Fusion 360 cost?

Snapmaker 2.0
1

I just ordered A350 and went to download the Fusion 360 that I supposedly need to make it work. Fusion 360 costs $60 a month or $500 a year. Am I correct about this? Sure would be nice to have been told this before I ordered.

2

It’s free for hobby use. https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/personal. It’s a 1 year license that can be renewed perpetually. That link explains the limitations of the free version. In practice it’s not terribly limiting.

3

Fusion 360 is not required to make anything work. Can you link to official documentation which says that it is?

FreeCAD is a worthy alternative (although harder to use), but again is in no way ‘required’ to use Snapmaker.

4

There is also estlcam witch is free and can do the cam work required.

5

Here it says to use Luban for simple stuff and Fusion 360 for more complex stuff:

Snapmaker Luban / Snapmakerjs(Old version)
If you want to do some simple job. You can use any svg editor(Like Inkscrape or Adobe illustrator) to do the design, then export .svg file. Using SnapmakerLuban to generate the gcode.

Snapmakerjs also support relief for small landscape.
Generate gcode using Snapmakerjs

  • Using svg editor like Inkscrape or other software to export .svg file, then import into Snapmakerjs.
  • Notice that, .dxf is a format that working on to let Snapmakerjs read .dxf file. For now, you can use other tools like https://cloudconvert.com/dxf-to-svg or alternative to help to do the job if your CAD software can’t export .svg format.

Fusion360
We can achieve serious task by using it.
Generate gcode using Fusion 360

  • We have developed post processor script for Fusion 360 to help more advanced use case.
  • The reason we favor Fusion 360 is that it has free license for education.
6

This is a problem across the industry - even if you buy a $100K CNC Haas mill, it doesn’t come with Solidworks or Fusion360. It’s expected you will acquire or make models independently of the hardware being provided.

However, as they correctly pointed out in your excerpt, Fusion360, and the many other software modelling packages mentioned above, are free for noncommercial use.

1 Like
7

Thanks to all of you for responses. I do appreciate it. Can you show me where to find the free version of 360? I saw supposedly free version for students and teachers but even that charges after one year it appears and I am neither one. After researching the heck out of these machines I think SnapMaker is far better than any other out there but after placing order and then trying to practice with software and discovering the huge expense of the secondary software needed to create images I decided this is too expensive and complex for me to deal with so I asked to cancel my pre-order. Hopefully they will without issue. Thanks.

8

I linked to it in my first reply. Hit “Get Started” on that page. You’ll create an account, and it will walk you through the check boxes where you promise you’re using this for non commercial projects. And don’t worry about the 1 year expiration, it allows you to renew each year for free.

For creating images, most people use Inkscape, a free and open source software widely used. I understand the panic associated with unexpected expenses at the last moment, but really, you can do this all with good, free software.

9

There is a lot of good free software out there.
The free version of Fusion 360 does most of what you need.
Tinkercad is great for creating 3D models.
Inkscape, GIMP, Krita and others for image creation & manipulation

Lightburn is the only one I’d pay for and it’s only $40 (haven’t gotten around to it yet. Been able to do everything in Luban I’ve needed so far.)

-S