Welcome to the Onshape forum! Ask questions and join in the discussions about everything Onshape.

First time visiting? Here are some places to start:
  1. Looking for a certain topic? Check out the categories filter or use Search (upper right).
  2. Need support? Ask a question to our Community Support category.
  3. Please submit support tickets for bugs but you can request improvements in the Product Feedback category.
  4. Be respectful, on topic and if you see a problem, Flag it.

If you would like to contact our Community Manager personally, feel free to send a private message or an email.

Onshape vs. Fusion360

2»

Comments

  • nick_papageorge073nick_papageorge073 Member, csevp Posts: 659 PRO
    .....snip.....
    and there were no common button layout "brands" between F360 and Onshape.
    ....snip...

    I found the same button set. In Onshape keep the default. In Fusion set it to Tinkercad.

  • john_mcclaryjohn_mcclary Member, Developers Posts: 3,890 PRO
    Well said @shawn_crocker
  • michael3424michael3424 Member Posts: 674 ✭✭✭✭

    I still use fusion at home for my CNC hobby, but I stick to the CAM portion of it. I never want to touch the design portion of Fusion again!

    How satisfied are you with the Onshape->F360 CAM interface?  I have a legal version of F360 but found the CAD interface very confusing and much prefer Onshape (Alibre for paid work) for CAD.  I'm planning to buy a Pocket NC 5-axis bench top mill to play around with and that has support mostly for F360 so my plan is to design in Onshape and create tool paths with F360.  Will that workflow present any frustrations so far as you know?
  • nick_papageorge073nick_papageorge073 Member, csevp Posts: 659 PRO

    I still use fusion at home for my CNC hobby, but I stick to the CAM portion of it. I never want to touch the design portion of Fusion again!

    How satisfied are you with the Onshape->F360 CAM interface?  I have a legal version of F360 but found the CAD interface very confusing and much prefer Onshape (Alibre for paid work) for CAD.  I'm planning to buy a Pocket NC 5-axis bench top mill to play around with and that has support mostly for F360 so my plan is to design in Onshape and create tool paths with F360.  Will that workflow present any frustrations so far as you know?

    I like the user interface in Onshape a lot. It makes sense. I dislike the user interface in Fusion tremendously. I understand why they did it the way they did, but I personally feel it makes the organization of the features of the model all over the place and difficult to manage as a user.

    Using one system for CAD, and another system for CAM, should not present too many issues. That's typically how its done in the professional world. The engineer will do the CAD. Then send STEP files to the toolmaker (or machine shop, etc) and they will use MasterCAM or whatever is their preferred software. In the hobby world, its one person doing both, and that truly makes Fusion appealing. Its a 100% non-issue in the professional world, because the engineer frankly has no time to do machining. The company would go broke if they paid their engineers to machine parts. I suspect this is one reason why Onshape has not made CAM a priority. Engineers don't care about CAM as a general statement.

    Now that said, if you are sure your design is finished, exporting it as STEP in Onshape, and sending it to Fusion, will work great. But if you have a design change to make back in Onshape, you may lose some/all of your tool paths when you re-import the changed STEP file into Fusion. I don't know how easy or hard it is to maintain the toolpaths on the geometry that has not changed.
  • mahirmahir Member, Developers Posts: 1,291 ✭✭✭✭✭
    @michael3424 ,
    Like @nick_papageorge073 , I am not familiar enough with Fusion to know how robust the tool paths are to modifications in the .step file. However, one alternative process would be to make the modifications to the imported geometry directly in Fusion. This option requires a couple assumptions.
    1. The changes are relatively simple to implement on non-native imported geometry.
    2. You're ok with making the change twice (in Fusion AND Onshape).
    3. The tool paths are complicated enough that redoing them is a bigger headache than #2.
  • michael3424michael3424 Member Posts: 674 ✭✭✭✭

