Fusion 360 has the better pricing model, it's that simple. 500$ is not too expensive even for a hobbist: you'll likely spend more on consumables in a single year. And there's simply nothing else of that value for that price point. There are no OSS solutions that can offer reasonable CAD design yet.
I'm not a fan of Fusion: it's UI is not really well designed. It's slow and clunky. It forces "cloud" on your throat for ABSOLUTELY NO GOOD REASON. Seriously: wtf? I frequently need to work offline, and Fusion doesn't really seem to get out of my way.
Onshape, which is 100% web based, is better is several ways: it's actually faster to booth, which is scary! (not in everything, but for most things it is!). Starts in a 1/10 of the time. The interface is much more streamlined and efficient to work with. For my purposes, Onshape is only lacking in "variable" management (there's no substitute for a simple spreadsheet here -- even FreeCAD is superior in this regard).
Am I recommending Onshape? No. I hate cloud-based solutions. The lock-in is absolutely obvious here: if you're offline you're doomed. Import/export is read-only.
However, for ~500$ a year, with Fusion you get a complete CAD/CAM solution with decent CFD. Onshape starts at 1000$+ and only gets you a (good) CAD system, and you still need $$$ more for CAM.
If you're starting, Fusion is the better deal.
It's that simple.
I'm not sure why Onshape is squandering the opportunity here to provide a slightly cheaper offering to promote their solution. Their CAD is good, but not good enough for the fusion offer. They could capture a nice maker segment if they provided a slightly cheaper solution.
Now, why not FreeCAD? The problem I see is that FreeCAD is quite a bit behind to be usable for day-to-day work. I use it for toy projects, and it's pretty limiting by itself. I wrote and recommended before that FreeCAD starts to really shine only when combined with Cadquery or OpenSCAD. With parametric sketching, "visual" interfaces only get you so far. Cadquery gives FreeCAD a considerable edge for complex designs.
The problem though still stands: even if you just start with 3D printing you realize consumables and electricity are not a zero cost anymore. 3D printing and hardware design in general is expensive. Investing some money into 3D design tools is logical, but you want something that works reasonably for your hardware. It's a chicken-and-egg problem. I'm a developer, there's no way I could work on a 3D CAD in the size of FreeCAD in my spare time and get anywhere useful.
All being said, FreeCAD 0.17 passed SolveSpace for all my purposes this year, which is a great achievement. At some point FreeCAD will become viable enough and will in turn start to attract enough money to staff full-time people.
I'm not a fan of Fusion: it's UI is not really well designed. It's slow and clunky. It forces "cloud" on your throat for ABSOLUTELY NO GOOD REASON. Seriously: wtf? I frequently need to work offline, and Fusion doesn't really seem to get out of my way.
Onshape, which is 100% web based, is better is several ways: it's actually faster to booth, which is scary! (not in everything, but for most things it is!). Starts in a 1/10 of the time. The interface is much more streamlined and efficient to work with. For my purposes, Onshape is only lacking in "variable" management (there's no substitute for a simple spreadsheet here -- even FreeCAD is superior in this regard).
Am I recommending Onshape? No. I hate cloud-based solutions. The lock-in is absolutely obvious here: if you're offline you're doomed. Import/export is read-only.
However, for ~500$ a year, with Fusion you get a complete CAD/CAM solution with decent CFD. Onshape starts at 1000$+ and only gets you a (good) CAD system, and you still need $$$ more for CAM.
If you're starting, Fusion is the better deal. It's that simple.
I'm not sure why Onshape is squandering the opportunity here to provide a slightly cheaper offering to promote their solution. Their CAD is good, but not good enough for the fusion offer. They could capture a nice maker segment if they provided a slightly cheaper solution.
Now, why not FreeCAD? The problem I see is that FreeCAD is quite a bit behind to be usable for day-to-day work. I use it for toy projects, and it's pretty limiting by itself. I wrote and recommended before that FreeCAD starts to really shine only when combined with Cadquery or OpenSCAD. With parametric sketching, "visual" interfaces only get you so far. Cadquery gives FreeCAD a considerable edge for complex designs.
The problem though still stands: even if you just start with 3D printing you realize consumables and electricity are not a zero cost anymore. 3D printing and hardware design in general is expensive. Investing some money into 3D design tools is logical, but you want something that works reasonably for your hardware. It's a chicken-and-egg problem. I'm a developer, there's no way I could work on a 3D CAD in the size of FreeCAD in my spare time and get anywhere useful.
All being said, FreeCAD 0.17 passed SolveSpace for all my purposes this year, which is a great achievement. At some point FreeCAD will become viable enough and will in turn start to attract enough money to staff full-time people.