I would appreciate any feedback as I try to figure out what to do about CAM. I have been on Sprut since 11, and have already ranted on the complete let-down of Tormach parting with ENCY and leaving us on our own.
Ency’s proposed yearly maintenance fee is as much as my solidworks license. It’s a bit more than I want to spend. I have heard mostly good things on Fusion, and it appears I could use the base package and then buy tokens to do a few day’s upgrade to Fusion Manufacturing if I need my fourth axis.
I would love to hear from sprut users that have gone to Fusion - is there anything big it cant do? I will certainly try the demo, but any advice is welcome. Also are most people on the base package? anyone using solidworks models imported into Fusion? How does that go?
Appreciate any wisdom before I decide to re-up with Ency or try Fusion.
I use fusion because it works on Mac. You get a free 14 day trial of all the extensions when you sign up and whenever they do an upgrade sometimes they give a free 12 day trial of the token addons. You can get a free student license for a couple years if you have a school email address. It’s a lot but I learned cad and cam and tool path all on fusion. They do like to Upgrade it a lot which basically means moving around all the functions, buttons and adding more extensions that you have to pay to use.
My basic paid seat of Fusion will do 4th axis indexing and wrapping without buying anything else. For more than that or the fancy surfacing toolpaths you have to buy the $$$ extension.
Autodesk does have a habit of rearranging and occasionally moving Fusion CAM features to higher paid tiers which is extremely annoying, so keep an eye out for that.
I switched to fusion about 10 years ago when I lost access to SW due to a job change. I’ve now landed in a job where I use both (and mastercam, it’s a whole thing). I’ve never used Sprut so I can’t compare directly to that package. What I can tell you is that unless you need true simultaneous multi-axis, there’s next to nothing you can’t do with the basic fusion license. The manufacturing extension provides a lot of powerful toolpaths, but 3+2 and toolpath wrapping around a cylinder are both available in the basic version.
Personally, I started out on the free license back when it was essentially the same as the paid version. By the time they started cutting features from the free license, I was already using the software to make some decent money and the annual license isn’t expensive, especially compared to everything else out there so I’ve been a paid subscriber ever since. I’ve used the free trials of a couple of the extensions a couple times, rarely has it made any significant difference to what I was working on. So again, unless you need true multi-axis, the basic paid license is all you need.
As for SW into Fusion, yes you can do it and it works fine. It’s a little annoying because you can’t natively drag a file in, you have to upload it first and wait for it to convert in the cloud before you can open it but that typically doesn’t take too long unless it’s a hugely complex file. I did this at first but very quickly switched to modelling in Fusion for anything that would be going into the CAM workflow. Far too often I end up iterating my designs, if only slightly, and having to switch between programs, make the change, upload the new version, then reattach any toolpaths that broke due to the new geometry, was just too much effort. My current workflow keeps everything in Fusion which makes that process much faster and easier. Otherwise, I do the modelling in solidworks and the programming in mastercam if that’s what the customer requires.