topic Re: Fusion 360 library manager usability in EAGLE Forum

Fusion 360 library manager usability

Bjanders — Sat, 03 Dec 2022 21:19:20 GMT

Maybe I'm missing something, but I find the usability of the of the Fusion 360 version of the library manager inferior to the Eagle version.

For example, here I have selected the 40xx library in Fusion 360:

I can only see at most three components at a time. Scrolling through that list takes forever clicking one or three components at a time forward and you get no overview. After clicking 30 times to get to the end you wonder, what was component number 53, and you start the clicking exercise again. Also, the images are tiny, or then you can select to show the large icon and have even more clicks and less overview.

The way it is in Eagle is in my opinion superior in every aspect:

You can easily see every single component with a glance and the component images to the right are large and scales with the window size.

Also the layout of the libraries are better in Eagle. Here's Fusion:

The same Folder Name is repeated on every line and there's no Description (and the column can't be enabled). Yes, you can see on the right, but only for the selected library. If you select Local disk libraries no Folder Name is displayed at all in the Folder Name column, so you have to select the library to see in which folder it is.

In Eagle folders are actually folders (so the folder name only has to be stated once), and I get a description designed for humans for all libraries at once:

Don't I just understand how to use the Fusion 360 version, or what is the UI design decision rationale for the Fusion version? I don't get it. Does anyone prefer that? Why?

Re: Fusion 360 library manager usability

jorge_garcia — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 00:11:09 GMT

Hi @Bjanders,

I hope you're doing well. Thank you for this feedback, i've passed it along to our team for review.

Looking for specific parts is easier to do in the place parts panel, I think you'll find that a better experience.

Let me know if you have any other ideas.

Best Regards,

Re: Fusion 360 library manager usability

Bjanders — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 17:35:28 GMT

Thanks for the response. Yes, I noticed the parts panel and have used it, and that is much better. But it's not very helpful when you are looking for libraries and which libraries you want to enable. In practice, the way you have to do it now is enable a bunch of libraries where the part you are looking for potentially exists, then open a project (or create a new), go to the parts panel, look through the parts, and then go back to the library manager and disable the libraries that your not interested in again. (I don't want to clutter the parts panel with a ton a libraries that I don't need.) This works, but is far from optimal, and a downgrade in user experience from Eagle.

I don't want to bash Fusion Electronics just for the sake of it. There are lot of good things in it. While some things have improved, I also see it taking steps backwards in usability. I can understand lack of features, but making usability worse is harder to understand. Of course usability can many times be very subjective, but somethings (like the ones I posted about) I find it hard to believe that a majority of the customers would see as an improvement.

I also want to take the opportunity to once again express my dislike of forcing the customer to rely on cloud services for their data. I know I'm far from alone on this.

Re: Fusion 360 library manager usability

jorge_garcia — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 21:51:48 GMT

Hi @Bjanders,

Looking over your post I just realized that you are not comparing library managers. You are comparing the EAGLE control panel's behavior to Fusion's library manager. If you look at EAGLE's library manager (it has one within the schematic and board editors) and compare it to Fusion's you'll notice that Fusion's is more fully featured.

With that said, the behavior of the control panel is desirable and Fusion has no equivalent to the control panel currently. The developers are looking at this thread. I'm putting this in as a feature request, maybe it's something we can add to Fusion's library manager.

You are definitely not alone on the cloud thing, but unless there is a mass revolt of both electronics and mechanical users I don't see Autodesk changing that stance. I will continue to report your comments up the chain.

Best Regards,