I think one of the biggest pros for Fusion 360 is it’s barrier to entry. As a (former) hobbiest, I found F360 a delight to use, with a small learning curve. As features were added, I began to understand the industry standard of design process. Once my hobby became a full time business, I didn’t see any value in changing the design software to something like a Solidworks or an Inventor. F360 did everything we needed it to do! We have projects in F360 that run deep, both on PC and Mac. We were easily able to work remotely during the pandemic, and continue to do so today. I gave Solidworks a go, and it does everything we’d ever need it to and it was a great experience, packaged with Catia, but the cost and the machine upgrades wasn’t worth it to continue using it. Choice I guess.
I have never understood why Inventor is the "red headed step child" in professional 3D cad software. When I was a reseller I got to watch an internal video comparing Inventor, Solidworks, Pro E and Catia. 16 different tasks. Inventor was the best/fastest in 14 of them. Granted Autodesk may have picked stuff Inventor is better at but I've used SW and Inventor both and the sheer amount of clicks needed in SW for similar tasks is ridiculous. I will be an Inventor guy for life or until I can't use it/don't need it anymore. The cost is well worth it to have control over my files and all the other pros you mentioned. Great vid Neil 👍
I use Inventor and Solidworks on daily basis depending on our clients. I would be verry interested to see what are those task that you say, “the sheer amount of clicks needed in SW for similar tasks is ridiculous”. I love and hate to use Inventor. I love that it feels snappy and not bloatware like SW. It has some so excellent features (Design Accelerator, Frame etc.) but I just feel that people at Autodesk don’t use Inventor. Because some of the basic aspect, I just can’t understand why is not fixed. I’m talking about: Mirror that doesn’t update position in assembly, overall bad experience at using assembly (this direction, that direction, why is it so hard to fix constrains), the fact that you need to project edges in sketch to dimension, Part rotation (what’s with that, o just use F4, why?, o just use space mouse, again why?) and on and on. I just think they don’t play to their strengths. I sure somebody needed the unwrap command??
I use Inventor. I don't love it but it gets the job done. Frames and sheet metal have very few issues, but for modeling solids I find solid edge to be superior in speed. I don't know why nobody finds their synchronous option an advantage over other programs out there.
I agree with @Milan Bojovic... where is “the sheer amount of clicks needed in SW for similar tasks is ridiculous” coming from? When I used SW I had a separate numpad for my left hand. This allowed me to type the first 2-3 letters of a command (AutoCAD style) I wanted, enter in a dimension on my extra numpad, and move on to next element. Moving your non-dominant hand between keyboard/numpad is much faster than moving your dominant hand from mouse to numpad, since you have to "find your place" with the mouse whenever you leave it. Plus both numpad/keyboard have blind bumps. Meanwhile, in Inventor, this same workflow is unworkable, since you have to click on the search bar. And yes, you can go through the effort of assigning command aliases, but that's too much work, and I haven't ever been happy with the end result. So instead, I've given up and just use the command ribbon, which by the way, doesn't always make alot of sense (Why are Styles and Document setting on different tabs???). All this allows me to detail my drawings in half the time, and do solid model designs with less friction. It's kinda like how it's been proven that walking through door ways can cause you to forget where you were going, mode-switching is taxing on the brain. Why should I ever have to move my focus away from viewport?
@@crazyfox266 My personal opinion is that Autodesk is putting most of their resources into Revit and AEC related offerings. We are in the AEC community but do not use Revit and use Inventor in its place. Lost track of how many people who use Revit wish they were using Inventor when we show them what we do with the software. Inventor can design ANYTHING including buildings, industrial sites, factories, aircraft, cars, medical devices, etc. and uses point clouds for Scan-to-BIM to boot. It's all about money Milan and the value of Autodesk stock. We all miss Carl Bass who was the CAD user's friend and ambassador at Autodesk.
Thanks! I'm in talks with Bryce & Trent at the moment to see about some possible future collab opportunities, I can't put my email address here obviously but feel free to ping them and get my details, If I do a CAM version of a video like this it would be great to be schooled on that side of things as I'm a bit of a noob on the CAM stuff!
@@Neil3D sounds good.. I'll reach out. We'll have to get you to swing down to our tech center in Birmingham to get some time infront off machines. You might find mfg isn't as blue collar as you think :-)
I was a Solidworks user until they changed their licensing that made it a pain to be able to work at home if I had to. In the past they had a home license that was part of your main license but greed got rid of that so I switched to Inventor. Now I use both Fusion and Inventor and love them both along with Inventorcam for my programming. The big plus for Fusion is that Fusion works in both Windows and Mac! That's huge! All I wish is that the files can be saved locally. ITAR prevents me form storing in the cloud.
In Fusion360 you can?! just Click File->Export->Choose fusion 360 file extension. This way you won't loose any features and can work on it later. This way you can keep your files at home.
Nice comparison, I look forward how this story will end. Fusion 360 is getting better with every monthly update and the closer connection from design to manufacturing is well appreciated by the engineering teams. I guess it will all come down if there will be a more advanced PLM integration in Fusion 360 available. The Fusion Manage Extension is a first step, but if there would be a proper Fusion Manage integration I know several design teams immediately jumping onto Fusion 360 + Fusion Manage. Simply because it can do 90% of their work in a much simpler integration. Any yes there will be those special cases were you Inventor Veteran will help you out to save his pit file directly in to Fusion Team ;-)
I would like to thank you for all the effort you placed into TFI videos. I was definitely one of those stats on all your inventor videos and I still go back there sometimes when my memory needs refreshing on a task I may not have performed in a while. I have transitioned from working for employers to now running my own business and supporting many of the smaller fabrication shops in my area across Inventor/Fusion and Advance Steel applications. Fusion has benefits in some areas that Inventor lacks, for example in obj, stl file formats, Fusion does that better. I perform a lot of sheet metal work and inventor is simply better there. With some great add-ons used for drawings in inventor I would never consider Fusion. All in all, I was there as fusion began and I have watched it develop and always have it on hand with the manufacturing suite as I do require it sometimes. Thanks again for all of the effort you had made in the past to TFI Inventor training videos, my life has been impacted in a positive way due to your efforts.
Thanks Brent! I'm back on software now and the interest in this video kinda shows its the right way to go, although I'm still not returning to tutorials on TH-cam though! But that's actually really motivating to hear, I often sit here wondering why I'm doing all of this but it's feedback like that which reminds me, so thanks for that!
I loved the workflow in Inventor. It's what is used in school. After using Fusion I still enjoy the flow of modeling in Inventor. Yes you can make the same model in both, but I would rather work in Inventor.
In my book the thing that keeps tripping me up is that the fusion team loves the joint command so much - and it is the best solution 90% of the times - but I really miss ordinary constraining as an option, and then the measurement command is lousy. In Alibre we got x, y, z + direct as the default and that covers 99% 0f measurements and itis tricky through several mouseclicks to get usefull measurements. Aside from that I think the Fusion workflow is exceptional!
@@jenspetersen5865 Compared to inventor I feel fusion takes twice as long, the shortcuts on then mouse just are a joke, for example. The overwhelming nature of inventors menus is what I like, probably because I know what is where, but fusion just doesn't have the in depth feel. I'm by no means a pro, however as someone who also learned Inventor in school, and has done a few designs since for personal use, fusion just doesn't even come close.
When I started, I've downloaded Inventor, and you were basically the only one making tutorial on TH-cam. Sadly I like inventor more, that F7 feature is the thing that I miss more with other SW, but I've switched to Fusion to have more support since I'm self thought
Happy... it's Saturday now, all! This was a BIG video to make, it'll spawn some reactions, but I do plan on releasing further videos re functionality differences, pros and cons between the two etc. I understand a lot of people feel the need to tell you that you've 'forgot' to mention something, but I intentionally steered this away from product level features. Re the System Requirements and the GPU part, this debate was somewhat limited to Autodesk offerings, I know Solidworks has an arguably arbitrary requirement for a certified GPU but that still isn't or shouldn't be the bottleneck when it comes to handling large datasets. There's just so much more to this than seeing a model spinning on screen. But I didnt have the time to get into that as an off-topic waffle. One part I feel a little anxious about is the community bit. To be clear, I stand by all of that 100% as that's my take and perception on it having lived it for several years. But just for clarity, I'm not implying there are no community events or activities for Inventor, the point being made was in context to fusion 360 AND the overall size of the Inventor license base globally of which there'll be well over a million, the wider user base are generally not interested in engaging in community activities relating to Inventor, I can attest to that with receipts. Inventor does OK at Autodesk University and OK when a significant marketing push has happened via Autodesk for a learning event, and I'm not referring to community here in context of the help provided on the forums. Either way, there are a few super enthusiastic Inventor users who engage in community discussions... some of them are in my Discord server, totally not saying that doesn't exist, just saying it's nowhere near on the scale of Fusion 360 and those guys are somewhat of a minority!
