Software in the cloud

[David Shealey]

Most 3d CAD systems will save out as .stp files, long with others such as parasolid. These do not carry the design feature creation data with them, but most good 3D modelers are getting pretty good at feature recognition and the ability to modify the solid created from the .stp file

 

[BaronJ]

Hi 74sprint, Ozwes007, Awake, Guys,

Thankyou all for putting your points forward most eloquently, far better than I could have.

I've had virtually no experience of 3D cad, so I hope that you all will forgive me for that omission.

Linux rules !

 

[nel2lar]

Trust me Microsoft and other big companies are no better - my 2 year old printer won't work with my pc on Windows 10 but works on my wifes pc with the same operating system - no obvious reason. There is always an example of somebody who got screwed by Linux or Windows. I could list dozens of examples of Windows updates that affected the company I work for, as a small business its hard to keep up when the software is only a supporting piece of your product.

Many times peripheral devices are left unsupported when the big guys decide to move on.

Gordon
As far as in the cloud software and Fusion 360 - I've accepted that I may be held somewhat ransom by them at a point in the future, and I'll protect myself as much as possible by exporting portable formats, as well as saving locally the native format and hoping that some savvy person will in the future figure out a conversion to the next great cheap CAD software when that day comes.

I tend to support the Linux crowd for home use and there are open source software that operate on Windows that can replace many of the current subscriptions (i.e. OpenOffice instead of Microsoft office for word processing and spreadsheets, etc. )

Mike

Mike
I feel your pain and it just kills me because you put many hours in learning the system and out of the blue it will not work anymore. The biggest thing that get me about technology is when the company's just quit making updates available to you. I read a big thing with John Deere Tractors, Everything on the newer models are all programed and if a board goes down and they decided to no longer make the replacements it put a piece of equipment out of service and there is nothing you can do. It might be a perfect world concept like the "Model T" but I feel all new improvement should be on shelf for 20 years. That way a new piece of equipment would be guaranteed to be workable for at least 20 years. It is sad to have $100,000 pieces of equipment not good for anything but a boat anchor. Sad life we live in where big business can get away with unacceptable conduct.

 

[bmac2]

Software has always been a problem. Great ideas get purchased by the big boys and killed. Case in point is the CAD program I started out with was Generic CAD. It was starting to outshine Auto Cad so they bought it and killed it. Fortunately some of the original developers resurrected it as Visual CAD and I have been using it ever since. They come out with upgrades from time to time but the older version still works just fine. What 3 D CAD needs is the equivalent to DXF so that the drawings can work across various programs. Maybe there is such a thing but I am not aware of it.

Gordon I started out with a copy Generic CAD that came on 5 ¼ inch disks then upgraded to Gen CAD 6. When I bought a copy of Via CAD I think it took me about a year before I finally stopped using Gen CAD completely. It was a steep learning curve and I kept running into situations where I’d start thinking “If I was doing this in Gen CAD, I’d be done by now”.

I find that Via CAD and Fusion 360 are very similar but I don’t like Cloud services.

Please see Photo Bucket.

 

[Mike Whittome]

Perhaps I am over reacting but I am concerned about all of the software operating in the cloud instead of on my computer. Recently I have been playing around with Fusion 360 and have a pretty good start. I am concerned because recently there has been a scare, apparently false, that Autodesk was going to start requiring a purchased copy. I do not want to spend a lot of time designing something which is saved on the cloud instead of on my computer only to be unable to access it a year from now. Even if I save the file on my computer it is in a format which is useless in any other program. As a retired hobby user there is no way that I am going to pay $500 per year for software that I am going to use twice a year. This is not only a CAD problem. Microsoft Office is now also a cloud based program. I am using the old 2007 version which lives on my computer. The same is true of Quick Books which I used for years. The latest lives on the cloud and I must pay a subscription fee to access my files. Here again I am using my old 2007 copy which lives on my computer. I loose some features but for the most part it does what I need. Also I can use my program in places where I do not have to be connected via WiFi.

Am I just an old Luddite or is there reason for concern?

Gordon

 

[Mike Whittome]

I have just face the same dilemma. My copy of Fusion 360 was shut down as elapsed. A bit of research showed that individual users with out a commercial motive could enjoy a free copy, which I went for. My files were immediately again available and I was able to update to the latest software version. I have been doing this for three years with no problem.

 

[Gordon]

Photo Bucket is a perfect example of why I am concerned. I may have to take a look at some of the Linux programs available. I am a little leery of screwing up my computer by loading Linux even with dual boot. I realize that many thousands of others have done so without problem.

 

[awake]

Gordon, good news: you can go ahead and try the programs without switching to Linux.

