How Have Hobbyists Historically Afforded Autodesk Software?

Using My How To Draw Threads In Fusion 360 To WorkAnd it's unlikely that a CNC alone will be enough for anything, so there's a bunch of related tools and supplies needed. How have hobbyists historically afforded Autodesk software? I dabbled in 3ds Max back in the day, but I was never under the impression I could justify purchasing it. For 3D there's FreeCAD, but, IMO, while it is nominally quite capable, the UI is so obtuse and inconsistent that after a few hours with it, you'll just pay whatever Autodesk is asking you to pay. That's not to say F360 is great, but FreeCAD is unfortunately much worse. I really wanted to like it, since I don't like my work to be tied to proprietary software, but after digging through it for a week I was back to F360. Fusion 360 was the Sketch/Figma answer to SolidWorks/Adobe, and I think it still can be. I’ve seen some absolutely amazing CAM work done in Fusion and I love using it. It’s so easy to get started actually making stuff in it. We’ll see about the limitations but right now they don’t seem too severe. The only decent FOSS parametric CAD software I've found is SolveSpace, but it is quite limited, e.g. it doesn't even have a bevel tool, and there's no CAM. They also have a massive global team of really brilliant people working on NX and the related components. I'm talking former NASA employees who worked on components for the space shuttle or Mars rovers work there. That's the kind of expertise you can't really buy or acquire as an OSS project. There are other free-as-in-beer options but the only ones that don't have a risk of this happening are the open source packages, of which FreeCAD and SolveSpace are the only current viable 3D options.