So I’ve been following many of the posts and hearing all about how everyone is loving Fusion360. I’ve also been told a couple of times that I, as a hobbyist, can get it for free. However, every time I go to the site to download it, I can see where to get it for free if I’m a student or educator, but I don’t see any place for the hobbyist to go and get it for free.
I’m sure I could figure it out if I started just clicking on buttons and finding out what I might be able to get away with, but I’d like to do this properly and it just isn’t clear how to do that.
In this link, the box at the right of the screen identifies “Free for students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and startups” and further states “Start by downloading the 30-day trial, Once you’re in, simply register for free use”.
… well… It turns out I was griping a few weeks ago about the lack of support for my early OSX pre-intel Power PC. Of course, it isn’t Windows, just of that era.
I also do have a more current machine.
Generally Ubuntu now. Did Fedora for many years as LTSP in a school, then Ubuntu made it easier. First system I learned on was BSD as a modem server. That was interesting. Before broadband in a rural school had four telephone lines coming in to the modem pool.
so i bought my Glowforge on the first wave and am so excited! I haven’t been checking these forums like i should have been but i am curious to know what everyone is going to use for a DESIGN PROGRAM. I have been designing in Silhouette Studio for about 2 years now and it is SO USER FRIENDLY. I eventually want to go to school for design or do some design classes , but was curious to see what my NON DESIGNER peeps are using when the time comes. I have Illustrator and Photoshop but am still learning the basics. THANKS!!
If you already have AI/PS, then go ahead and spend some time on those. the training videos from Adobe are a very nice start, and then the tutorials available on youtube, or lynda, will be easier to follow.
Some folks like to learn from books… The “classroom in a book” series is available on amazon, both for the current “cc” release, and for many of the older releases as well. If you go the book route, my advice is to follow through and do each of the projects. Boring, bland projects help you learn the tool without worrying about the product.
I’m a non-designer. I’m using Inkscape because it’s open source and free, but it seems that most examples and tutorials are done on Illustrator. If I could, I’d try and learn that. I’m happy with Inkscape, though. Just needs a little translating at times.
Another non-designer here. I’ve been using Fusion 360 for the past few weeks. It works great and has been very easy to learn. I like being able to see how my design is going to look in 3D. The only downside is having the extra step of exporting the sketches as DXF and then opening those in Inkscape or illustrator to convert them to a format that the Glowforge can understand (though supposedly DXF support is in the hopper).
You mentioned wanting to take design courses. I don’t have info offhand, but a lot of course material and online classes from universities has been put out there for free. Look for courses about design theory, color theory, art history, etc.
Mandrake was what I started with 