AutoCad 123D free alternative besides TinkerCad?  

Re: AutoCad 123D free alternative besides TinkerCad?

OnShape.com has a free option and has powerful tools found in 123d such as:

-loft between 2 shapes
-extrude spline
-extrude 2D sketch

FreeCAD also looks powerful.

Re: AutoCad 123D free alternative besides TinkerCad?

I've been using FreeCAD and Onshape and between the two I think I'll be fine. I can also pull out OpenSCAD when necessary, but I imagine that sounds scary to non-programmers.

I'm also a big Blender fan, it does not have CAD features but otherwise I can do almost anything you can think of to a 3D model.

Re: AutoCad 123D free alternative besides TinkerCad?

Fusion 360 is also free for non commercial use.

http://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/overview ... scroll down ... Free for students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and startups

Re: AutoCad 123D free alternative besides TinkerCad?

In case somebody is wondering what happens with the free Fusion 360 (free for Enthusiasts, Startups, etc) after the inital year is up:

A popup showed up when i launched Fusion last week, giving me 3 or 4 options, one was: Continue as Free User. I checked that, clicked OK and that was it. Couldn't be any simpler.

Re: AutoCad 123D free alternative besides TinkerCad?

Are they removing the free model for Fusion360:

Download a free 30-day trial and try it out on your Mac or PC. With in-product tutorials, you’ll be up and running in no time. Fusion 360 is as low as $25 per month on an annual subscription, or $40 month to month.

http://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/students-teachers-educators

Re: AutoCad 123D free alternative besides TinkerCad?

It doesn't surprise me that their free offer isn't on the single most valuable spot of their homepage, after all they are in it to sell software. But it still is and has been right there on that same page as long as I remember visiting their site, just a bit further down. People keep overlooking the free offer all the time.

Will it go away soonish?

Doubt it. As I said, I just renewed for another free year, the offer is still right there on the homepage, in addition to that - quoting from their announcement:

"We are consolidating these tools and features into key apps such as Tinkercad, Fusion 360, and ReMake. Today, we are sharing the news that in early 2017, after we complete this consolidation, we’ll be shutting down 123Dapp.com and turning off many of the apps to new download. Rest assured that we remain committed to providing free tools to hobbyists, kids, hackers, and makers around the world. "
Source: http://blog.123dapp.com/2016/12/important-news-about-the-next-chapter

Sounds to me that Fusion / Tinker are meant to remain as free for us Makers.

So, no, I do not think they're going to do away with the Free Fusion 360 any time soon. Cynical me is saying: of course there's no guarantee that eventually they wouldn't change their minds. And if they do, the skills learned in Fusion won't be wasted. I am quite happy i took the plunge from 123D to a more complex tool like Fusion.

PS: 123 Design will supposedly remain functioning in offline mode if you keep the installer handy. Don't know how valid that claim is.

Re: AutoCad 123D free alternative besides TinkerCad?

I really like the 123d program, you can still download it for the PC. The mac version has been removed.

For TinkerCad users who are reaching limits download the 123d version right now. I downloaded the fusion360 for the Mac and it had problems running on my 2014 Mac mini running OS 10.10.5, but I probably need to get my OS software current.

Re: AutoCad 123D free alternative besides TinkerCad?

So I downloaded the Fusion360 installer and it looks pretty nice. I found that the free download link only appeared if I launched a private / incognito windows.

Re: AutoCad 123D free alternative besides TinkerCad?

I like 123D and just reached feeling comfortable using it so I'm disappointed it's been discontinued. Fortunately, if you download the installer before it goes away, it'll still install, work, and allow you to load and save locally. You just won't be able to use the cloud features.

Re: AutoCad 123D free alternative besides TinkerCad?

So I have Fusion360 installed on my mac and windows box.

Thoughts so far for anyone else looking for more powerful CAD tool:

- You have think differently on how to design the object. Everything starts with a 2D sketch, and then you extrude the object
- Every step can be fined tuned, which will propagate to future steps
- Has a visual history like photoshop
- Automatically organize object parts into folders called body
- Has online collaboration built in

- Has Git integration built for the objects you design (see below):

Branching and Merging in Fusion 360

A few weeks back Charles posted about Distributed Design in the context of the overall vision Will laid out late last year. Branching and Merging picks up where Charles left off—why we’re doing it, what it is. And as always, we would love to hear your feedback.

Branching and merging is a way of working with design files that enables you to:

Have multiple people explore variations on the same design, in parallel, in separate spaces
Easily choose the best designs at any time from all variations for your project
Break off into a new branch to try something different at any point, while keeping all other variations you’ve made, intact
Get variations back into your primary source of truth for the project as the team moves toward a final version of the design

Branching and Merging technology has a long history in the software development world—and there are many parallels with the design world. A good example is GitHub, which enables software developers to explore variations on their program code, then easily share and capture only the best results in their final product. This is the model that we’re using in Fusion 360 for Branching and Merging. In our case, we have a strong visual component that suits the visual paradigms designers expect.

Our visual approach to Branching and Merging functionality makes it transparent to you – you don’t need to manage duplicate designs or handle conflicts, or be concerned about losing any options you explore.

So how does it all work?

A branch is something you create to work on a part of the project in your own discrete workspace. The project itself is what we call the “Main” branch, or just “Main”, and Main is your source of truth when you look at the project overall.

You create a branch from Main (or from another branch), and you can do that from any point in Main or the branch, and your new branch will start off with the data as it was before you branched.

Fusion branching operates at a project level. So you branch from a point in an entire project, not from a single design. This helps you—and the other members of your team—to manage a set of related designs in a unified project space. This allows you to focus on the quality of the overall design in a truly collaborative environment.

Let’s look at an example of a mountain bike project tree with branches that four designers are working on.