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Rethinking SolidWorks

jay_kinsingerjay_kinsinger Member Posts: 6 ✭
in Community Support

I've been teaching CAD using SW for three decades. My colleagues and I will be meeting Wed. to weigh the pros and cons of Fusion, SolidWorks, OnShape. These issues are important to me:

  1. Instant Tech support. I have SW in my contacts and sometimes I even call them while in class if we are having trouble modeling something.
  2. CAM. I use HSM (Autodesk) works to write code for our CNC's. I like it better than the SW CAM. HSM is nested within SW so I can seamlessly go from CAD to CAM.

I asked to have a sales rep call me and he did but he was on the industrial side, not educational. Could someone call me from the educational side

Answers

  • STEGSTEG Member, User Group Leader Posts: 103 PRO

    I think you should ask the sales rep you already talked to, to refer you to the right person.

  • Ste_WilsonSte_Wilson Member Posts: 367 EDU
    edited December 19

    [edit]Ah,I see by the dates I may be too late. @jay_kinsinger What did you decide?

    As an educator,

    1. The tech support is good and gets back quickly, but I've never phoned them for modeling support! (they might on the educator enterprise, not sure)
    2. At present CAM is not offered by Onshape, but is pending, but may not be available to one and all, just enterprise users. I'm not sure if this includes education enterprise.

    The things which I love about onshape (let me count the ways..)

    1. I don't ever have to persuade my nice IT dept to install or update it, ever. (occasionally i have to ask them to whitelist the domain to stop registration emails getting blocked).
    2. I can share things instantly with colleagues and students, no files to send.
    3. It runs on a Chromebook or Raspberry Pi 5.
    4. I can set up classes and assignments.
    5. I can jump into a student's document and follow what they are doing, in real time, and help, by interacting with their model.
    6. It's pandemic proof.
    7. The interface is more accessible, I think, than other CAD I have used.
    8. It saves automatically.
    9. Marking: I get one link per student. All the stuff is in tabs in one document. I don't spend hours downloading files and opening them!
    10. One of the devs made me a Santa feature script which generates present boxes! (you can find it in the what's new thread).

    https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/26070/improvements-to-onshape-december-13th-2024

    https://hwh.stephenteacher.com/txtbook.html
  • nick_papageorge_dayjobnick_papageorge_dayjob Member, csevp Posts: 844 PRO

    Fusion is horrible for modeling anything complex. One reason, IMO, is their feature tree is horizontal on the bottom of the screen, with icons only. On a model with 100 features, try reordering a group of 15 features in front of a specific feature, and I bet you will about throw your computer out the window. If I had to use it professionally, I'd quit.

  • MDesignMDesign Member Posts: 244 ✭✭✭

    All this talk about fusion and solidworks makes me wonder what the haters of onshape are saying. hmmmm…🤔

  • michael3424michael3424 Member Posts: 693 ✭✭✭✭
    https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/111244#Comment_111244

    In my mostly hobbyist world, there's a fear of the "cloud" and they don't like that their files are "public" in the free plan. Lots of paranoia there.

  • glen_dewsburyglen_dewsbury Member Posts: 823 ✭✭✭✭
    https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/111264#Comment_111264

    Do they know that Fusion 360 will only let you be off line for so long. I had a chuckle when a friend wanted to demonstrate for a group how he could work without a connection. Then the program insisted that he sign in because he had been offline too long. There was no Wfi in the building. LOL

  • michael3424michael3424 Member Posts: 693 ✭✭✭✭

    That's pretty funny.

    The really paranoid ones use FreeCAD. There are quite a few using F360, mostly for the built-in CAM. I'd be tempted to keep a license for F360 for CAM and use Onshape for my hobby work, but I need 5-axis CAM support and that is still pretty expensive in F360 and I really detest the F360 UI anyway.

  • MDesignMDesign Member Posts: 244 ✭✭✭
    https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/111264#Comment_111264

    In some cases, that can be a valid concern. But for the most part people are just paranoid for no reason at all Especially hobbyist's. smh

    https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/111265#Comment_111265

    Autodesk's way of making sure they get paid. Once you go offline you got 30 days to get back on so the license server can make sure your paid up.

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