proposal for CAM Studio in free version of Onshape

fst

I read that CAM Studio is supposed to only be part of Onshape Professional and Enterprise (so the 2500€ variant and upwards)(?)
Imho a yearly 2500€ subscription CAM would be disproportional for a hobby or small business CNC that cost a few thousand dollars for the entire machine.
So my proposal would be to split this by postprocessor: Postprocessors for CNC machines up to 10000€ could be in the free version, 10k-100k CNCs in standard and 100k+ in professional+.
Then it would be more fitting and realistic - think the yearly subscription of a CAM system should not exceed 10% of the machine cost to be a viable option.

michael3424

I'm not sure that this is practical.  Who is going to obtain and maintain a list of verified machine prices?  Also, for many machines, options can double the price of the machine.

fst

Assuming postprocessors are (mainly) made by the Onshape team, they have to invest some time into each (class) of machine anyways and maintain a collection of these postprocessors. Think it should be mostly obvious whether a machine is more for hobbyists ($$$$), small businesses ($$$$$) or enterprises($$$$$$+) - even with a factor of 2.

michael3424

@ferdinand_strixner - good luck on your quest, then. 

I've raised a similar request for a "hobby/entrepreneur" version of Onshape, priced at several hundred $/year but Onshape (or PTC) has not been interested.  That's their perogative, so I make the request once a year or so just in case things change.

wout_theelen541

I can definitely see the michael3424 said:

@ferdinand_strixner - good luck on your quest, then. 

I've raised a similar request for a "hobby/entrepreneur" version of Onshape, priced at several hundred $/year but Onshape (or PTC) has not been interested.  That's their perogative, so I make the request once a year or so just in case things change.

I could see a good business case for including at least some CAM functionality for standard and educational users. Differentiating between post processors would be really difficult but I could see a case of opening up 2.5 and 3 axis machines (with limited bed sizes) for standard users. I agree though it is very frustrating if you're a hobbyist using Fusion 360 when you know CAM studio is available.

patrick_shea

We use ONSHAPE for our Makerspace, and are working on convincing our local Secondary Schools to swing over to ONSHAPE, showing the wonders of Solid Modelling.  A simplified version of CAN STUDIO that would limit 2 1/2 or 3 axis would be ideal to help integrate people into the the world of manufacturing.  We are loosing ground in North America to offshore manufacturing.  Give us hand here!!  .  

wieder

One possibility would be

to allow only GRBL as output

GRBL is only used in the hobby sector

and not in the industry

fst

On second thought, the current anti-commercial measure #1 in the free version should probably work for CAM, too: If one has to upload a design to a public workspace before it can be loaded in the CAM module, then this will restrict usage to public domain projects anyways.

Under these conditions they could also offer the other modules like rendering studio, simulation etc. in the free version. And even allow access to these features to Standard license owners, who could use these in public projects, too. Would be a good "demo".

alan_89

patrick_shea said:

We use ONSHAPE for our Makerspace, and are working on convincing our local Secondary Schools to swing over to ONSHAPE, showing the wonders of Solid Modelling.  A simplified version of CAN STUDIO that would limit 2 1/2 or 3 axis would be ideal to help integrate people into the the world of manufacturing.  We are loosing ground in North America to offshore manufacturing.  Give us hand here!!  .  

Hopefully CAM Standard will feature in the new free educator plan to get more young engineers using CAD/CAM. Doesn’t help hobbyists I know but I think everyone appreciates that this will use plenty of cloud compute power that someone has to pay for.

I think the educator plan was a incredible move for STEM education 

https://www.onshape.com/en/blog/introducing-educator-plan

Fusion can do it free because they use local compute power for CAM but Fusion 360 requires many my of the things that onshape doesn’t like local installs reasonably powerful specific hardware etc. 

Not sure of the solution but IIRC the original cloudmilling solution that was acquired had a pay per use model. If that is viable to implement it could offer a sustainable option for both. 

P.s if you haven’t watched the video from onshape live 23 which includes the story behind the pair who developed it well worth a watch! https://www.onshape.com/en/resource-center/videos/onshape-live-23-cam-studio

fst

If it is about compute cost - would happily compensate PTC for that with a full featured non-commercial hobby tier! Just 2500€ per year is not in the cards for my usage scenario...
Or optimally a real open source tier: The designs are really open source - so everybody could do with them what they want as long as the results stay open source - including the creators. The current approach where full license owners have more rights on the designs than the makers themselves is not encouraging to put a lot of effort into high effort public, collaborative projects.

alan_89

fst said:

If it is about compute cost - would happily compensate PTC for that with a full featured non-commercial hobby tier! Just 2500€ per year is not in the cards for my usage scenario...
Or optimally a real open source tier: The designs are really open source - so everybody could do with them what they want as long as the results stay open source - including the creators. The current approach where full license owners have more rights on the designs than the makers themselves is not encouraging to put a lot of effort into high effort public, collaborative projects.

I’ve seen numerous requests for a cheaper hobby tier but Onshape don’t seemed to have ever had that focus. 

Fusion 360 also seem to be trying to gradually push the cost up as I think that shows they don’t consider it a sustainable model even with just the files being cloud base which is way less costly. They do simulation compute on the cloud now but charge for it per simulation using credits unless you subscribe to a higher plan IIRC

Onshape free public plan does seem like a nice compromise but I agree without cam pretty restrictive for hobbyists

I’m not sure how viable some sort of token system for CAM, would be just suggesting an alternative someone might want to raise an improvement request for, could be applicable to paid standard users to casually use/ test features before considering upgrading. Seems like this kind of model is becoming more common in the CAD Industry 

Yam_S

Any news about Onshape Cam reveal date ?
3 months ?
6 months ? 
more ?

fst

alan_89 said:

I’m not sure how viable some sort of token system for CAM, would be

As long as one can buy individual tokens (not 1000€ minimum, 1 year expiry time) that might also be an option, yes.
Agreed, a hobby offering that has to be subsidized is unlikely to be sustainable. So if a hypothetical full featured open source license would be at least break-even hosting-wise and there to stay in return, this would probably be the better option for the users in the long run.

dirk_van_der_vaart

Carveco offer,s 15 US dollar per month subscribtion 2.5 D software, would something be possible for Onshape free user,s?

https://carveco.com/carveco-software-range/carveco-maker/

steven_holmes

I only learned about this recently.  I'd love for the CAM component to be availble for us hobbyists who do not use it to make a living.  sadly the lack of it will keep many of us tied into things like Fusion360's hobbyist licence.  I'd happily pay a small fee as I have never yet made any money from my hobby.