CAD Softwares

VEX V5 General Discussion General Forum
22

Interesting. Not used Fusion for a while now but used to be a workhorse, although constant mandatory updates were a pain on school machines.
So what do you use instead?

23

I use fusion 360, you can get an education license for free if you are a student. On the other hand that protobot software looks pretty promising, and it is free so you could check that out. There is also solidworks but while I havenā€™t tried it, I hear its harder to learn (because there is a lot more functions, not because its a bad program or anything)

24

It might be internet related issues because fusion is a cloud based software. (I rarely ever have issues on my computer) still has some bugs though

25

While itā€™s easy to complain about Fusion it has some nice features and overall it was what we were familiar with, so we just threw more computing power and patience at it :slight_smile:
For school projects Fusion never chugged but VEX part libraries have a ton of faces and sketch points which is probably the main cause.
(as for that internet comment that just popped up, it was slow no matter what kind of internet connection I had)

26

Protobot is very user friendly imo, and the new release will bring objects such as flex wheels and different gussets, im excited to see what it does in the future and I hope they add something such as a lexan editor

27

The VexCad project has made libraries for the most popular CAD programs which is linked below.

Fusion and Inventor are both equally popular with prideful fanbases on both sides claiming that one is better than the other, but you canā€™t really go wrong with either and it is easy enough to switch between the both. I am an inventor fan because the skill ceiling is much higher but Fusion is cloud-based, has better rendering at low levels, and is very nice for manufacturing IMO.
Solidworks is the industry standard and is very helpful to learn but is way harder to start with no CAD experience.
I donā€™t like Onshape for Vex but it is probably the easiest general CAD program.
Protobot was designed for Vex use and is great for that but doesnā€™t really offer a high skill ceiling or other uses.

28

What do you use to cad?

  • I donā€™t cad
  • Fusion 360
  • Inventor
  • Protobot
  • Blender
  • Onshape
  • Autocad
  • Solidworks
  • Other
0 voters
29

This poll should allow for multiple selections.

30

As a user of Fusion for 2 years, I am glad I made the switch to Inventor. Even though thereā€™s no cloud sharing, and the controls/UI are less intuitive to me, the performance benefits are ultimately worth it. The difference is like night and day.

31

I think solidworks is easy to use and professional, after adding the V5 part library it is very smooth to use.

32

I personally use Fusion 360 mainly because itā€™s cloud based. It has some glitches with my rather low end computer but works very well with school machines.

33

Even with my rtx3070 and 11900k Fusion struggles. Aside from the collaboration featires, it is a pretty horrible experience. You really have to fight it to make do even remotley what you want, and the moment it does work it completely crashes. Too bad I havenā€™t learnt Inventor yet, that is on the list of tools to learn next