I like it when you spoke about system requirements. I built a wokstation in 2020 since the only work I coud find was contrat work. I made sure I got the best CPU I could "afford" and skimped on the GPU since I knew the CPU and memory was the limiting factor. Fast forward to today, and I am working in an office that has laptops that can barely run one instance of Revit, much less the typical 2-3 I normally run. My he workstation could do 4-5 no sweat. I love the portability of the laptops but the limited compute is irritating.
thank you Niel, this video is very useful. I am sorry your work to promote inventor over the years did not get that much attention from the community,. They sure got mine! You helped me and my team become higher level users.
Thanks Jeff! I can't complain, it all served a purpose. Definitely didn't yield outputs which were representative of the inputs but I had to concede after a few years that I was fighting a battle I couldn't win there, can't reach people who don't want to be reached or just aren't out there looking to be reached. But ultimately that's why the tutorials stopped and I had to move onto different things! But it all got me started I guess!
Hey thanks really appreciate your videos, built a rack workstation this year got to use your tools to help me build a killer workstation switched to inventor to get more modeling features. I have the manufacturing suite but still do cam in fusion because it's honestly more feature rich but would rather model in inventor. Thanks appreciate it!
Nice video mate... cool to see so much of our MFG work from NZ in the showreel footage you had in the background as well. That video is really doing the rounds. 🙂
I am responsible for teaching both of these platforms and there are some huge differences between them. Fusion 360 is a lot easier than Inventor because the basic transition goes Tinkercad, then Fusion 360, then Inventor. As much as I cringe with Autodesk's dominance in the CAD market, they have spent the time to research what is developmentally appropriate for teaching.
We use both For big models only inventor! The same model with close to 10k parts Inventor - fast, no problems, smooth 3d view F360 - slow, crashes, freezing 3d view
Really good video, and for me, a hobbyist who loves to design, it confirms Fusion 360 is the correct tool. Can't agree more about the Fusion 360 community, there is so much help and support out there with Lars being a huge help.
So number one... You absolutely can save everything locally. I do. Because someday I'm not going to be able to access the cloud... But using decent practices, I've managed to keep all my files since the late 1990s...
Great breakdown , industrial designer with mostly rhino3d skills I found inventor just felt like big boy software. 360s interface was fragmented and I struggled feeling like I was clicking so many thing to achieve little. Too me that's the difference. Interesting about the white collar blue collar in regards to cam exports. I've found it's never great to put eggs in one basket. Machinists use so many different bits of software I think you exporting from cam cos you can would result in them hitting problems unless you have the post finely tuned. I can see them just running it through their tried and tested can solution on the floor more often. Maybe in a small shop where you don't have that foundation and that makes it easier to roll out this as a workflow. Give me inventor with ai regenerative design features as a subscription cloud compute Option and they'll kill it.
There are many third party very heavy duty applications designed to run inside of inventor. Since Inventor was introduced and Mechanical Desktop was ended I have used Openmind Hypermill for my CAM solution. It lets me generate g-code right inside of Inventor. It is extremely high end (5 axis and the like). I wear both white and blue shirts. Cheers
its also worth noting that fusion has quite the following in film. its fast becoming an essential tool for artists building props and concepting things for movies, tv and games
Inventor's engineering drawing is superb as far as I'm concerned. One of the biggest reasons why I went back to inventor from fusion 360 is the drawing creation in fusion lacked development. I do not know what it is today, but the problem is it feels like there's a weird middle area where both need to be installed for small young companies that want to design their own products, make the blueprints professional, use next gen or cutting edge manufacturing techniques (such as additive manufacturing or generative design) and manufacture it in-house. There's a weird middle ground that isn't quite full inventor, isn't quite full fusion 360 and for the past few years I've needed both installed in a company. Largely because of inventors drawing and GD&T section. Which is annoying because toolpath generation requires VRAM and cuda core count and heaps of CPU memory which means more toward like gaming hardware specs which has been crazy expensive the past couple years. Toolpath generation with adaptive clearing is one of the greatest inventions in subtractive manufacturing, but omg it is taxing on hardware, in both platforms.
If you've got Inventor 2023 there's a button on the ribbon bar now to just push your data straight over into Fusion, no pack n go needed. But if not 2023, Fusion can import IAMs and IPTs natively without having to package it all up, just do an import in Fusion and off you go
If one had access to BOTH Inventor and Fusion 360, What would be (in your opinion) the NECCISARY minimum combination of extensions one would need to CAD,CAM parts in a production environment consisting of a 5'X10' CNC router and/or laser?..
Heck the only thing that Inventor has that 360 does not is the local files. I would really love to have that in 360 and always hated the idea of not having complete control over my creations!
I feel like you really need to check out what the interactions are between Infraworks (bridge tools and generic objects) and Inventor. Essentially Infraworks runs Inventor server in the behind Infraworks and uses that to generate all the components you see in Infraworks. The benefit is that you now get thousands of Inventor models instanced to the dimensions they should be at that specific location in the world. Definitely something that puts Inventor into a new category as a means to really kick some "a" in the Infraworks side of things (and shake up the Revit fanboy community).
Interesting! I've never had a license for that so it's never been something I could just peek into and play with, but I'll see if I can get one and check it out! Thanks!
Would you say "Inventor CAM" is inventors answer to integrated cnc machining tool path generation? and is in fact just about identical to fusion 360's CAM functionality? Although yes it is a separate license/purchase/download/install. It would me nice if it were truly a part of inventor. I think if Fusion 360 had a better offline solution. To ensure no data is uploaded. (There is a way to do it but it is messy). Then Inventor would be obsolete.
Lets keep in mind that the chance of something going wrong with our personal computers are quite bigger than something going wrong at the Autodesk servers and all their backups. Hopefully you got backups on the clouds or something)
Fusion being free does help people find their niche, since no one models everything, or every category. Then if you start making money, and need more powerful tools, you then pick what you need. I use Inventor every day, and I use AutoCAD for sending out drawings to vendors. I have access to a product suite that includes Fusion, but it is rare I ever start it up, or actually use it for my job. I do want to learn Fusion, but there are only so many hours in a day, and I have a lot of technique with Inventor that Fusion would need to duplicate.
Same here. I use Inventor every day for business, same as AutoCAD. Since I use Fusion for private purposes, such as 3D printing and cnc milling, I also started to use it in the office as well, because it is included in the design suite. And yes, it is a double, but it has it's advantages.
360 is not free unless you are a student and even at that it's still very limited compared to the student version of Inventor or even the subscription version of Inventor.
F360 may be easy to learn, if you don’t know something else. As an AutoCad user for years, its hard to adapt to F360, as the simplest of AutoCad functions are made complicated in F360. I have been successful using F360, for mostly CAM, but I long for being able to quickly build and draw something with AutoCad ease. I think I just need to put my AutoCad bias aside and go all-in on F360.
What about designing capabilities? Is inventor more professional? When using only part design, assembly, drawing and maybe simulations, is inventor worth the price difference?
Why not both?? I use both for work, they both have there own use cases but work very well together. Fusion is great for quick design/parts and 3d printing and if you're only looking for something for home use. When putting together large designs and assemblies in a professional setting then Inventor is far superior.
They can indeed be leveraged together but that was outside of the scope of this video, possibly to be covered in a future one. It's a minority of clients who would have the opportunity to use both due to the combined cost, but you're not wrong they do compliment each other in a lot of ways and that'll only increase moving on in the future.
The "cloud" part of fusion is a total deal breaker for me! I was recently dumbfounded by how cloud centric it has become...I couldn't view a file without first uploading it to the cloud. And better yet, the option to access local files is locked out until you purchase a subscription! Cost me a 1 month subscription fee to find out that I can't do anything without first uploading everything to the magical cloud.
