For $500 US per year the Fusion 360 suite is unbeatable in my opinion. I have paid Solidworks tens of thousands of dollars over the years in annual maintenance fees. The simulation and CAM packages alone, if I remember correctly, were in the order of $9K US for the initial purchase and several thousand per year for maintenance for both.

What tends to happen with this kind of software --at least in my mind, not sure about how others thing about this stuff-- is that the ROI curve becomes asymptotic over time. The "support" fees don't match the marginal gains from release to release.

For example, I don't think we've had a need to contact GoEngineer (our reseller) for well over a decade. Once you achieve a certain level of competency there's very little they can contribute to the equation. Which means all that's left in terms of value for the "support" fee are the incremental software updates from year to year. And, as I said, with time, it's hard to point at features or solutions that justify the annual cost.

From my perspective if companies like SW/Dassault were smart they would progressively reduce the cost of annual updates to match customer realities.

The ONLY reason to upgrade past a certain point becomes interaction with other companies, vendors or consultants who might be on a newer version. Aside from that, I can't think of a single feature introduced by SW in the last many years that would justify spending thousands of dollars per year to get those features.

I haven't done the accounting at this point. If I had to guess I would say we have about $75K US per seat into SW and related tools. That's just crazy.

Don't get me wrong, I love SW. And, yes, we've made a ton of money using the tool. Yet that doesn't mean I am not going to be critical of a cost structure that, in my opinion, does not match the marginal improvements offered in exchange. It's negative value.

Here's a specific example from CAMWorks, the CAM tool we own and they push (to the point of SW having added a "lite" version of it for free with SW in the last few years). We have the full package, which wasn't cheap, along with training and maintenance over the years. And yet, for the tens of thousands of dollars we have spent on it, their tool, feeds and speeds library absolutely sucks (it will actually damage your machine if you are not paying attention) and they don't implement HSM (High Speed Machining) a critical productivity tool in modern machining. In fact, if you want HSM you have to spend (don't remember exactly) about $1,800 US for the initial license and (again, don't remember exactly) >$1K US per year for support and updates.

I can't wait to drop CAMWorks like a hot potato, it's horrible software we got stuck with over a decade ago. When you are running a CNC shop it isn't always easy to jump from software to software. People need to learn the tool and become productive with it. In addition to this, mistakes can be very, very costly (a spindle Z crash on a Haas VMC can cost you $5K to $10K US easy). In other words, you have to be very careful about the decisions you make and these decision become multi-year commitments, like it or not.

So, yeah, if Fusion360 had a full local mode of operation I would be throwing money at them. It's the right approach in my opinion: A reasonable annual fee, for a full-featured suite and modern software that seems to be evolving quite nicely.

I love SW, but it makes sense for you use case I would definitely go with F360.