If you're at a point where you can consider other solutions, I would do so. In an ideal world, we'd all switch to FreeCAD and donate and make it into the next Blender. I hope that still happens, yet. There are enough options out there to meet quite a few personal use cases even aside from the FOSS options- including MecSoft's FreeMILL, which appears to be similar to the new free tier of Fusion. The 40% should be available for two more weeks, from what I've heard, but I happened to get an extra $300 I wasn't expecting so I could jump in earlier. The main capabilities they're turning off shouldn't be until January. I don't want to continue to use Autodesk products though if I can help it- and $500 a year isn't awful in the grand scheme of things, I'll admit, for the capabilities- but the general lack of transparency, the sudden changes, the unilateral removal of features that customers have been using (which seems insane... Paying customers as permanent beta testers?!), the bait-and-switch "get 'em hooked" strategy... I dunno. Not what I would call a quality, ethical way of doing business- and ethical issues aside, unreliability as a vendor for mission-critical tools is a giant red flag. Some brief Googling shows that this isn't the first time they've done this, this is just how they do business. Like I say, I hope I'm using MecSoft's VisualCAD/CAM by this time next year. Their perpetual licenses are $600 for a basic 3-axis CAM + vector/art packages (Vectric V-carve might be a better, deal, I haven't compared), $1500 for the same higher-tier 3-axis CAM that Fusion comes with (seems like a pretty good deal), $2500 for the simultaneous-4th features that I need (vs Fusion's $1500/yr for the Manufacturing extension, because it doesn't actually come with 4th axis CAM... And some argue it can't do 4-axis at all), and a couple higher-end packages for 5-axis work. Their prices seem reasonable for the higher-end hobbyist or small commercial shop, without getting into the crazy MasterCAM/Esprit/NX etc. world. For basic 3-axis machining where cycle time is irrelevant, you're manually swapping tools in an ER collet and probing them, maybe running per-tool sequential files, probably not too much changes. But I want reasonable cycle times using G0, I have repeatable tooling using TTS-style holders in a 3/4" R8 collet (and a BT30 spindle to replace it with at some point) that I don't ATC (yet, I'll save that for the BT30) but I do expect the M6 tool calls. I'm not 100% sure on this one but I believe they originally said they weren't going to be providing the more advanced 3-axis strategies in the free tier either, which they sort of gloss over in the blog post now, I'm not sure if they backtracked on that or not. I definitely use more than ten files at a time (which the updated blog confirms that assemblies can use archived models, as I suspected above) with assemblies and pallet designs and multiple simultaneous projects... Plus the fact that I have every intention of putting 4th axes on both the mill and the gantry machine I'm building. But right now, I have a year where I don't have to worry too much about what they're doing, what they're saving for later, what they're pretending they're not doing any more, etc etc.
FreeCad Facebook page is discussing the Fusion 360 fallout and upcoming FreeCad updates. Perhaps someone could convince Marc Fleury (JBoss founder and Redhat fame) to advise/invest in it.
In the interests of corrections when appropriate: TIL: this isn't as true as the conversation you can find on Practical Machinist would have you believe (shocking, I know). For at least some stuff, the basic 2D paths that are 4th-axis-enabled out of the box would do the majority of what most people need: Anything more complex than 2D work on cylinders seems to require the extension for $1500/yr (also includes advanced probing, etc), but anyone using a rotary axis who doesn't just want to wrap 2D toolpaths all the time at least has a bit of an option (albeit now at $500/yr).
