Autodesk Fusion 360 Personal License Changes

Some of you have contacted us about an email you’ve received from Autodesk about changes to the free personal license capabilities in Autodesk Fusion 360 starting 10/1/2020. We have seen the notification too and we have contact Autodesk to better understand these changes. We had a conference call with them, but we are still waiting to hear back on some finer technical details that could not be addressed on that call.

First and foremost: It’s clear that Fusion 360 will remain free to hobbyists and, while not as efficient as it was in the past, it still is a very effective tool. For those not aware of the intended changes, we recommend that you check out this post from Autodesk.

Autodesk confirmed to us that the files you have already created as a hobbyist (personal license user) will not be deleted or go away. They will remain accessible. You’ll just have to select the 10 that you want active and archive the rest. Furthermore, the education license and small business/start-up licenses do not appear to be slated for functionality reductions. All of you that utilize those licenses will (as we understand it) will retain access to the same tools that we at MillRight CNC have as a paid commercial licensee.

There are two changes that we think actually matter to our users in this update from Autodesk (again, based on our understanding of the facts). 1) They are disallowing wrapped tool paths for the free personal license. This might impact our rotary (4th) axis users that are doing continuous wrapped toolpaths, but will not make much difference to those that are just indexing the rotary axis. Indexing is the majority of the the need as we understand it. 2) They are removing rapid (G0) moves from the g code. As soon as we saw this, we started making plans to assist our customers that rely on a legitimately provided personal use Fusion 360 license with this. MillRight has already talked to a couple of our programming contacts about making a “Rapidizer” to convert the handicapped G code back to full functionality in a matter of seconds. Basically, you’d have to run your G code file through the “Rapidizer” that we would provide for free. It would convert any G1 (linear feed rate traverse) movements that should instead be G0 (rapid traverse) movements and automatically resave the code as “Your File Name – Rapidized“.  We aim to minimize the impact for you and we think this will do just that.

Please email support@millrightcnc.com with any questions or suggestions.

Happy machining.

-Derek