@@fredygump5578 yea Murray doesn't seem to understand your point at all. Deal-breaker for me as well :/ perhaps they offered a 'lite' version with a once-off purchase, that I could operate completely offline, with optional one-off upgrade purchases, I would consider it
Going from Inventor to Fusion one of the things I loved the most was a reduction of error-messages and sudden shut downs before remembering to save, at about 99%) Absolutely amazing. Don't think I've missed data with Fusion even if has 'jammed' and needs a restart. Seems to be recovered what one have not saved already.
Weird! I was thinking the same thing....I was thinking about moving from Fusion to Inventor, and literally the first project I chose to try out, I needed modeled threads for prototyping purposes and ran into that wall straight away.
I use Fusion at home and Inventor at work. More often then not, Inventor's UI frustrates me. Maybe I need to spend more time with it or I need some proper training. Fusion I picked up pretty easy with no formal training.
I was the founder of a manufacturing engineering firm.. We used solid works, NX, Rhino, alias, and a few others. When I started my next company my hatred of solid works was maxed out, that program is a nightmare. So I tried fusion, for a while it was great, but more and more tools are broken, things don't work, and basic drawing features or mold making tools just don't exist. So I'm done with fusion. On to try inventor. If not I guess I'll go back to NX.
I use both everyday for work at a yacht company (in addition to rhino). I personally prefer Fusion, but all my coworkers seem to favor inventor. We use autodesk vault for storage, and we check in files after creation. On day to day basis I have more issues with lagging and crashing in inventor. Fusion rarely has issues, however it doesn’t handle the insane assemblies as well as inventor. If I were to start my own company, I would use rhino and fusion only (so long as I wasn’t doing 1000 part assemblies)
Inventor shouldn't be lagging on 1000 part assemblies if that's around what you're on, that's quite small in context. If you run InvMark, there's a factory assembly I use for several of the tests which is a 1000 part assembly, I think it has 10,000+ occurrences in some tests. Might be worth running that to see what your score is, see if your systems are OK, if the systems are OK then potentially your assemblies have build/relationship issues causing the lag.
Hi Winston, it's Kojo from Ghana. I'm a BSc. MECHANICAL ENGINEER. Technical engineering drawing was one of the interesting programs I enjoyed throughout primary to high school to the university. I have an eye for detail to deliver an impressive design. I consider engineering drawing a talent and I will want to focus on utilizing the skill as a profession by using 3D CADS. Unfortunately, I have Lil to no idea as to the path to take to become a professional Designer. I be very grateful to have a professional interaction with you or get a reply from you. Thank you.
@@Neil3D eye opening experience here. Wow. I never knew CAD Softwares were largely used. Almost everybody commenting here uses one or more of these CAD. All these years, I didn't know CAD were that importance tool for professionals. I've thinking this because in GHANA, It's only just a few companies use CAD
To the point about Autodesk having to decide where to draw the line between what "Inventor" functionality F360 gets. I suspect that they do not want to limit F360 as much as you might imagine. I previously worked for several Autodesk distributors over a period of more than thirty years. I would put Autodesk's motivation behind F360 as a means of creating a cloud centric product with the ultimate goal of phasing out the desktop products. They already shifted (like many other software suppliers) to a subscription model several years back because there was limited value they could add in successive version releases to justify upgrade revenue. F360, IMHO, is part of a much longer plan to shift to the guaranteed revenue stream of service provision as opposed to the more lumpy licensing model. They'll most likely solidify this (pun intended) by adding cloud based AI like features that would not be feasible on desktop products.
I think Inventor is massively underrated. In the furniture industry, as I am, I see Solidworks lauded all the time as being the best option but when you actually start to try and do complex drawings of your model it's a flipping nightmare! It's like they originally designed the Solidworks drawing capability on Windows Paint and have been trying to fix it ever since! Bill of materials is also a complete joke. I think Inventor is a much more mature program in terms of the 2d drawing offering and the bill of materials interface is much more usable as well in my view. The fact you can also use AutoCAD to do 2d drawings of your Inventor model and maintain a link between the two is awsome, especially for where you have company with a mix of old school 'just using AutoCAD' types and those preaching the good news that is parametric CAD 🙏😆! I hope Autodesk continue to invest in Inventor as currently I think that's the closest thing it has to compete with Solidworks.
I use Inventor to model furniture, and I used Solidworks for the first 4 years of modeling starting back in 2016. Back then Inventor was terrible. It has come a long way since then. I create a lot of CNC frames, and Inventor gets the job done, especially with their drawing templates, and the way I can lay parts out to send to a vendor. I skipped Inventor 2022, but I will probably bump up to 2023 when it is available. The best part of 2021 was being able to drag a model to another monitor, and choosing dark mode for my menus.
I am in mechanical industry, I transferred from Catia to SW and found it was terrible. Then I started using Inventor and it’s even worse. SW is more intuitive, better organized interface, more tools for drafting, less glitches. 2D function is not a plus for me because never used it since 3D took over. I feel SW is more used in bigger sized businesses in mechanical industry. I think preference is largely application based.
@@kevinli2574 I Agree SW has a good UX and modelling is generally a pretty good experience in SW. Although, from what I can see, Inventor has improved greatly in that regard in the last 2 or 3 years since I stopped using it. However in my line of work, 2D drawings are still (sadly I often think!) crucial and doing those in SW I always found to be a nightmare. And like I say, I also found BOMs in SW very hard to use (you can only view and edit them as a placed entity in paper or model space rather than having its own interface- I mean what?! 😖). Also if you're in SW and your company is still very reliant an AutoCAD (yes i know!), then you've got a much better chance of using Inventor and AutoCAD in tandem than you do SW and AutoCAD together. End of the day there's no perfect system and they all have their pro's and con's and on top of that of course people get used to things and have their preferences. Swings and roundabouts! 😄
Fusion 360 is aimed more at hobbyist and startup companies with great design tools for 3D printing. Inventor is much more expensive and require more effort to implement in a company but offer better features and tools for complex assemblies and mechanical design.
Just a shame inventor cam gets left behind......I for one am not a big fan of the cloud environment and will not ever risk being able to access my data on whether or not I have an internet connection.
I use inventor when I have to design/engineer something. At work we use PowerMILL and Fusion since we aren't creating data but simply fixing broken models and manufacturing. Inventor is miles better than Fusion.
I wish Fusion would use more of a powerful computer. I use it a custom gaming/workstation PC I built and it barely uses the computer's resources at all. Even when it bogs down and is running slow because I'm doing something complex my RAM, CPU, and GPU, are all barely in use.
Guys, a noob here! I wanted to learn 3d modelling, and I was wondering, what would be the best software, available for free, that you would recommend? If there are tutorials o skillshare for it, that would be great too, haha. Anyway, I would love to be able to use the files for 3d printing at some point.
A fun fact is that OTX next week doesn't contain a single Inventor session (Only one factory) but several Fusion 360..... Personally I hate it....😒.... Thangs anyway for all your Inventor content. Specially all the hardware stuff.....👍👍
God i hated the generative design thing when i tried it, i had unlimited cloud credit yet i hated it. No amount of cloud credit would make me work with fusion.
I work with inventor pro (actually the collection) and I must say that the biggest difference, that I expected to see listed here, is the environments. I last used Fusion 360 in 2018 so they might have been implemented but I doubt, since some are only available in the pro version of inventor. For example, metal sheet environment is gold. It makes easy as hell to create parts that can be manufactured dirty cheap, and combined with frame generator and piping environment you can really scale up productivity and design process.
There is a sheet metal environment in Fusion, have been for a few years at least. Probably not quite as powerful as in Inventor, but it works great and does everything I've needed so far :)
Form my personal experience: Autodesk does allow you to keep a local backup of ALL files and team data. This backup automatically sync with the cloud everytime you are connected to the internet. This is also relativity simple to setup, all you have to do is download the client service from your online team portal.
I've been really surprised every time I find out Fusion 360 has features I previously assumed were Inventor exclusive, but it happens a lot. BTW, files in every format that I know of can be exported to the PC? At least, work files can have backups created and archived files.
Yea you can export files to F3D and other formats as a backup or for sharing, but anything you create and actively work on has to be in that data panel. Once its exported it basically exits Fusion 360 and no longer exists to Fusion. So active projects have to be in the cloud. That's kinda where I was coming from with that.
This is not a joke sir. I was a welder/ fabricator for fifty years never touching a cad program in my lifetime. My life’s mission has been to become current and relevant. At 60 years old, yup my old man believed in cheap labor… Could an old school learn Fusion 360 then implement it down the line into my shops CNC’s ?
