f3d archive as long as it’s a standalone design (ie not linked to other designs).

You can export locally. I'm pretty sure you could a few years ago too. They really push you to the cloud, but I use Fusion360 completely locally.

Really wish there was a non-subscription Solidworks though.

I did the free trial and it seemed ok - but I had too many bad habits from fusion...one thing that always tripped me up was the limit of 1 sketch per 'part'(?). It seemed to enforce 'best practices' much more then Fusion does, and I just tinker with hobby projects. They were very attentive though, and even called a few times to see how I was doing...

Also, I really liked the 1 time purchase vs. subscription

I second Alibre, I am using the pro version. I bought it in 2012, and I can't remember if I've paid for upgrades to keep it current since then.

I used it to design an injection mold and I am still using it for 3d printing projects. It's a capable program and on-par with SolidWorks or Inventor for basic modeling.

I haven't tried OnShape yet, but if I didn't have Alibre I'd probably look into that or another web-based program for new hobby projects. I like the idea of perpetual licenses but it's only perpetual for as long as it runs on your operating system.

I just can't get into the web based ones...I don't know why but they all seem slow and clunky to me. One thing I didn't like about alibre is the lack of Linux (or Mac) version, as I plan on ditching MS once my win10 box is unusable - I have no interest in that new AI crap MS is adding.

And Siemens SolidEdge is totally free for hobbyist use.

It would seem so, but no, that is "correct."

However true that might be, I’d rather try to avoid wrestling with software for my data. If that’s really the case then even if it’s free I’m pretty sure you’re not getting your money’s worth.

I actually agree. If having copies of your files is important, subscribe to SolidWorks. It's inexpensive and better than Fusion 360. Most of what I use Fusion 360 for is ephemeral stuff that I print once and never need the design again.