Nearly all free and open software (FOSS) is written to be multi-platform, so even though much of this software is developed on Linux, it runs on Windows and Mac as well. Therefore, much as I like using Linux, I have to admit there is no reason to switch as long as you are satisfied with how your Windows machine is running - you can still take advantage of nearly all the FOSS out there. (On the flip side, starting to use FOSS on your Windows machine will make it easier to transition if you ever do decide to try Linux. That was true for the example I gave above of my parents - they had been using LibreOffice on Windows for several years, due to not wanting or needing to purchase MS-Office.)

Here are some links to get you started with FOSS on Windows:

LibreOffice suite - complete replacement for Office360. (Click the Download Now button and if necessary choose your operating system - it should "sense" your operating system and default to it - probably Windows 64-bit if you are running a recent version of Windows):

https://www.libreoffice.org/

LibreCAD - very capable 2d CAD; I have never used AutoCAD, but I've heard people say it is similar in approach; has CAM features built in. (Click on either link under Windows and then click on the link for the latest installer; you'll want to run this program after it downloads; look in the Downloads folder and double click on the file name):

https://librecad.org/#download

FreeCAD - very capable 3d CAD, with rapid improvements being made; includes CAM; in addition to the mechanical design that is probably what you and I are most interested in, it includes various specialized "work benches" for things like architecture, ship building (!), and more. (Click on Download Now and choose your flavor of Windows, 32-bit or 64-bit):

https://freecadweb.org/

Note that there are tons of tutorials available for all of these. Note also the discussion (above? or might be in another thread) about the problem you can run into with a tutorial based on a different version than the one you are using. Where this will have the biggest impact is with FreeCAD, because of the rapid development. The current stable version as of this post is 18.4; for many basic tasks you would be fine with a tutorial based on version 17, maybe even 16, but there were some significant changes with version 18. And there are even more significant features coming in the next version (19) - and sometimes people put out tutorials on these new coming features, and you will wonder why you can't find that feature in the version you are using - DAMHIK. I tend to like Sliptonic's you tube tutorials on FreeCAD, but he's been mostly quiet lately - only one recent video.

 

[kvom]

I use Solidworks for CAD, and get it for $20/year as a veteran. Each year the old version stops working in November or so, and I have to order the latest version. It does run on my desktop, and I use a desktop CAM program. I do save what I need for machining as DXFs or STLs, but the DXFs are loaded into the CAM which is the actual repository for duplicating some work in the future. I may have to upgrade to Win10 in the future. I know that this is the last year I can run TurboTax on Win7, but I have a Win10 laptop that should be OK for that.

 

[TonySteamHobby]

It has come to the point that I am afraid to upgrade my OS. Recently, I upgraded my Mac, clicked on my Outlook and was presented with the message that I had to upgrade my MS suite. Well, despite the fact that I lost everything associated with that suite, I refuse.

The same thing happened when I upgraded my IPad, my Force Affect and Force Affect Motion programs from Autodesk did not work with the new OS. Autodesk would not be supporting the software any longer. I lost all of my steam engine models, with no warning. And those were just two of the 30 programs I lost.

I retired a few months ago. I brought home my stand alone 2007 Autocad as a parting gift. I called to get a license code but Autodesk does not support old versions so the software is now useless. I had been an Autocad user since ver. 9.

I had also purchased Autocad Lite for home use at $99 when it first came out. I upgraded it until they raised the price outside of the range where I could still justify to my wife that I needed to spend that much money. Now I must learn a new, free package (freecad) to support my hobby as my retirement budget doesn’t include multi-thousand dollar software.

If I buy a hammer at the hardware store, I don’t have to go back and pay again at the end of the year for continued use. If I loan my hammer to the neighbor and he moves away I loose my hammer. That is how I feel about my software or projects in the cloud. I trust no software that stores data in or operates from the cloud.

I still have software which runs on my vintage computers which I purchased 40 years ago. Can we expect a cloud service to still be available in 10 years or more. I doubt it greatly, especially when, at a companies whim, they can just elect to stop supporting the product. It’s then, your investment turns to vapor.

I love the many engineering apps I own. What I don’t like is the new trend of the OS developers to completely disregard backward compatibility with my apps. It seems the only thing I can trust to remain constant is my 1948 version of the machinists handbook.

I had a discussion with my 37 year old son recently, I was commenting on his all digital dashboard and integrated GPS screen. I asked how anyone would be able to restore his car in 20 or 30 years. He said no one would want to. I think that sums it up. Use it now, buy something else later, don’t look back.

I rant like this to my wife continuously and she says suck it up. Thanks guys, I see I’m not alone.

