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Title basically.
One of my windows computers, which happens to be the one I happen to do the most CAD work on, can't upgrade to windows 11 due to having an Ivy Bridge era Xenon (it's an E5-1680 v2 for the curious, older used workstations are fantastic bang for the buck computers).
Switching to Linux on this computer has been in the cards for a while, but I hadn't been in a hurry to do it. Looks like my hand might be getting forced...
Got to be fair, since the 1.x update it got so much more usable for me
Yep, very much improved. I recking it will turn out like Blender. It sucks right now compared to some other tools like Fusion360, but given time it will improve and at some point it will tip over into being the default. It all depends on buy in. If a few bigger players get behind it because they can avoid predatory fees and costs associated with using a proprietary piece of software they will switch, invest in their own mods, then drive the industry knowledge standard towards FreeCAD. That will break the hold the proprietary apps have as workers gain skills in the new context, leaving the old proprietary stuff to rot. I hope it is soon, but it will happen eventually.
Oh, I know. I am familiar with the fusion workflow and it generally just works - even when you mess with a feature way earlier in your timeline.
I model some vaguely complex things and find that I often fiddle with things. From the last I looked into it, OSS CAD didn't handle this very well.
@IMALlama well, freecad really improved a lot recently. It may be worth looking again. One problem still may be the many different workflows you can use, some of which may be super inappropriate for complex stuff. I recommend the part design workbench with the sketch feature, combined with a spreadsheet for fully parametric designs. Sketches can now be attached to faces of the object, which is super helpful. Do all the fillets and chamfers at the end, ideally.
OpenSCAD can also be fun if you like fiddling with parametric designs.
Yes and no. This install script works well, but it breaks every few months (not the fault of the script, but Autodesk). Then you have to wait for an update and reinstall everything.
The second link to this repo, thanks!
When you say it breaks every few months does that mean that fusion does its usual update thing as-per-normal and then just nopes out one day?
The main function of the script is to enable the browser redirect for the login. Sometimes Autodesk changes how the login works and logs you out. Then you can't login back again, because the browser redirect doesn't work.
Answering the title: No. Never heard of anyone who had.
Embrace Freecad or succumb to windows/macos
I've had it run on wine a few years back, but it's hard to say if it would still run now as they change it all the time. Freecad is ok for simpler designs, but if you do complex cad work, you hit its limits (clunky and buggy). There's always onshape though, works perfectly fine on Linux.
It's very easy to bypass TPM / Secure Boot requirements and install Windows 11 on Ivy Bridge, though I'd favour going Linux anyways and make a Windows virtual machine for stuff like if you can't give up proprietary software.
That's just me. If you want to install Win11: Basically you just need Rufus to make your boot-able USB stick and you tick a box to disable the checks. That's it. On the same PC hardware it'll HWID activate, don't buy a key.
Or if it doesn't just use massgrave activator found in github.
I haven't looked into this at all, but wasn't Microsoft threatening to block updates if your system doesn't meet the requirements?
They did once but never have. Four years later in a couple days in fact.
Thanks for the information. I think I'll give Linux a go on a spare SSD and can treat this as my fallback plan.
Just wanted to mention, I do this for work apps, including Autodesk products (and a bunch of niche industry apps).
I have a base VM for Windows (really for a few different versions of windows, some applications are horrifically outdated but still needed), which has nothing installed but the bare necessities. None of the junk from the microsoft store, just a working set of drivers, including GPU for pass through. I block local network access for everything but access to a specific directory on my NAS (mounted proxmox-side so Windows doesnt see it as a network endpoint, just as a mounted drive).
I clone that image for each application I want to run independently.
Its been my method for a good few years now, aside from my work laptop its the only bit of windows I have. It also keeps a nice separation of my work stuff from my personal stuf.
I then boot the VM for whatever application I need, and off we go!
Highly recommended if you've got the setup to support it. And you don't have to go anywhere near the extent I do, I mention it just to share how far you can take an approach like this.
Hope it helps!
Thanks! A VM is a totally viable option.
Sure thing. Probably you'll (most people) want a Stable Release or Long Term Service distribution to start with instead of rolling releases or bleeding edge distributions. I threw myself into the deep end to learn faster but not everyone wants that. I'm willing to risk breaking things beyond repair to learn, and have done so lol. You know yourself so that's up to you.
I'll give you my personal shit list if you like:
Pop_OS! I view System76 as incompetent after unfortunately owning a laptop sold by them. Long story, bad developers. Big regret.
Canonical is pretty notoriously awful now. So avoid Ubuntu and IMO stuff downwind (forks) of them. People really like Mint however, you can decide for yourself.
RedHat - Fedora is also making worrying decisions lately. Sad because I really loved Fedora. Second best repository to Arch/AUR. Again you can look up their controversies and decide for yourself.
Manjaro is infamously incompetent. Some diehard defenders, I don't get it. Lots of needless breakage in updates and AUR incompatibility. I looked this up to make sure my opinion was still current. It still is.
