topic Re: PDF User Manual for Fusion 360 [Ultimate] in Fusion Design, Validate & Document Forum

PDF User Manual for Fusion 360 [Ultimate]

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Nov 2014 16:21:08 GMT

Is there, or could I suggest, a PDF User Manual for Fusion360. The easiest way to learn is to have a printed document by ones side, so that you can read and type at the same time. The video instructions provided are first class but it can be very distracting if you are flitting between the two continuously and makes for slow progress.

Thank You.

Re: PDF User Manual for Fusion 360 [Ultimate]

jeff.walters — Wed, 19 Nov 2014 16:28:54 GMT

I agree its easier to reread a sentence for some than to try and rewind and pick up that one misunderstood sentance. I alos find it easer to pick up where i left off when interupted.

Re: PDF User Manual for Fusion 360 [Ultimate]

TimeraAutodesk — Wed, 19 Nov 2014 23:58:02 GMT

Hi All,

We are actively working on providing a more in-depth learning experience that walks a user through the various workspaces and get them the training they need to go from beginners to experts. Provided are instructions on how to start the training:

1. Click on this link to download the zip file of all the sample files associated with each Module. Upload them in Fusion 360.
https://myhub.autodesk360.com/ue29c9141/shares/public/SH7f1edQT22b515c761e12e3a50ab9cda319

2. Begin the training by going through each module in ascending order (01, 02, 03, etc). You can view them in the browser or download them locally.

I hope you find this helpful!

Timera

Status changed to: Solution Provided

TimeraAutodesk — Wed, 19 Nov 2014 23:58:21 GMT

Re: PDF User Manual for Fusion 360 [Ultimate]

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Nov 2014 10:13:35 GMT

Hi Timera, yes I have these and they do follow the same excellent quality displayed by the rest of the Fusion Team output.

For my purposes I perfer one lookup document that I can read on my desk and quickly reference. So, unless you or someone on the Team objects, I will combine these individual docs into one and use this as my one-stop reference doc. I can then extend this as you produce more guidance..

Kindest,

Re: PDF User Manual for Fusion 360 [Ultimate]

TimeraAutodesk — Thu, 20 Nov 2014 16:48:01 GMT

@Anonymous That is perfectly fine, please use them however is most useful to you. This is just our first revision/beta of this content, and we are continuing to work on it to make it better. We knew that users were in need of something immediately, so we decided to make this available early. We really appreciate your feedback on it, and I'll have the team start looking into bundling these up into a more cohesive one-stop-shop learning resource. Please let us know of any other feedback you may have on the training material that can help us make it better!

-Timera

Re: PDF User Manual for Fusion 360 [Ultimate]

Anonymous — Fri, 05 Dec 2014 08:04:51 GMT

It's also easier to annotate your own PDF copy, sort of makes it more
personal and a handy reference for later. Better than having to revisit the
Vid and search for the correct clip. As I said, the in-house Vids are very
well made and instructive but a written manual, in my humble opinion, can't
be beaten. Fusion360 is a very powerful product, once you start to
understand its complexities.

Cheers,

LJ

Re: Status changed to: Solution Provided

Anonymous — Fri, 05 Dec 2014 08:04:54 GMT

Hi Timera, I have responded in the Forum thread.

Basically for my purposes I prefer one lookup document that I can read on my
desk and quickly reference. So, unless you or someone on the Team objects, I
will combine these individual docs into one and use this as my one-stop
reference doc. I can then extend this as you produce more guidance.

Kindest Regards,

LJ

Re: PDF User Manual for Fusion 360 [Ultimate]

laughingcreek — Fri, 02 Jan 2015 18:27:44 GMT

The videos pdf's are great tools for learning. I would really like a referance manual. Some time i just need to have my memory jogged on how to properly use a command. Some time's there is an option you haven't noticed before and would like to (quickly) find out what it is for. Or maybe a reminder of what a color means, etc. Wading through video and pdf tutorials for this info is tedious

Re: PDF User Manual for Fusion 360 [Ultimate]

Anonymous — Tue, 31 Mar 2015 17:41:50 GMT

Did you manage to assemble a PDF? If you wouldn't mind sharing that would be extremely useful. Im waisting an awful lot of time trying to find the information through the tutorials and it's really not very efficient. I'm having a really hard time understanding why they can not produce a manual...