 

[Brian Hutchings]

Although Fusion 360 saves info to the cloud, it is also possible to save the same files to your PC.
Brian

 

[Cogsy]

If I buy a hammer at the hardware store, I don’t have to go back and pay again at the end of the year for continued use.

But let's say your hammer costs you $20 - not a bad price for a good hammer. Now you can use that hammer year after year, but it will never get any better than it was the first day you bought it, in fact it will get older, the handle may get loose, the head will get scarred and chipped and eventually it will be useless. With a cloud-based hammer, you only pay $2 a year but you have the best version of a hammer you can buy every day of the year. If you get the latest hammer today but they bring out a new version with a nicer ergonomic grip and a screw-on deadblow attachment tomorrow, yours will automatically upgrade.

Even your old copy of the machinery handbook isn't quite what you think it is - the pages are yellowing, the ink is fading and, most importantly, the errors that existed in it 70 years ago remain uncorrected to possibly catch you out at some point. It's human nature to resist change but in my mind the subscription model for software is a better system.

 

[Gordon]

But let's say your hammer costs you $20 - not a bad price for a good hammer. Now you can use that hammer year after year, but it will never get any better than it was the first day you bought it, in fact it will get older, the handle may get loose, the head will get scarred and chipped and eventually it will be useless. With a cloud-based hammer, you only pay $2 a year but you have the best version of a hammer you can buy every day of the year. If you get the latest hammer today but they bring out a new version with a nicer ergonomic grip and a screw-on deadblow attachment tomorrow, yours will automatically upgrade.

Even your old copy of the machinery handbook isn't quite what you think it is - the pages are yellowing, the ink is fading and, most importantly, the errors that existed in it 70 years ago remain uncorrected to possibly catch you out at some point. It's human nature to resist change but in my mind the subscription model for software is a better system.

The problem is that we are not offered the option of using our old dinged up hammer. The new hammer may be better but if I am only using my hammer to drive in one nail a month I can decide that the old hammer is adequate for my job. What works for a going business does not necessarily work for the retired hobbyist. My lathe is probably about 60 years old and my mill is similar age and I would be very unhappy if suddenly South Bend Lathe Co disabled my lathe and would not permit me to repair it. There is no doubt that some of the newer lathes are an improvement over my old machine but I can decide to continue to use my old less ideal machine. It is not worth several thousand dollars to have a better lathe. If the option is only sever thousand dollars or using my old machine, the old machine is going to stay. Even a business will decide what bigger and better is worth and will the upgrading pay enough to justify the cost.

 

[stragenmitsuko]

To continue the hammer metafore , once everyone is using the 2$ cloud based hammer , and the hardware stores selling the 10$ lifetime versions are out of business , rest assured you won't get the hammer for 2$ . Maybe you won't even get to use one at all , maybe all of a sudden your right to use a hammer will be revoked because you refuse to buy the matching gloves and t shirt at a 100$ .

But then it'll be to late and they'll have total control over your computer and your designs and you'll have no choice to pay the fee just to acces yur designs .

Windows 10 fi is also clearly evolving that way .

I think once a software package does what it has to do for me , I don't need further upgrades .
Most of the time upgrades are a step in the wrong direction anyway .
Menu's get rearranged , certain features dissapear or don't work anymore ...
Not worth the hassle for me .

Take draftsight as another example .
Very basic cad software , capable of doing everything I wanted and not much more .
Was freeware , and has been for a decade or so . But now it's no longer free .
They're also going towards cloud based and a yearly fee .

So my guess is give it 10 more years and yeah , those who've kept win 7 or XP and lifetime licenses
ar gonne be very happy . Won't last forever , I know , but I have at least 10 old pc's stockpiled that will run Win7 and or XP .

My 2ct's .

Pat

 

[awake]

Or - just to be a FOSS pain in the rear (please note that I said FOSS, free and open source software, not FOS!!) - I can get a free hammer (FOSS), that is mine to keep, AND I can get the free updates that are available on a regular basis - or not, as I choose. When I can do that, why pay $2 / month for a hammer I don't actually own??

Actually, Cogsy, I agree that sometimes the subscription model makes sense - particularly in a larger organization, where it is actually cheaper to pay $2 / month than it is to try to update several hundred / thousand computers when the $20 hammer falls apart. But as Gordon notes, the math works out differently for an individual user, and even more so for a hobby user.

 

[awake]

So my guess is give it 10 more years and yeah , those who've kept win 7 or XP and lifetime licenses
ar gonne be very happy . Won't last forever , I know , but I have at least 10 old pc's stockpiled that will run Win7 and or XP .

Far too many older CNC machines are facing this sort of dilemma - I'm talking about full sized commercial machines that used a DOS machine or a Windows XYZ machine as the control system. The floppy drive goes out, and for some reason it is hard to find a new one; the CRT goes out, and nobody makes those any more; it's all flat screens; and so on.

