Fusion 360

Fusion 360 (built by the massive leviathan Autodesk) is an incredibly aggressive, wildly disruptive platform that completely obliterated the traditional boundaries between Design (CAD) and Manufacturing (CAM). Historically, an engineer used SolidWorks to design a part, exported it, and the machinist imported it into Mastercam. Fusion 360 fused both workflows into a single, cloud-based, terrifyingly affordable software ecosystem. Its signature feature is "Seamless CAD-to-CAM Integration." If the machinist is programming the toolpaths in Fusion, and the design engineer suddenly realizes the hole needs to be 2mm wider, the engineer changes it in the Fusion CAD workspace. The machinist's Fusion CAM workspace instantly, mathematically updates the toolpath to reflect the new hole size, completely eliminating the terrifying version-control nightmares of legacy manufacturing. It heavily dominates the "Startup, Maker, and Modern Job Shop" sector. Legacy CAM software costs $15,000 upfront. Autodesk aggressively priced Fusion 360 as an incredibly cheap SaaS subscription. It essentially democratized advanced 3-axis and 5-axis CNC programming, allowing a guy in a garage with a $5,000 Tormach CNC mill to utilize the exact same terrifyingly complex toolpath algorithms as a massive aerospace company.