As a newbie in the CAD field, I can say Fusion is brilliant in its ability to allow you to work directly in the modeling environment. I've learned quiet a bit in the last two weeks. But, there's much more to learn, as usual.
Speaking as someone who had been in the publishing/printing industry for some 20 years, wearing numerous hats as IT, network admin, plant technician, composition, prepress, press, and post-press, this CAD field is a dream that always eluded me. Now, I'm getting my feet wet. Well, toes, actually. Tip of toenails?
I have a few thoughts regarding this software (Mac):
Man! Is it buggy! I know it's just a preview. I've relaunched 50 times, I'm sure. The developers, likely more.
There's lots of lag, even though I'm using a quad-core i7 (920) CPU @ 3.2Ghz with a Nvidia GTX 680 GPU. The lag exists particularly during joint placement (you need to really wait for the Joint Origin to stabilize before clicking), which is odd, as processor usage is rather low. It appears to be only single-threaded and not optimized at all.
There are lots of inconsistencies - things that work one time and, then, don't another time:
As someone who has used page-layout and Illustrating software for decades (Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, and QuarkXpress) I'm puzzled as to why some some "simple" features as not present.
There doesn't appear to be a way to easily create duplicate parts that have no link or relationship to its parent. This is a great hindrance. If one needs to make a similar part that is modified independently (beyond moving), he's better off importing/placing a new part. If my solenoid project is any indication, mirrored or copy/pasted parts create too many restrictions. Is there a way to break this link and create independent parts?
Looking at the tutorials, I've seen that the interface of current version of Fusion has really been streamlined, compared to the 2009 version. Makes much more sense. Keep up the great work. I wish this project could progress much faster, though. Would love to see a Mac version of Autodesk Inventor/Fusion.
best of wishes,
MAJ