Autodesk creating to much expensive software's that do similar work till a point it become so much confusing like in a supermarket where you find the same in 100 diff bottle but each one with a slightly diff taste its kind of a high level of scamming
except that you can save files to your drive? i've never understood when people said that you can't save your own files to your storage solution. just press ctrl+s and save the f3d file to your puter
I would disagree. The chance of hackers getting into the computers and servers of a average company, or the home computer of a one man business, is larger than getting into the database used by Autodesk, with hundreds of devoted IT specialists and millions in equipment and safty.
Yes but if you subscribe to Fusion and buy the machining extension and the simulation extension your paying more than the product design suite that has Inventor CAM in it and a lot more. So... Maybe Autodesk should rethink their pricing and fragmentation strategy of Fusion or that great community you mention is going to be greatly deminished.
Do the majority of the community in the casual sense of the word, need what the commercial extension brings to the table over what the core CAM offering has though? I don't profess at this point to know the ins and outs of exactly what is behind the machining extension paywall other than 5 axis and a couple others, and I don't really fully appreciate the extent of the community and how they leverage it all yet, but my uneducated perception is that most people/business's that have 5 axis machines are a different demographic to the hobbyist user base. How that stacks up in a feature to feature and cost comparison to Inventor, Inventor CAM and the collection I guess is an interesting one if you are in that arena, I guess I need to be schooled a bit more on the CAM offerings before I can pitch in on that debate!
@@Neil3D I received an e-mail from Autodesk recently saying that multi-axis contour and swarf machining will go behind the paywall (paywall^2 actually. Since I'm already paying for a subscription). As is 4-axis simultaneous currently. And I think you'll find that the maker community already has DIY machines with a 4th axis running Mach3/4 or even GRBL. Even some Y-Axis lathes with tool changers have been DIY'ed. As for the Simulations, yes that's absolutely necessary for small companies and weekend warriors alike. Remember, if you're selling a product, you don't qualify for the start-up licence no matter how little money you make(i.e. home based machine shop part-time). The machining and simulation extensions plus the basic Fusion subscription is 503eur+2*2112eur = 4.727,00eur in Europe!!! And that with only 2 of the 7 or 8 extensions available. Product Design & Manufacturing Collection is currently 3.764,00eur. That's incl. VAT and before any sales, promotions or discounts. My comment was aimed at the fact that Fusion is so successful and Autodesk is so determined to milk that cow that they have gone ahead and priced a fully-featured Fusion360 subscription well beyond the Product Design & Manufacturing Collection when even that fully featured version is more restricted in terms of features than the collection. For example Fusion does not have a frame design tool. AutoCAD is included in the collection, with all it's might, and compatibility with Visual Basic, and Dynamic Blocks and add-in ecosystem. CAM is the least of the problems here!!! I was trying to bring focus to the paranoia that has gripped Autodesk with making money from Fusion. A software that was subscription-based before any other and that many people paid a subscription for well before it was ready to be sold or compete, and hence has made them more money than it ever had the right to. It's a pity and it's becoming irrational. That's all I'm saying.
LOL I'm so glad someone got it! I started playing it again a couple of weeks ago for an hour here and there, I played the original back in the 90's and it was one of my favourite games of all time, I AM RUBBER YOU ARE GLUE haha They released a special remastered edition of the original a few years ago with a complete new graphics engine and voice-overs, made me so happy!
Soooooooo?, Which one performs most like Apple products and makes me start craving soy, glittery-things, and sitting on inverted-stools with three of my buddies?
@tech3d Here's a speedmodeling showdown between an F360 user and an Inventor user - thought you might dig this: th-cam.com/video/YmQFzoT1DSA/w-d-xo.html
Yet fusion 360 lost its shine when Autodesk decided to cut functionality on the free version. Don’t buy into the bleed game use open source freeCAD and pay to own software like solid edge.
#1 you can work in offline mode. Export your files locally and open files from your local computer. Clear the offline cache before going back online. And your files will not be uploaded to the cloud.
That is why I just don't try to use the software ( I use Inventor). It should do things the way you want them done, without having to go down a rabbit hole, like trying to figure out a cheat for a video game. Younger people that grew up playing video games as a way of life, seem to have no problem with that.
I use Rhino3D, The way inventor and fusion handle object manipulation is so alien to me. In rhino you can specify a grid of 10x10 meters and place hundreds of objects and work on them one by one. Move them at will and do almost anything without using popup menus. I have tried fusion and was incredibly frustrated by the interface. I love that I can type in the first 3 letters of a command, get 20 options and then hit enter as it auto selects the most used command with those 3 letters.
The comparison given seems like mechanical centric CAD CAM view. For me the ability to design simulate build and manufacture in integrate mechanical and electronic system elements is what gives F360 its edge. Also I disagree with the white collar blue collar explanation. Designing complete systems is not a blue collar exercise. It usually undertaken by graduate engineers. I think the answer is in the name Fusion, fusion of all aspects of product design.
Been working with Inventor. Now Fusion. Nope. I do not miss the 99% higher number of error messages showing up in Inventor, often crashing the program and losing data. Work got so much easier when going to Fusion.
I have fusion 360 running on a win 10 virtual box on my pretty old linux gaming rig. I don’t know enough to know what to expect with performance but it runs fine for me. It put up a couple warnings about performance but I was able to make them stop popping up and it works fine for me. All this to say if you are a hobbyist you do not need a crazy workstation.
I'm very interested in Fusion 360. The Price is just great for "normal people". BUT, I simply HATE Cloud solutions so I can't own this Application just buying it. I also hate Subscriptions. And the free version is very limited without any access to Eagle.
There's currently a 20% discount on Fusion 360, visit this link to see current pricing on the Autodesk store - www.dpbolvw.net/click-9205628-15225129
Does it also include the free version?
If yes, sign me in!
Thank you for your video and inputs
I think one of the biggest pros for Fusion 360 is it’s barrier to entry. As a (former) hobbiest, I found F360 a delight to use, with a small learning curve. As features were added, I began to understand the industry standard of design process. Once my hobby became a full time business, I didn’t see any value in changing the design software to something like a Solidworks or an Inventor. F360 did everything we needed it to do! We have projects in F360 that run deep, both on PC and Mac. We were easily able to work remotely during the pandemic, and continue to do so today. I gave Solidworks a go, and it does everything we’d ever need it to and it was a great experience, packaged with Catia, but the cost and the machine upgrades wasn’t worth it to continue using it. Choice I guess.
How did a hobby become a full-time business? And what exactly are you doing?
@@alejandroperez5368 I started designing drones and it literally took off into support vehicles for emergency services.
putting all your eggs in one basket? Never works out well in the long run.
@@verygoodbrother Are you promoting the idea of Jack of all trades, master of none.
@@kojokwame5201 no, I'm promoting having a contingency plan especially if you rely on it to make money
I have never understood why Inventor is the "red headed step child" in professional 3D cad software. When I was a reseller I got to watch an internal video comparing Inventor, Solidworks, Pro E and Catia. 16 different tasks. Inventor was the best/fastest in 14 of them. Granted Autodesk may have picked stuff Inventor is better at but I've used SW and Inventor both and the sheer amount of clicks needed in SW for similar tasks is ridiculous. I will be an Inventor guy for life or until I can't use it/don't need it anymore. The cost is well worth it to have control over my files and all the other pros you mentioned. Great vid Neil 👍
I use Inventor and Solidworks on daily basis depending on our clients. I would be verry interested to see what are those task that you say, “the sheer amount of clicks needed in SW for similar tasks is ridiculous”.
I love and hate to use Inventor. I love that it feels snappy and not bloatware like SW. It has some so excellent features (Design Accelerator, Frame etc.) but I just feel that people at Autodesk don’t use Inventor. Because some of the basic aspect, I just can’t understand why is not fixed. I’m talking about: Mirror that doesn’t update position in assembly, overall bad experience at using assembly (this direction, that direction, why is it so hard to fix constrains), the fact that you need to project edges in sketch to dimension, Part rotation (what’s with that, o just use F4, why?, o just use space mouse, again why?) and on and on. I just think they don’t play to their strengths. I sure somebody needed the unwrap command??
I use Inventor. I don't love it but it gets the job done. Frames and sheet metal have very few issues, but for modeling solids I find solid edge to be superior in speed. I don't know why nobody finds their synchronous option an advantage over other programs out there.
I agree with @Milan Bojovic... where is “the sheer amount of clicks needed in SW for similar tasks is ridiculous” coming from?