Re: PDF User Manual for Fusion 360 [Ultimate]

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 06:30:46 GMT

LJ Your argument is right on target. Let me explain where I'm coming from. I spent more than 35 years in technical publications and have written in 20 different disciplines.. As a beginning tech writer I made myself a promise to write what I produced in the manner that the guy on the street could understand it. The use of video's proliferates today and abbout 99% of them assume too much of the viewer (after all they are produced by the coders, not the users). Trying to make sense of Step One means three or four more points go unresolved, so you are going over and over the same thing while trying to get what the video is trying to get across. A complicated product like Fusion 360 should be accompanied by firstly, a carefully written introductory manual followed by correlated effort-specific books. Good work.

Re: PDF User Manual for Fusion 360 [Ultimate]

larry_adams1970 — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 05:20:35 GMT

The #2 pdf does not match the video.

Re: PDF User Manual for Fusion 360 [Ultimate]

Anonymous — Sat, 07 Nov 2015 02:22:21 GMT

I have used the above mentioned tutorial. I thought that it needed work. Basic was basic but above that the techniques where not clear.

Re: PDF User Manual for Fusion 360 [Ultimate]

Anonymous — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 20:56:24 GMT

The zip file with the data download is not downloading

Re: PDF User Manual for Fusion 360 [Ultimate]

Anonymous — Mon, 09 May 2016 04:40:30 GMT

Right on. I learned Inventor by purchasing a how-to-do manual.

With fusion it has taken me a long time but I'm beginning to understand as I work with each icon. Since there are no manuals that I know of, I have been slowly creating my own simple manual showing each icon and how to use it. This is helping me learn the process which in many instances very much like inventor. When I get to the assembly stages of my search regarding how to do Fusion I expect to stall on my personal project until my search and try process leads me to how to assemble predesigned components into simple and progressively to more complex assemblies. I simply cannot keep up with the nice video descriptions some have provided, but they move along much too fast for me to comprehend and learn from them.

I only wish someone more familiar with Fusion could have created a manual rather than as I am trying to do by myself. This is a personal learning process during my retirement with a hopeful direction toward being able to use Fusion for useful hobby projects such as 7 1/2" gauge model engineering locomotives which I have done in the past.

Doug Wilkinson

Seattle, WA

Re: PDF User Manual for Fusion 360 [Ultimate]

Anonymous — Mon, 09 May 2016 16:08:22 GMT

Hi Doug,

You wouldn't believe how many Kudos points I've received for suggested one
unabridged manual to the Fusion Team. All that proves to me, is that there
is a need for such a document.

There are manuals present in PDF form but they tend to cover single aspects
of Fusion, in combination with the related video. Indeed I've found both the
individual manuals and related videos to be of excellent quality. However
like you, I 'need' a full manual by my side when learning a complex
application such as this. It's well-nigh impossible to keep moving between
video and manual whilst understand and retaining information from previous
video/manual combinations.

With the Fusion Team's consent, I used Adobe Acrobat Pro to combine all the
singleton manuals into one coherent version. This effectively gives me the
one manual I require.

Hope that helps.

Lyndon

Re: PDF User Manual for Fusion 360 [Ultimate]

Anonymous — Sun, 05 Jun 2016 14:05:38 GMT

Firstly, I'm going to disagree that this "Solution" has been provided.

What was supplied was a set of Tutorial documents and videos. In my mind, these definitely do not provide the functionality of a users manual.

As time progresses, user manuals seem to be a thing that are falling by the wayside. This is an unfortunate development. I learned both SolidWorks and Sketchup with a printed copy of the electronic users manual that was provided. This allowed me to look up things that weren't clear to me in the tutorials.

Here is a hearfelt plea to the folks at Autodesk,

Please reverse this trend. I'm using the enthusiast version of Fusion360 and I would pay for a good, thorough users manual.