    Now that said, if you are sure your design is finished, exporting it as STEP in Onshape, and sending it to Fusion, will work great. But if you have a design change to make back in Onshape, you may lose some/all of your tool paths when you re-import the changed STEP file into Fusion. I don't know how easy or hard it is to maintain the toolpaths on the geometry that has not changed.
    Thanks for the response.  Needing to re-do some or all toolpaths probably won't be a major problem for me once I get used to making F360 toolpaths.  I use SprutCAM now for mill and lathe work now and it has a connector to work with Onshape that has worked well enough but there is no official post for the Pocket NC in SprutCAM and it may not have all or enough of the 5-axis toolpaths for whatever I'll end up doing with the Pocket NC or SprutCAM may need a moderately expensive upgrade to do the advanced stuff.  IAC, I feel more comfortable about using F360 CAM now, so thanks for that.
  • michael3424michael3424 Member Posts: 674 ✭✭✭✭
    mahir said:
    @michael3424 ,
    Like @nick_papageorge073 , I am not familiar enough with Fusion to know how robust the tool paths are to modifications in the .step file. However, one alternative process would be to make the modifications to the imported geometry directly in Fusion. This option requires a couple assumptions.
    1. The changes are relatively simple to implement on non-native imported geometry.
    2. You're ok with making the change twice (in Fusion AND Onshape).
    3. The tool paths are complicated enough that redoing them is a bigger headache than #2.
    I'd prefer to keep the changes in Onshape and deal with any resulting CAM problems in F360.  The CAM software that I use now recognizes when a STEP file that it has been using has changed and will re-import it into CAM on user approval so maybe F360 is similar.  The toolpaths in SprutCAM are usually screwed up though unless the changes are very minor, such as changing a hole diameter.  Adding a chamfer will require re-selecting edges and such so I'll be prepared if F360 does that.  It's usually simple enough to re-select the features for each operation, though 5-axis F360 work may surprise me.
  • brennan_natolibrennan_natoli Member Posts: 15 EDU
    edited November 2021
    I learned Fusion 360 this past summer and loved it. I use it mostly for woodworking designs and find it really fluid and easy to build my projects.  I teach high school manufacturing and Fusion kept crashing so we are making the switch to OnShape now. 

    What OnShape lacks, in my opinion, is lack of short short video tutorials of practical designs. (I know they have the learning center with video explanations and slide deck instructions.). The videos are good at explaining information but step by step design videos would be best. 

    There are so many more tutorials on Fusion that show you how to design practical, simple, and relevant projects that are under 20 minutes. This is crucial for students. They are not going to watch an hour long drawing of a complex part.  My students (and myself) get turned off almost instantly from learning CAD if they are learning to draw some fabricated sheet metal part or irrelevent piece of hardware. OnShape does seem to have a great learning forum but lacks presence in terms short step by step video tutorials. 



  • tim_hess427tim_hess427 Member Posts: 648 ✭✭✭✭
    @brennan_natoli - Something else you might try doing, if you can't find good videos, is to find the most interesting/cool/relevant public documents and have the students reverse engineer them.

    You can go through them step-by-step to see how they were made and then have questions and activities to dig further. How well does the model capture "design intent"? How easy is it to make changes without breaking downstream features? Can the students find ways to make the model more robust or more configurable? Are sketches fully defined? Can the students figure out how to make the model with fewer features? 
  • bruce_williamsbruce_williams Member, Developers Posts: 842 PRO
    @brennan_natoli

    Thank you! this is good feedback on training for younger students.  Could you please post link(s) to tutorials format you are liking from Fusion?  Other users have likely made some Onshape YouTubes that could be similar.
    www.accuratepattern.com
  • john_mcclaryjohn_mcclary Member, Developers Posts: 3,890 PRO
    edited November 2021
    Most tutorial videos you see on YouTube are from community members of that product that have been using it for a while.

    Since Onshape's community is fairly small and fairly new. There will be a lack of content for a while.
    But most tutorials you see for Fusion or SolidWorks can be also be used to help learn Onshape.
    All of the sketch constraint practices and design intent theory is still the same in most cases.
    The only main difference is where the buttons are located, and some more efficient workflows are available in Onshape.

    But efficiency and short-cuts come with experience and practice with the system you're using.
    There is no one way to model something, so any tutorial on how to model something should only be viewed as a video of generic modeling examples.

    You should learn the system as a whole (independent of how specific parts should be modeled) in order to understand why certain workflows are used. That is something the Onshape learning center is pretty good at.

    Furthermore, you are always better off asking the forum directly.
    For example, if you want to learn how to draw and airfoil. YouTube will take you to some fusion 360 tutorial or something, where you will spend hours following along with their instructions. But if you asked the forum, you would find out there is a featurescript that will automatically draw your airfoil base of industry standards in a few clicks.

    With Onshape's featurescript, there are a lot of automated tasks that have been made by community members that obsolete design practices of other systems. But the only way to lean about them is to ask the community.
  • jack_erhartjack_erhart Member Posts: 86 ✭✭
    I simply use and like Onshape, because it's allow me to do the work I want to do, without having to have a super computer to make it happen.
Sign In or Register to comment.