When I used SW I had a separate numpad for my left hand. This allowed me to type the first 2-3 letters of a command (AutoCAD style) I wanted, enter in a dimension on my extra numpad, and move on to next element. Moving your non-dominant hand between keyboard/numpad is much faster than moving your dominant hand from mouse to numpad, since you have to "find your place" with the mouse whenever you leave it. Plus both numpad/keyboard have blind bumps.
Meanwhile, in Inventor, this same workflow is unworkable, since you have to click on the search bar. And yes, you can go through the effort of assigning command aliases, but that's too much work, and I haven't ever been happy with the end result. So instead, I've given up and just use the command ribbon, which by the way, doesn't always make alot of sense (Why are Styles and Document setting on different tabs???).
All this allows me to detail my drawings in half the time, and do solid model designs with less friction. It's kinda like how it's been proven that walking through door ways can cause you to forget where you were going, mode-switching is taxing on the brain. Why should I ever have to move my focus away from viewport?
@@crazyfox266 My personal opinion is that Autodesk is putting most of their resources into Revit and AEC related offerings. We are in the AEC community but do not use Revit and use Inventor in its place. Lost track of how many people who use Revit wish they were using Inventor when we show them what we do with the software. Inventor can design ANYTHING including buildings, industrial sites, factories, aircraft, cars, medical devices, etc. and uses point clouds for Scan-to-BIM to boot. It's all about money Milan and the value of Autodesk stock. We all miss Carl Bass who was the CAD user's friend and ambassador at Autodesk.
Still feel like IronCAD is the best CAD package out there that has been treated completely dirty by the industry.
Love your videos! As a Product Manager working at Autodesk on Inventor and Fusion (responsible for CAM) I found this video particularly enjoyable.
Thanks! I'm in talks with Bryce & Trent at the moment to see about some possible future collab opportunities, I can't put my email address here obviously but feel free to ping them and get my details, If I do a CAM version of a video like this it would be great to be schooled on that side of things as I'm a bit of a noob on the CAM stuff!
@@Neil3D sounds good.. I'll reach out. We'll have to get you to swing down to our tech center in Birmingham to get some time infront off machines. You might find mfg isn't as blue collar as you think :-)
Thanks for all the Inventor videos you've done over the years. I still refer back to them all the time.
I was a Solidworks user until they changed their licensing that made it a pain to be able to work at home if I had to. In the past they had a home license that was part of your main license but greed got rid of that so I switched to Inventor. Now I use both Fusion and Inventor and love them both along with Inventorcam for my programming. The big plus for Fusion is that Fusion works in both Windows and Mac! That's huge! All I wish is that the files can be saved locally. ITAR prevents me form storing in the cloud.
In Fusion360 you can?! just Click File->Export->Choose fusion 360 file extension. This way you won't loose any features and can work on it later. This way you can keep your files at home.
Or you can have a local cache of all your files
Nice comparison, I look forward how this story will end. Fusion 360 is getting better with every monthly update and the closer connection from design to manufacturing is well appreciated by the engineering teams. I guess it will all come down if there will be a more advanced PLM integration in Fusion 360 available. The Fusion Manage Extension is a first step, but if there would be a proper Fusion Manage integration I know several design teams immediately jumping onto Fusion 360 + Fusion Manage. Simply because it can do 90% of their work in a much simpler integration. Any yes there will be those special cases were you Inventor Veteran will help you out to save his pit file directly in to Fusion Team ;-)
I would like to thank you for all the effort you placed into TFI videos. I was definitely one of those stats on all your inventor videos and I still go back there sometimes when my memory needs refreshing on a task I may not have performed in a while. I have transitioned from working for employers to now running my own business and supporting many of the smaller fabrication shops in my area across Inventor/Fusion and Advance Steel applications. Fusion has benefits in some areas that Inventor lacks, for example in obj, stl file formats, Fusion does that better. I perform a lot of sheet metal work and inventor is simply better there. With some great add-ons used for drawings in inventor I would never consider Fusion. All in all, I was there as fusion began and I have watched it develop and always have it on hand with the manufacturing suite as I do require it sometimes. Thanks again for all of the effort you had made in the past to TFI Inventor training videos, my life has been impacted in a positive way due to your efforts.
Thanks Brent! I'm back on software now and the interest in this video kinda shows its the right way to go, although I'm still not returning to tutorials on TH-cam though! But that's actually really motivating to hear, I often sit here wondering why I'm doing all of this but it's feedback like that which reminds me, so thanks for that!
I'm a few decades long Inventor user. Thank you for clearing that out for us!
I loved the workflow in Inventor. It's what is used in school. After using Fusion I still enjoy the flow of modeling in Inventor. Yes you can make the same model in both, but I would rather work in Inventor.
In my book the thing that keeps tripping me up is that the fusion team loves the joint command so much - and it is the best solution 90% of the times - but I really miss ordinary constraining as an option, and then the measurement command is lousy. In Alibre we got x, y, z + direct as the default and that covers 99% 0f measurements and itis tricky through several mouseclicks to get usefull measurements.
Aside from that I think the Fusion workflow is exceptional!
@@jenspetersen5865 Compared to inventor I feel fusion takes twice as long, the shortcuts on then mouse just are a joke, for example. The overwhelming nature of inventors menus is what I like, probably because I know what is where, but fusion just doesn't have the in depth feel. I'm by no means a pro, however as someone who also learned Inventor in school, and has done a few designs since for personal use, fusion just doesn't even come close.
When I started, I've downloaded Inventor, and you were basically the only one making tutorial on TH-cam. Sadly I like inventor more, that F7 feature is the thing that I miss more with other SW, but I've switched to Fusion to have more support since I'm self thought
Happy... it's Saturday now, all! This was a BIG video to make, it'll spawn some reactions, but I do plan on releasing further videos re functionality differences, pros and cons between the two etc. I understand a lot of people feel the need to tell you that you've 'forgot' to mention something, but I intentionally steered this away from product level features.
Re the System Requirements and the GPU part, this debate was somewhat limited to Autodesk offerings, I know Solidworks has an arguably arbitrary requirement for a certified GPU but that still isn't or shouldn't be the bottleneck when it comes to handling large datasets. There's just so much more to this than seeing a model spinning on screen. But I didnt have the time to get into that as an off-topic waffle.
One part I feel a little anxious about is the community bit. To be clear, I stand by all of that 100% as that's my take and perception on it having lived it for several years. But just for clarity, I'm not implying there are no community events or activities for Inventor, the point being made was in context to fusion 360 AND the overall size of the Inventor license base globally of which there'll be well over a million, the wider user base are generally not interested in engaging in community activities relating to Inventor, I can attest to that with receipts. Inventor does OK at Autodesk University and OK when a significant marketing push has happened via Autodesk for a learning event, and I'm not referring to community here in context of the help provided on the forums. Either way, there are a few super enthusiastic Inventor users who engage in community discussions... some of them are in my Discord server, totally not saying that doesn't exist, just saying it's nowhere near on the scale of Fusion 360 and those guys are somewhat of a minority!
I like it when you spoke about system requirements. I built a wokstation in 2020 since the only work I coud find was contrat work. I made sure I got the best CPU I could "afford" and skimped on the GPU since I knew the CPU and memory was the limiting factor. Fast forward to today, and I am working in an office that has laptops that can barely run one instance of Revit, much less the typical 2-3 I normally run. My he workstation could do 4-5 no sweat. I love the portability of the laptops but the limited compute is irritating.
thank you Niel, this video is very useful. I am sorry your work to promote inventor over the years did not get that much attention from the community,. They sure got mine! You helped me and my team become higher level users.
Thanks Jeff! I can't complain, it all served a purpose. Definitely didn't yield outputs which were representative of the inputs but I had to concede after a few years that I was fighting a battle I couldn't win there, can't reach people who don't want to be reached or just aren't out there looking to be reached. But ultimately that's why the tutorials stopped and I had to move onto different things! But it all got me started I guess!
I honestly would love to engage with you on some top notch professional level. I'd personally be appreciative if you reply me
Hey thanks really appreciate your videos, built a rack workstation this year got to use your tools to help me build a killer workstation switched to inventor to get more modeling features. I have the manufacturing suite but still do cam in fusion because it's honestly more feature rich but would rather model in inventor. Thanks appreciate it!
