Comments on: CAD Software Compared: Solidworks vs Fusion 360

By: Luke

Luke — Fri, 10 Apr 2020 12:00:37 +0000

In reply to Brenda Slay. Great advice!

By: Brenda Slay

Brenda Slay — Thu, 09 Apr 2020 14:44:28 +0000

Hi, I’m an engineer and former SolidWorks user and now work for a SolidWorks reseller. You can buy a SolidWorks license without subscription. It’s never required, even in the first year. Once you buy the license, you have access to it forever. The optional subscription gets you updates, technical support, CAM, and Visualize for rendering. If you opt out of subscription and decide later you want to be on the latest release, you do pay backdating of subscription. Subscription is about 25% of the license cost, so after 4 years of being off subscription, it starts to make more sense to buy a new license. Hope this helps.

By: Luke

Luke — Mon, 01 Jul 2019 09:01:02 +0000

In reply to Zoltan Dorogi. Wow, that's interesting :/

By: Zoltan Dorogi

Zoltan Dorogi — Wed, 26 Jun 2019 20:18:18 +0000

Hi There,

Also if you skip subscription you will need to pay for a license purchase and reinstitution fee for each year you skipped when you will renew.

Thanks,

Zoltan

By: Luke

Luke — Wed, 26 Jun 2019 13:05:47 +0000

In reply to Steve P.

Hey Steve,

Thanks so much for the corrections.

> From my experience, you own it whether you pay in year 2 or not, you just don’t get updates.

Is there anywhere you can point to where Solidworks makes this clear? I’m struggling to find clarification on that.

> SolidWorks comes with SolidWorks CAM for free, and it is part of the “subscription” features.

Thanks – I’ve updated the info.

By: Steve P

Steve P — Tue, 25 Jun 2019 19:57:04 +0000

Hmmm. Great article but a few errors on the SolidWorks tab – nothing big:

– SolidWorks requires a license purchase but the subscription is optional going in on year 2+. From my experience, you own it whether you pay in year 2 or not, you just don’t get updates.

– SolidWorks comes with SolidWorks CAM for free, and it is part of the “subscription” features

– I wouldn’t say the simulation is for professionals. I’ve known some pretty dumb people do some pretty high level simulations.

On the fusion side:

I think you can use fusion offline for a limited amount of time but files have to be uploaded online.

Great article!