So it seems that with New Educational Account validation processes, Autodesk is no longer supporting users who are NOT associated with a high school or a post secondary educational organization. This effectively means that if you are home schooled or middle school, or part of a group that is not a school, or even if you are a mentor on any team (but not an employee of the school), then you can’t get Fusion or Inventor or any other Autodesk product for free.
I think this is a big change from the past.
I think this is rather sad since we’ve all had great support from Autodesk in the past, particularly since Autodesk continues to advertise support for these competitions.
It’s a good opportunity to look at SolidWorks or onshspe. Sponsorship is tied to teams, not necessarily schools. More details here: CAD for VEX Robotics.pdf (299.7 KB)
Even though I am a valid high school student, and have a 100% valid license, I can tell you that Autodesk never did anything to confirm that fact. Use this information as you please.
Fusion 360 is free for personal/hobbyist use; sounds to me like VRC teams not affiliated with a school would meet the requirements outlined in that page.
Well…
This morning, they’ve adjusted things a bit to at least allow for registration of new accounts to be tied to a “Design Competition Mentor”… This is a great Fix, Thank you Autodesk for listening.
I’m not sure if they’ve told their support staff yet :-)… They still claim you need to be a teacher at a high school or a university…
Last note… Autodesk still haven’t updated anything with regard to Students, so you need to be a minimum High School aged student to get the free software… Middle Schoolers are not eligible for Educational accounts.