Nice video mate... cool to see so much of our MFG work from NZ in the showreel footage you had in the background as well. That video is really doing the rounds. 🙂
I am responsible for teaching both of these platforms and there are some huge differences between them. Fusion 360 is a lot easier than Inventor because the basic transition goes Tinkercad, then Fusion 360, then Inventor. As much as I cringe with Autodesk's dominance in the CAD market, they have spent the time to research what is developmentally appropriate for teaching.
The basic transition goes Tinkercad → FreeCAD.
At least since Autodesk puts the thumbscrews on the „free“ Fuson360-Users.
You are shining again Mr. Neil ! i am letting my boss watch this whole video ! thank you for summing it up :)
We use both
For big models only inventor!
The same model with close to 10k parts
Inventor - fast, no problems, smooth 3d view
F360 - slow, crashes, freezing 3d view
Really good video, and for me, a hobbyist who loves to design, it confirms Fusion 360 is the correct tool. Can't agree more about the Fusion 360 community, there is so much help and support out there with Lars being a huge help.
So number one... You absolutely can save everything locally. I do. Because someday I'm not going to be able to access the cloud... But using decent practices, I've managed to keep all my files since the late 1990s...
Great breakdown , industrial designer with mostly rhino3d skills I found inventor just felt like big boy software. 360s interface was fragmented and I struggled feeling like I was clicking so many thing to achieve little. Too me that's the difference. Interesting about the white collar blue collar in regards to cam exports. I've found it's never great to put eggs in one basket. Machinists use so many different bits of software I think you exporting from cam cos you can would result in them hitting problems unless you have the post finely tuned. I can see them just running it through their tried and tested can solution on the floor more often. Maybe in a small shop where you don't have that foundation and that makes it easier to roll out this as a workflow. Give me inventor with ai regenerative design features as a subscription cloud compute Option and they'll kill it.
This is a fabulous breakdown. I've been looking for a video like this for years. Thanks!
There are many third party very heavy duty applications designed to run inside of inventor. Since Inventor was introduced and Mechanical Desktop was ended I have used Openmind Hypermill for my CAM solution. It lets me generate g-code right inside of Inventor. It is extremely high end (5 axis and the like). I wear both white and blue shirts. Cheers
Good video! For my purposes as a 3D print hobbyist (blue collar?), Fusion 360 suits me fine 👍
Literally the one I was looking for, always precious, thanks mate!
WOW! amazing video... exactly what I was always wondering about!!! thanks mate... keep 'em coming
its also worth noting that fusion has quite the following in film. its fast becoming an essential tool for artists building props and concepting things for movies, tv and games
Yep I've noticed that fusion has a large following from non engineering fields.
Monkey Island reference was appreciated
Despite all, I still love your Inventor videos and have learned a lot from them. Keep up the great work.
I also learned so much from the TFI inventor videos. Neil Cross in my opinion is the best teacher of Inventor. His delivery is awesome.
Inventor's engineering drawing is superb as far as I'm concerned. One of the biggest reasons why I went back to inventor from fusion 360 is the drawing creation in fusion lacked development. I do not know what it is today, but the problem is it feels like there's a weird middle area where both need to be installed for small young companies that want to design their own products, make the blueprints professional, use next gen or cutting edge manufacturing techniques (such as additive manufacturing or generative design) and manufacture it in-house. There's a weird middle ground that isn't quite full inventor, isn't quite full fusion 360 and for the past few years I've needed both installed in a company. Largely because of inventors drawing and GD&T section. Which is annoying because toolpath generation requires VRAM and cuda core count and heaps of CPU memory which means more toward like gaming hardware specs which has been crazy expensive the past couple years.
Toolpath generation with adaptive clearing is one of the greatest inventions in subtractive manufacturing, but omg it is taxing on hardware, in both platforms.
Is it possible / easy to export Inventor files (Pack 'n' Go?) to Fusion 360 to use the latter's CAM package? Thanks.
If you've got Inventor 2023 there's a button on the ribbon bar now to just push your data straight over into Fusion, no pack n go needed. But if not 2023, Fusion can import IAMs and IPTs natively without having to package it all up, just do an import in Fusion and off you go
@@Neil3D Thank you much.
If one had access to BOTH Inventor and Fusion 360, What would be (in your opinion) the NECCISARY minimum combination of extensions one would need to CAD,CAM parts in a production environment consisting of a 5'X10' CNC router and/or laser?..
Thanks mate. Nice job. Helped me out a lot. 😎
I agree, making tutorials about Fusion 360 will help you grow the channel.
6:21 Whaaat? Autodesk Inventor does have Generative design! 🥴
Heck the only thing that Inventor has that 360 does not is the local files. I would really love to have that in 360 and always hated the idea of not having complete control over my creations!
BROTHER, YOU ARE THE BEST!!! You oooh really helped me!! THANK YOU VERY MUCH!
I feel like you really need to check out what the interactions are between Infraworks (bridge tools and generic objects) and Inventor. Essentially Infraworks runs Inventor server in the behind Infraworks and uses that to generate all the components you see in Infraworks. The benefit is that you now get thousands of Inventor models instanced to the dimensions they should be at that specific location in the world. Definitely something that puts Inventor into a new category as a means to really kick some "a" in the Infraworks side of things (and shake up the Revit fanboy community).
Interesting! I've never had a license for that so it's never been something I could just peek into and play with, but I'll see if I can get one and check it out! Thanks!
Would you say "Inventor CAM" is inventors answer to integrated cnc machining tool path generation? and is in fact just about identical to fusion 360's CAM functionality? Although yes it is a separate license/purchase/download/install. It would me nice if it were truly a part of inventor. I think if Fusion 360 had a better offline solution. To ensure no data is uploaded. (There is a way to do it but it is messy). Then Inventor would be obsolete.
I personally love fusion 360, and I save all my projects locally.
Lets keep in mind that the chance of something going wrong with our personal computers are quite bigger than something going wrong at the Autodesk servers and all their backups. Hopefully you got backups on the clouds or something)
Excellent summary Thank you
Fusion being free does help people find their niche, since no one models everything, or every category. Then if you start making money, and need more powerful tools, you then pick what you need. I use Inventor every day, and I use AutoCAD for sending out drawings to vendors. I have access to a product suite that includes Fusion, but it is rare I ever start it up, or actually use it for my job. I do want to learn Fusion, but there are only so many hours in a day, and I have a lot of technique with Inventor that Fusion would need to duplicate.
Same here. I use Inventor every day for business, same as AutoCAD. Since I use Fusion for private purposes, such as 3D printing and cnc milling, I also started to use it in the office as well, because it is included in the design suite. And yes, it is a double, but it has it's advantages.
360 is not free unless you are a student and even at that it's still very limited compared to the student version of Inventor or even the subscription version of Inventor.
F360 may be easy to learn, if you don’t know something else. As an AutoCad user for years, its hard to adapt to F360, as the simplest of AutoCad functions are made complicated in F360. I have been successful using F360, for mostly CAM, but I long for being able to quickly build and draw something with AutoCad ease. I think I just need to put my AutoCad bias aside and go all-in on F360.
@@727jetjumper If you are an expert with Autodesk Inventor, Fusion 360 will seem irritating.
What about designing capabilities? Is inventor more professional?
When using only part design, assembly, drawing and maybe simulations, is inventor worth the price difference?
High quality. Thanks for your time.
Why not both??
I use both for work, they both have there own use cases but work very well together.
Fusion is great for quick design/parts and 3d printing and if you're only looking for something for home use.
When putting together large designs and assemblies in a professional setting then Inventor is far superior.
They can indeed be leveraged together but that was outside of the scope of this video, possibly to be covered in a future one. It's a minority of clients who would have the opportunity to use both due to the combined cost, but you're not wrong they do compliment each other in a lot of ways and that'll only increase moving on in the future.
Thank you! Very helpful info
The "cloud" part of fusion is a total deal breaker for me! I was recently dumbfounded by how cloud centric it has become...I couldn't view a file without first uploading it to the cloud. And better yet, the option to access local files is locked out until you purchase a subscription! Cost me a 1 month subscription fee to find out that I can't do anything without first uploading everything to the magical cloud.
I'm guessing your banking is done online? And possibly your tax return? And your emails? Insurance? Purchases?
@@murrayedington LOL. I would explain, but you wouldn't listen.
