I just got into 3d printing as a hobby a few months ago and this has been my take away from their offerings as well. I use TinkerCad for most things; I'd like to get into Fusion 360, but I'd be a little afraid of learning a bunch about that software only to have more and more of it become out of reach behind licenses that don't make a lot of sense to buy as a hobbyist. That said, the products look great and seem to have everything a creator might want, so it definitely makes sense for pro shops to license and use.
The skills in these tools are transferrable. The designs not so much. Basically There's a way of thinking about and solving problems in these tools which is common, same as solving things in programming languages is similar but different and maybe different names. Annotations, lambdas, record types, functors they all have different names in different languages and commas and parens are used differently but when you learn one you get better at learning others. Another analogy is that it's a lot easier to learn to ski or snowboard when you can do the other one already than when you can do neither (even if you feel worse cause you know you can do better).
The hard part is if you build real ip up in these things that you lose when you get rug pulled. Or have no way to backup. F360 let's you export more complicated formats. But they all let you make stls which are a pita to reverse int drawings but you can.
It took me 50 hours to learn solid works, my first tool so I could kinda make what I wanted. Inventor took 3 to get used to. F360 an hour. The cost goes down.
Pick one your friends are using and design things.
Try openscad if you're more of a mathematical mind. Try blender if your an artist. Those are different yet still you're making things.
If you mentioned what you wanted to make I can point you further. There's many options.
Thank you for this reply! I'm really just getting into the design side of things now and started with some basic around-the-house stuff I could clobber together in tinkercad. I'll keep this in mind and try not to get bogged down on the 'what to start with' as much :-)
Not to condone any illegal activity from my point, but my personal approach to deceptive and consumer hostile business practices is using the software but not paying for it.
I used to think that way regarding Windows/VB6/Photoshop/Lightroom. It's like expressing your hatred for the Ku Klux Klan by signing up for their newsletter. That'll show them!
Looking back, it would have been more productive to develop proficiency in and give money/support to any underdog competitor.
Onshape is DOA for us- if Onshape goes away, so do your designs. They must know this is a huge issue, but still they provide no way to download your full work.
OnShape is pretty good, but I tend to think even hobbyists should be allowed to have private designs. That's a really weird and uncomfortable limitation that keeps me from recommending it to other people.
For a non-commercial setting I would never touch anything autodesk. You can clearly see how f360 was changed from maker-friendly price to essentially the same price as a professional cad license within a few years with a clear directed strategy to capture the market. I might still be ok if you consider it includes cam/sim, but again only in a professional context. And make no mistake, the software is cloud+subscription only. f360 doesn't allow you to work on assemblies when offline, or export meshes, and some other arbitrary restrictions that make no sense except to limit offline mode.
If you have the money, and you're fine with windows, I would suggest alibre with the offline license as one of the few options available.
I've bitten the bullet and went with a mixture of freecad/openscad/cadquery/solvespace for my hobby designs. It's more work due to the limits, but zero regrets.
The F360 businesses strategy is to sell subscriptions to companies. The free and cheap tiers are a lure for their target market which they're gradually reeling in. Don't get personally invested in it for fun unless you can sustain the financial investment.
What you learn in any decent 3D CAD software will be easy to translate to another one. Fusion 360 is a great package, but it's not because it has particular features that don't exist elsewhere. You can learn CAD on Fusion and leave it for another package later.
What you'd lose are your designs however. 3D designs don't convert well.
But currently there is no 3D CAD software that is good for mechanical design and has a good and free license for hobbyists.