Thank you,

chris

Re: PDF User Manual for Fusion 360 [Ultimate]

daniel_lyall — Sun, 05 Jun 2016 22:10:24 GMT

it is to hard at this time to do a user manual they would need a full time team to do it and it will never be up to date, fusion is changing so much all the time that this is in the supper hard basket. we are working on getting them to redo what is most important for user's but this is a moving target a new thread on the same subject get's started after every update. it is best at this time to just ask on the forum how to do something and keep up with the quick tip vids on the fusion youtube page, the learning material was good in feb but some of it is wrong now. the learning material is ok for the basic stuff the high up stuff you have to ask or work it out your self it will be like this for at least another 5 years.

Re: PDF User Manual for Fusion 360 [Ultimate]

Anonymous — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 00:23:38 GMT

There should be an easy way for many, common functions followed by intuitive guided user interface that pops up so we then learn the complex and honestly, proper way to do it since the application is ultimately intended to create extremely complex and finely tuned objects.

For whatever reason the support is a mess of tutorials with no tabulation system for us to navigate through them, seek simplified, exacting answers for a simple process and for some reason, the control system for creating, modifying and manipulating is the furthest thing from intuitive and practical. If you're going to go extreme at least create user support so a simple procedure to modify a simple object doesn't turn into 2-3 hours of slopping through information and the program.
A program like Sketchup when I want to chop a flat bottom onto a sphere it's a very simple, logical process relative to how you do things in Windows paint.

It would make sense to incorporate a dumbed down interface so new users and learning amateurs can do something as simple as I've mentioned by left clicking, drawing a square, chopping the bottom off with the standard parameter pop ups for exacting the axis depths, and THEN an information bubble appears showing how to do it the complicated way that is a pita to learn, however, I have gotten far enough with the program to understand why the U.I. is so challenging and ultimately, nonsensical when you're first learning.

As I've toyed with more complex designs and modifications, the screwy interface is actually more precise and versatile than the way you would do it in something more traditional such as Sketchup. You can knock out 3-4 processes in a single step with the GUI system in Fusion 360 which is why I keep returning to it.

So I know how to get my flat bottom on that sphere am I even doing it the most practical, efficient way?
I doubt it and therein lies the problem with the GUI and lack of support!
Odds are F360 will still end up on the top of the pile in a few more years for the preferred application in all things 2 and 3D CAD.

The average craftsman, teenager or housewife that wants to get into engineering, 3D graphical art etc. etc. etc?

I think after a week of hands on guided assistance you would find most would expect a paycheck from you to keep learning F360.

It's a labor of love which separates the tinkerers from the inventors and engineers.
I understand many people consider the program to be for hobbyists and amateurs, however, I've been at this for a few years and made the most progress with F360.
I've been to 3 different colleges 2 for electrical/electronic engineering and you could not pay me to go through SolidWorks CAD and CNC courses at this point in my life considering the massive courseload and cost involved. Some of the absurd, demeaning hoops you jump through as prerequisites just to get into CAD or CNC courses are one more reason our education system in the USA is corrupt, money grab and ultimately, failure causing us to fall so far behind in engineering, manufacturing and outright inventing technology you may as well move to the UK, Europe or even Asia if you want to get a competent curriculum for your degree and teachers that aren't incompetent idiots.

For these reason if you are really serious about learning design and manufacturing be it personal or commercial production, I don't think there's a better option than F360.
I now actually feel fortunate to be returning to my original school to wrap up my education in engineering because I don't have to go through CAD and realized after a couple months with the other school, I would much rather tough it out with F360 than some incompetent idiot that isn't fit to fry hamburgers let alone teach drafting and engineering courses. My struggles with F360 are a pittance compared to a moron teacher making 6 figures a year to explain and demonstrate absolutely nothing in a drafting class that is simply outdated and useless but required to move into CAD, advanced circuits, CNC etc. etc. etc.
When you talk to grads from the school or further progressed students that tell you they remember absolutely nothing from this nightmare course and idiot teacher, Fusion 360 looks like a godsend!

Re: PDF User Manual for Fusion 360 [Ultimate]

daniel_lyall — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 05:51:06 GMT

these will help they are getting there the fusion vid was from a big push from users to have a vid or a paper like it

https://www.udemy.com/product-design-fusion-360/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbSkwvZyU_0