@@fredygump5578 yea Murray doesn't seem to understand your point at all. Deal-breaker for me as well :/ perhaps they offered a 'lite' version with a once-off purchase, that I could operate completely offline, with optional one-off upgrade purchases, I would consider it
@@murrayedington not an argument
I’ve tried both for multiple years each and honestly being able to model threads was the selling point on fusion for me
Going from Inventor to Fusion one of the things I loved the most was a reduction of error-messages and sudden shut downs before remembering to save, at about 99%) Absolutely amazing. Don't think I've missed data with Fusion even if has 'jammed' and needs a restart. Seems to be recovered what one have not saved already.
Weird! I was thinking the same thing....I was thinking about moving from Fusion to Inventor, and literally the first project I chose to try out, I needed modeled threads for prototyping purposes and ran into that wall straight away.
I use Fusion at home and Inventor at work. More often then not, Inventor's UI frustrates me. Maybe I need to spend more time with it or I need some proper training. Fusion I picked up pretty easy with no formal training.
I am confused between Solidworks and Inventor, what do you advise?
so, if the internet goes down, Fusion 360 will not work as cannot access the files?
I was the founder of a manufacturing engineering firm.. We used solid works, NX, Rhino, alias, and a few others. When I started my next company my hatred of solid works was maxed out, that program is a nightmare. So I tried fusion, for a while it was great, but more and more tools are broken, things don't work, and basic drawing features or mold making tools just don't exist. So I'm done with fusion. On to try inventor. If not I guess I'll go back to NX.
Hey there mate!
Ahoy!
I use both everyday for work at a yacht company (in addition to rhino). I personally prefer Fusion, but all my coworkers seem to favor inventor. We use autodesk vault for storage, and we check in files after creation. On day to day basis I have more issues with lagging and crashing in inventor. Fusion rarely has issues, however it doesn’t handle the insane assemblies as well as inventor. If I were to start my own company, I would use rhino and fusion only (so long as I wasn’t doing 1000 part assemblies)
Inventor shouldn't be lagging on 1000 part assemblies if that's around what you're on, that's quite small in context. If you run InvMark, there's a factory assembly I use for several of the tests which is a 1000 part assembly, I think it has 10,000+ occurrences in some tests. Might be worth running that to see what your score is, see if your systems are OK, if the systems are OK then potentially your assemblies have build/relationship issues causing the lag.
@Sgron It was a real challenge for me to make drawings in NX. There is nothing better than Inventor in this regard.
Hi Winston, it's Kojo from Ghana. I'm a BSc. MECHANICAL ENGINEER. Technical engineering drawing was one of the interesting programs I enjoyed throughout primary to high school to the university. I have an eye for detail to deliver an impressive design.
I consider engineering drawing a talent and I will want to focus on utilizing the skill as a profession by using 3D CADS.
Unfortunately, I have Lil to no idea as to the path to take to become a professional Designer. I be very grateful to have a professional interaction with you or get a reply from you. Thank you.
@@Neil3D eye opening experience here. Wow. I never knew CAD Softwares were largely used. Almost everybody commenting here uses one or more of these CAD. All these years, I didn't know CAD were that importance tool for professionals. I've thinking this because in GHANA, It's only just a few companies use CAD
Can’t find the hardware leader board link
At least you know this guy had a job before. "who is doing real work" made me chuckle.
To the point about Autodesk having to decide where to draw the line between what "Inventor" functionality F360 gets. I suspect that they do not want to limit F360 as much as you might imagine. I previously worked for several Autodesk distributors over a period of more than thirty years. I would put Autodesk's motivation behind F360 as a means of creating a cloud centric product with the ultimate goal of phasing out the desktop products. They already shifted (like many other software suppliers) to a subscription model several years back because there was limited value they could add in successive version releases to justify upgrade revenue. F360, IMHO, is part of a much longer plan to shift to the guaranteed revenue stream of service provision as opposed to the more lumpy licensing model. They'll most likely solidify this (pun intended) by adding cloud based AI like features that would not be feasible on desktop products.
Can you control a machine directly from autocad?
Before watching this video I've never heard of Autodesk Inventor, even though I've been using Fusion 360 as a hobbyist for multiple years now.
Thanks Neil
360 cannot compete with Solidworks, Creo, Catia etc. - Inventor can.
I think Inventor is massively underrated. In the furniture industry, as I am, I see Solidworks lauded all the time as being the best option but when you actually start to try and do complex drawings of your model it's a flipping nightmare! It's like they originally designed the Solidworks drawing capability on Windows Paint and have been trying to fix it ever since! Bill of materials is also a complete joke. I think Inventor is a much more mature program in terms of the 2d drawing offering and the bill of materials interface is much more usable as well in my view. The fact you can also use AutoCAD to do 2d drawings of your Inventor model and maintain a link between the two is awsome, especially for where you have company with a mix of old school 'just using AutoCAD' types and those preaching the good news that is parametric CAD 🙏😆! I hope Autodesk continue to invest in Inventor as currently I think that's the closest thing it has to compete with Solidworks.
Give Solid Edge a try.
I use Inventor to model furniture, and I used Solidworks for the first 4 years of modeling starting back in 2016. Back then Inventor was terrible. It has come a long way since then. I create a lot of CNC frames, and Inventor gets the job done, especially with their drawing templates, and the way I can lay parts out to send to a vendor. I skipped Inventor 2022, but I will probably bump up to 2023 when it is available. The best part of 2021 was being able to drag a model to another monitor, and choosing dark mode for my menus.
@@kingbillybob 2022 introduced Model States which is very powerful and seems like it would be great for furniture design.
I am in mechanical industry, I transferred from Catia to SW and found it was terrible. Then I started using Inventor and it’s even worse. SW is more intuitive, better organized interface, more tools for drafting, less glitches. 2D function is not a plus for me because never used it since 3D took over. I feel SW is more used in bigger sized businesses in mechanical industry. I think preference is largely application based.
@@kevinli2574 I Agree SW has a good UX and modelling is generally a pretty good experience in SW. Although, from what I can see, Inventor has improved greatly in that regard in the last 2 or 3 years since I stopped using it. However in my line of work, 2D drawings are still (sadly I often think!) crucial and doing those in SW I always found to be a nightmare. And like I say, I also found BOMs in SW very hard to use (you can only view and edit them as a placed entity in paper or model space rather than having its own interface- I mean what?! 😖). Also if you're in SW and your company is still very reliant an AutoCAD (yes i know!), then you've got a much better chance of using Inventor and AutoCAD in tandem than you do SW and AutoCAD together. End of the day there's no perfect system and they all have their pro's and con's and on top of that of course people get used to things and have their preferences. Swings and roundabouts! 😄
Didn't you used to be TFICADTips?
Fusion 360 is aimed more at hobbyist and startup companies with great design tools for 3D printing. Inventor is much more expensive and require more effort to implement in a company but offer better features and tools for complex assemblies and mechanical design.
true difference..... very well said.... i myself use those for that
Just a shame inventor cam gets left behind......I for one am not a big fan of the cloud environment and will not ever risk being able to access my data on whether or not I have an internet connection.
I use inventor when I have to design/engineer something. At work we use PowerMILL and Fusion since we aren't creating data but simply fixing broken models and manufacturing. Inventor is miles better than Fusion.
I wish Fusion would use more of a powerful computer. I use it a custom gaming/workstation PC I built and it barely uses the computer's resources at all. Even when it bogs down and is running slow because I'm doing something complex my RAM, CPU, and GPU, are all barely in use.
Guys, a noob here! I wanted to learn 3d modelling, and I was wondering, what would be the best software, available for free, that you would recommend? If there are tutorials o skillshare for it, that would be great too, haha. Anyway, I would love to be able to use the files for 3d printing at some point.
Try Fusion 360 or Onshape, there's also TinkerCAD if you want to start out with something a little more basic.
A fun fact is that OTX next week doesn't contain a single Inventor session (Only one factory) but several Fusion 360..... Personally I hate it....😒....
Thangs anyway for all your Inventor content. Specially all the hardware stuff.....👍👍
Fusion files can be saved offline. I'm not sure what he meant by only saving it in the cloud 🤔
God i hated the generative design thing when i tried it, i had unlimited cloud credit yet i hated it. No amount of cloud credit would make me work with fusion.
I work with inventor pro (actually the collection) and I must say that the biggest difference, that I expected to see listed here, is the environments. I last used Fusion 360 in 2018 so they might have been implemented but I doubt, since some are only available in the pro version of inventor. For example, metal sheet environment is gold. It makes easy as hell to create parts that can be manufactured dirty cheap, and combined with frame generator and piping environment you can really scale up productivity and design process.