My gold list:
I like Debian or OpenSUSE for stable releases.
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed for rolling release.
CachyOS for gaming optimisations and as a bleeding edge Arch fork. I also love Pacman and the Octopi repository front end using Paru.
After exploring options such as Fusion360 and SOLIDWORKS I ended up making a free account on onshape. It's web-based and works flawlessly on Firefox and Linux. I should try a bit more FreeCAD, but lack motivation.
Freecad has gotten much better with the recent updates.
It's UI is (obviously) different than fusion, but so are other CAD programs.
Sure, it may not be at the stage where it could be used to do 100% of the mechanical and electrical design on a jet helicopter, but how many people need that level of complexity for their projects?
Drop autodesk. I've got access to autodesk products as an educator, and I've used inventor for years, but I have only had FreeCAD on my system for months. I have not found myself being unable to do anything I could do in Inventor.
I've had issues with FreeCAD being less performant and freezing or crashing when trying to make more complex parts.
Fairly rare though and I've been able to work around it
Sweet, thanks!
This script is why I ended up learning how to use OnShape. It's probably much better nowadays, but I could not get it working a few years ago. I needed CAD and OnShape was close enough to Inventor that it was almost frictionless.
Fusion360 has been rated Silver on WINE (windows compatability tool) so you have a decent shot of running it. Silver means "couple of minor bugs, might need tweaks to run but runs well".
In Linux we have FreeCAD but if you're heavily dependent on Fusion360 I'd recommend trying a Virtual Windows Machine, Bottles, Lutris, Steam Proton, the installation script posted here and so on.
If you have space for two drives on your computer then worst case you could bypass the windows whatever and have two different OSs.
You'll need to get used to many new things when switching to Linux. Changing to FreeCAD could as well be one of those
It will be frustrating, and it will take some time to get used to but honestly it's worth it. If not for anything else then to flex your brain cells and keep them nimble
Does FreeCAD do CAM too?
It has a dedicated CAM workbench yeah
Here are some YouTube tutorials for CAM in freeCAD https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaUEbWaf2rhSGcjQK9LYuL4PkV1GzjeIY
And the CAM category on the freeCAD wiki https://wiki.freecad.org/Category:CAM
I second freeCAD for complicated designs. For simple stuff I use tinkercad which runs from web browser
Personally I'd say go with freeCAD even for simple designs too. Its a great way to learn the software and you will not end up adjusting you designs to the limitations that tinkercad has. Them the transition to more complicated designs will be less painful
Also I feel like it is difficult to do premise placement on tinkercad
I've dabbled in Linux in the past and spend the majority of my time popping between windows and mac os. I also spend a decent amount of time in powershell/terminal, but largely in the context of work.
I'm not against investing the time learn new things, but time is very scarse these days with two younger kids.
My modeling workflow is often iterative and fusion's timeline makes it very easy to edit a feature from way back when and then propagate that change through all subsequent steps that reference that feature. You can also add entirely new features and then update the next step in the timeline to reference them. The last time I looked at alternatives this either wasn't supported or was fickle, but based on some comments in this post that may have changed. I'll have to give FreeCAD a try.
While I'd like to know the same, I'd also recommend reading their EOS page. You have time to switch over.
**What does end of support mean for Windows 10 and Fusion?**
Fusion will continue to work on Windows 10 after the 14th - however, Autodesk will no longer consider Windows 10 for validation, bug fixing, and product support of future releases. Application compatibility and support will not be guaranteed for this platform for releases after this date.
You can install a W11 VirtualBox VM on an old, unsupported processor without any special configuration. I have it running under Linux on a 10 year old AMD processor and it works fine.
There are also scripts to unlock upgrade on „unsupported” processors which still technically work with 11
Yeah, that is what I would have done. Check out Tiny10 and Tiny11, which is stripped down, but totally functional Windows versions that is perfect to use as base images for a VM. I used the default VM/QUEMU app that ships with Fedora, called Box (I think?). But you could install VirtualBox as well.
I think I remember people saying they got it working with this
https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps
That being said, stuff like Fusion 360 changes quite often and even if it works now it might break compatibility with the future update.
FreeCAD has come a long way since with the 1.0 release and the 1.1 release also has lots of good quality of life improvements.
No, I tried for a while but I gave up.
I switched to Onshape and I'm very happy with the switch.
So can still use it just not receive support right? They didn't cripple the actual software just because windows 10 isn't supported I hope?
It is fairly trivial to bypass the win11 upgrade requirements, if that is preferable to you.
I tried to make Fusion 360 run under wine and just couldn't get it reliably working.
There were problems logging in, problems with resolution, issues with fonts and DLL errors. It just wasn't stable enough to rely on.
I used it some years ago. It "just worked," but later when I tried to install it again, it didn't. I probably could've made it work again, but I didn't actually need it badly enough to bother.
So yes and kinda no