Actually, as I understand it, not just CNC machines - all sorts of embedded systems, including point-of-sale terminals and medical equipment and more. Who exactly thought it was a good idea to use Windows as an embedded OS ... ?!?

 

[Ozwes007]

Floppy drives can be replaced with USB/floppy converters. Did one for an old CNC at an engineering company 6 months ago. The cloud issue is a very big problem, too many people have data that just completely disappears or is hacked. And I’m not talking small companies as cloud service providers, Apple, Microsoft, yahoo, google, etc, all have lost massive personal an corporate data purposely and due to hacking and failed equipment. Until guidelines are in place that guarantees your data with specific tangible cost payouts don’t place anything in the cloud you can’t afford to loose. I tell all my business customers the same thing. Have a home copy of everything. One client lost 15 years of corporate data 2 years after they destroyed all there paper records. And this was on a Linux data server provided by a Government backed cloud service. Use the cloud by all means, but keep copies of everything.

 

[BaronJ]

Photo Bucket is a perfect example of why I am concerned. I may have to take a look at some of the Linux programs available. I am a little leery of screwing up my computer by loading Linux even with dual boot. I realize that many thousands of others have done so without problem.

As I have said previously, just download a Linux live CD ISO, burn it to a CD and boot your computer from it. It won't make any changes at all to your machine and you will be able to run Linux and even surf the net. Of course you won't be able to save anything to the CD.

I am using Q4OS and have been for a couple of years. It uses the "Trinity" desktop and is based on "Debian". The latest version is Q4OS 3.10 Centaurus.
It does everything that I want or need.

 

[petertha]

Although Fusion 360 saves info to the cloud, it is also possible to save the same files to your PC.
Brian

I don't run Fusion but was told by someone who did that yes, it can save files to your non-cloud personal drive, but you cant open them (or maybe it was edit them?) without appropriate licence/credentials. Somehow his had lapsed or renewal got messed up. Maybe that was then & current modes are different, not sure.

I'm equally unclear about Microsoft 365.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/of...f-my-subscription-expires?view=o365-worldwide
There is a staged progression of file utility based on time. Read What Happens if I cancel a subscription. Some people claim you can simply copy/paste files to another format/app even after expiry, but I'm not really sure about that. When they say Office applications, like Word and Excel, will eventually move into a read-only, reduced functionality mode and display... that almost smells like limited editing capability, which is kind of what file conversion involves. Could one 'back up' your MS files to another vendor while still having a subscription? Probably.

Anyways, I think different vendors are taking different paths on this issue & the fine print isn't always clear or locked down.

 

[Cogsy]

Photo Bucket is a perfect example of why I am concerned.

While I think Photo Bucket really went about it the wrong way and I hope it bites them so hard they can't recover from it (holding users to ransom is never OK in my book), they are a company and need to make money to provide their services, just like all the rest. Obviously their ad revenue wasn't sufficient to continue with the completely free model (likely because the majority of their users simply embed content into forums like this one which prevents Photo Bucket from displaying ads on them). The thing is though - Photo Bucket is a cloud service which is exactly what every single one of their users wants (yourself included). It's hosting on a remote server so you don't have to host it yourself. I lost my Photo Bucket account the first time they hit us with a user fee but I didn't lose my images as I kept local backups. There's no way I would entrust my images completely to the cloud.

Ironically, if we'd all been paying a subscription fee (that we were happy with) in the first place, I don't believe Photo Bucket would've needed to ransom their users and the whole situation could've been avoided.

Back to the hammer metaphor, if you have made the switch to a subscription hammer (like Office365) then you are pretty well locked in to a subscription, but if you've still got a copy of Office 2007 or something, then you can keep using that. The same goes for other programs like CAD, CAM and photoediting. What we can't expect is to suddenly get the latest version of whatever it is we need at a subscription price and just keep using that forever without upgrading or continuing with the subscription. If some companies are willing to offer to lend you a free hammer (like Fusion currently is) then we have to be aware that they may want it back, or charge a fee for it in the future. Alternatively, we can hunt-up a vintage hammer to buy and keep banging away with that.

Again referencing Matlab, there is a free program available called Octave and it is so similar to Matlab that most general programs written on one will execute on the other. It's not quite as pretty or user-friendly as Matlab but I could live with that, except like I said earlier, every couple of years a library or function is released for Matlab that allows me to do something that I've needed to do but couldn't, or it makes something incredibly difficult to accomplish far easier. That's how I can justify the price as I'm directly paying for the development of the tools I need. Matlab just makes the best hammer...