There is a sheet metal environment in Fusion, have been for a few years at least. Probably not quite as powerful as in Inventor, but it works great and does everything I've needed so far :)
@@Robinlarsson83 Nice, I'll give it a shot then. Back when I used it there was none, glad to hear they implemented it. Thanks for you answer man :3
Form my personal experience: Autodesk does allow you to keep a local backup of ALL files and team data. This backup automatically sync with the cloud everytime you are connected to the internet. This is also relativity simple to setup, all you have to do is download the client service from your online team portal.
Inventor needs better marketing....but the localization is a huge positive for it it could market to
Make a comparison between Siemens NX and Fusion 360 please🤣
I've been really surprised every time I find out Fusion 360 has features I previously assumed were Inventor exclusive, but it happens a lot.
BTW, files in every format that I know of can be exported to the PC? At least, work files can have backups created and archived files.
Yea you can export files to F3D and other formats as a backup or for sharing, but anything you create and actively work on has to be in that data panel. Once its exported it basically exits Fusion 360 and no longer exists to Fusion. So active projects have to be in the cloud. That's kinda where I was coming from with that.
You're wrong you can still save your fusion files to your local pc if you want.
This is not a joke sir. I was a welder/ fabricator for fifty years never touching a cad program in my lifetime. My life’s mission has been to become current and relevant. At 60 years old, yup my old man believed in cheap labor… Could an old school learn Fusion 360 then implement it down the line into my shops CNC’s ?
Biggest things for me: Fusion 360 runs on Mac not just Windows, as a hobbyist Fusion 360 is free, and community is engaged.
The best part of fusion is the assembly style workflow
Autodesk creating to much expensive software's that do similar work till a point it become so much confusing
like in a supermarket where you find the same in 100 diff bottle but each one with a slightly diff taste
its kind of a high level of scamming
The single greatest downside is the cloud. The fact we dont really control or protect the files is a nogo.
except that you can save files to your drive? i've never understood when people said that you can't save your own files to your storage solution. just press ctrl+s and save the f3d file to your puter
I would disagree. The chance of hackers getting into the computers and servers of a average company, or the home computer of a one man business, is larger than getting into the database used by Autodesk, with hundreds of devoted IT specialists and millions in equipment and safty.
Yes but if you subscribe to Fusion and buy the machining extension and the simulation extension your paying more than the product design suite that has Inventor CAM in it and a lot more. So... Maybe Autodesk should rethink their pricing and fragmentation strategy of Fusion or that great community you mention is going to be greatly deminished.
Do the majority of the community in the casual sense of the word, need what the commercial extension brings to the table over what the core CAM offering has though? I don't profess at this point to know the ins and outs of exactly what is behind the machining extension paywall other than 5 axis and a couple others, and I don't really fully appreciate the extent of the community and how they leverage it all yet, but my uneducated perception is that most people/business's that have 5 axis machines are a different demographic to the hobbyist user base. How that stacks up in a feature to feature and cost comparison to Inventor, Inventor CAM and the collection I guess is an interesting one if you are in that arena, I guess I need to be schooled a bit more on the CAM offerings before I can pitch in on that debate!
@@Neil3D I received an e-mail from Autodesk recently saying that multi-axis contour and swarf machining will go behind the paywall (paywall^2 actually. Since I'm already paying for a subscription). As is 4-axis simultaneous currently.
And I think you'll find that the maker community already has DIY machines with a 4th axis running Mach3/4 or even GRBL. Even some Y-Axis lathes with tool changers have been DIY'ed. As for the Simulations, yes that's absolutely necessary for small companies and weekend warriors alike. Remember, if you're selling a product, you don't qualify for the start-up licence no matter how little money you make(i.e. home based machine shop part-time). The machining and simulation extensions plus the basic Fusion subscription is 503eur+2*2112eur = 4.727,00eur in Europe!!! And that with only 2 of the 7 or 8 extensions available. Product Design & Manufacturing Collection is currently 3.764,00eur. That's incl. VAT and before any sales, promotions or discounts.
My comment was aimed at the fact that Fusion is so successful and Autodesk is so determined to milk that cow that they have gone ahead and priced a fully-featured Fusion360 subscription well beyond the Product Design & Manufacturing Collection when even that fully featured version is more restricted in terms of features than the collection. For example Fusion does not have a frame design tool. AutoCAD is included in the collection, with all it's might, and compatibility with Visual Basic, and Dynamic Blocks and add-in ecosystem.
CAM is the least of the problems here!!!
I was trying to bring focus to the paranoia that has gripped Autodesk with making money from Fusion. A software that was subscription-based before any other and that many people paid a subscription for well before it was ready to be sold or compete, and hence has made them more money than it ever had the right to. It's a pity and it's becoming irrational. That's all I'm saying.
It's almost like you intentionally put that Monkey Island reference in there just to remind me how old I am.
LOL I'm so glad someone got it! I started playing it again a couple of weeks ago for an hour here and there, I played the original back in the 90's and it was one of my favourite games of all time, I AM RUBBER YOU ARE GLUE haha They released a special remastered edition of the original a few years ago with a complete new graphics engine and voice-overs, made me so happy!
@@Neil3D Oh man... It's happening buddy...
th-cam.com/video/AXrH4TfI0JQ/w-d-xo.html
Inventor wins hands down, Can perform all tasks offline where Fusion can't, + no need for cloud where your info can be compromised.
Soooooooo?, Which one performs most like Apple products and makes me start craving soy, glittery-things, and sitting on inverted-stools with three of my buddies?
and spin 360s on that stool as well xD
@tech3d Here's a speedmodeling showdown between an F360 user and an Inventor user - thought you might dig this: th-cam.com/video/YmQFzoT1DSA/w-d-xo.html
You would talk about FreeCad !
Yet fusion 360 lost its shine when Autodesk decided to cut functionality on the free version. Don’t buy into the bleed game use open source freeCAD and pay to own software like solid edge.
PRICE
#1 you can work in offline mode. Export your files locally and open files from your local computer. Clear the offline cache before going back online. And your files will not be uploaded to the cloud.
That is why I just don't try to use the software ( I use Inventor). It should do things the way you want them done, without having to go down a rabbit hole, like trying to figure out a cheat for a video game. Younger people that grew up playing video games as a way of life, seem to have no problem with that.
Yea I don't think that's a feasible workflow or changes fusion being cloud based, it kind of is what it is
I use Rhino3D, The way inventor and fusion handle object manipulation is so alien to me.
In rhino you can specify a grid of 10x10 meters and place hundreds of objects and work on them one by one. Move them at will and do almost anything without using popup menus. I have tried fusion and was incredibly frustrated by the interface. I love that I can type in the first 3 letters of a command, get 20 options and then hit enter as it auto selects the most used command with those 3 letters.
Yeah, the same thing for me. As a rhino user with +15 years of experience it's a bit difficult to jump in to inventor/f360 workflow.
The comparison given seems like mechanical centric CAD CAM view. For me the ability to design simulate build and manufacture in integrate mechanical and electronic system elements is what gives F360 its edge. Also I disagree with the white collar blue collar explanation. Designing complete systems is not a blue collar exercise. It usually undertaken by graduate engineers. I think the answer is in the name Fusion, fusion of all aspects of product design.
Yeah, its mostly the cam. There are zero competitors. A hypermill seat is something like 27 thousand dollars.
inventor users love inventor, but wish it was more like F360
F360 users love F360, but wish it was more like inventor
Been working with Inventor. Now Fusion. Nope. I do not miss the 99% higher number of error messages showing up in Inventor, often crashing the program and losing data. Work got so much easier when going to Fusion.
I have fusion 360 running on a win 10 virtual box on my pretty old linux gaming rig. I don’t know enough to know what to expect with performance but it runs fine for me. It put up a couple warnings about performance but I was able to make them stop popping up and it works fine for me. All this to say if you are a hobbyist you do not need a crazy workstation.
AutoCAD 8 ~ to Fusion, yeah $500 a year but oh the 4th and 5th axes is $1600 a year in Fusion. but all and all best bag from the buck imo.
I'm very interested in Fusion 360. The Price is just great for "normal people".
BUT, I simply HATE Cloud solutions so I can't own this Application just buying it. I also hate Subscriptions. And the free version is very limited without any access to Eagle.
Autodesk, fed the inventor to the mechanical desktop, I think it will feed the inventor to the fusion 360...😉