topic Re: Some simple feature requests to streamline design in Fusion Design, Validate & Document Forum

Some simple feature requests to streamline design

byronandgomez — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 15:51:58 GMT

I've been using fusion professionally for years and here are a few easy to instigate features that would make everyones life a little easier.

Please upvote if you think any of these would be useful to you.

Apologies in advance if any of them exist already and I've just failed to notice them.

1. Super Visible: A toggleable visibility override that makes the a particular component/body etc. the only visible component without changing the visibility status of anything else. This would save you from having to turn off dozens of things to perform an action only to then have to turn everything back on again a moment later. simply right click the eye icon and select "super visible"

2. Preserve settings in extrude: a simple check box within the extrude command pallet that saves all extrude settings and values for the next time you use the command. This would save a great deal of time on certain repetitive tasks. The same could be applied to many other tools.

3. Appearance override: An option to make everything appear in the default steel. I work in wood and the wood textures can be messy to look at and are more demanding on the computer. In theory I could just keep the appearance features at the end of the timeline but in practice it is easy to forget and occasionally with patterned objects that have different appearances on different faces it is best to apply appearances before pattern feature.

4. space becomes underscore in parameters: This is a minor gripe but can we please have space automatically converted into an underscore in the name field of parameters. If you have a lot of parameters with long names to input then having to hit "shift -" every time is awkward and slow.

5. date of last save/export as an attribute in the tittle block of drawing space: the date a drawing was first created is not useful information for me or my client, it might be years ago if it's an amendment of an old design.

6. lock cross section plane in drawing space: adjusting the length of a section view often results in accidentally changing the angle, something that I can't see anyone ever wanting to do.

7. leaders that point at empty space: If you are labelling finishes in the drawing space you want to point at the middle of a space, not a line or other edge feature. Perhaps all enclosed spaces could have an invisible central point a leader could lock to to retain cohesion after model changes.

8. A rebate (rabbet if you're American) tool that functions like the fillet or chamfer tools: rebates are an extremely common design feature in many industries, being able to apply them more quickly would be helpful.

9. Combine multiple tool bodies into multiple target bodies: there's a plugin for this but it really should be a core feature.

10. A zone at the end of the timeline which the marker will not move into except when manually forced. These features would therefore always be applied at the end. This zone could be suppressed as a group or set to be automatically disregarded by the drawing space. It would be useful for features that you wish to have when producing renders but not on your technical drawings for example small fillets or splits in bodies that allow you to visually simulate joints in wood.

Please upvote or comment if you like the sound of any of these or have your own simple feature ideas.

p.s. Fusion team, your dimensions disassociate at the drop of a pin. Please make this more robust before I accidentally throw my computer out the window.

Re: Some simple feature requests to streamline design

kacper.suchomski — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 19:14:03 GMT

Please check the Isolate tool (browser context menu)
Click the three dots next to the size field to use previously used values. You can also use parameters.

Re: Some simple feature requests to streamline design

jordan783ZS — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 01:55:23 GMT

3. You could use "Display Component Colours" under the "Utilities/Inspect" tab. It makes all the components different solid colours, which should be easier on your PC.

Re: Some simple feature requests to streamline design

Drewpan — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 04:45:44 GMT

Hi,

Some good thoughts.

Can you please give an example image of what a Rebate (rabbet) is?

I am Australian and I don't have a clue what this refers to. I might

know what it is if I actually see one.

Cheers

Andrew

Re: Some simple feature requests to streamline design

davebYYPCU — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 07:07:40 GMT

Rebate - to cut the small profile away that results in the L shaped profile.

Eg, Picture and window frames.

Might help....

Re: Some simple feature requests to streamline design

byronandgomez — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 10:29:05 GMT

That does the trick, I new there would be some tricks I'd missed. thanks!

Re: Some simple feature requests to streamline design

byronandgomez — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 10:36:18 GMT

That's the one, obviously this pretty easy to do as is but it would be faster if it could be done like the fillet tool, especially for the edges of a curved panel or anything with a compound curve.

Re: Some simple feature requests to streamline design

aleksei_ovsienko — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 11:18:26 GMT

I feel like Fusion drawings shortcomings and bugs warrant at least a separate thread pinned to the top. Or maybe even a Forum section. Just because they are so numerous and starting a topic for each of them will completely clog the forum.
But being able to point a leader to a surface instead of object is indeed one of them.

Re: Some simple feature requests to streamline design

byronandgomez — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 11:35:18 GMT

Hi Kacper, thanks for the reply

1. Great, thats exactly what I wanted although I maintain that this would be more intuitive if worked into the visibility icon but so long as it exists then I'm happy.

2. This doesn't really do what I want as critically it still defaults to join when I may want a new body or component. I want to be able to go: extrude, select face, enter. and do the same thing as the last time I used extrude. I don't want to go: extrude, select face, three dots, select value, select operation, new component, enter. as that takes two or three times longer.

My way you wouldn't even need to move your mouse over to the tool pallet, just select your face and hit enter. This sort of thing can really add up with repetitive tasks.

I have definitely seen and heard other people complaining about extrude always defaulting to join.

Re: Some simple feature requests to streamline design

bwalker145 — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 14:14:03 GMT

7. leaders that point at empty space: If you are labelling finishes in the drawing space you want to point at the middle of a space, not a line or other edge feature. Perhaps all enclosed spaces could have an invisible central point a leader could lock to to retain cohesion after model changes.

Would like this as well. My current workaround is to place a leader note on an edge, and then Right Click > Move to break the association. You'll get a re-association warning & it's not linked to the object, but it does what I need it to for now.

p.s. Fusion team, your dimensions disassociate at the drop of a pin. Please make this more robust before I accidentally throw my computer out the window.

I've lost many hours re-associating FCF's that randomly decided to disassociate, when all I did was re-open the file.

Re: Some simple feature requests to streamline design

aleksei_ovsienko — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 07:35:14 GMT

I believe they're looking into object diassociation thing as I raised this subject a while ago and they gave the issue a reference number. It is indeed a ball ache.
The whole way objects are associated or not associated is weird. For example there is no way to associate a simple annotation to a view. Sketched objects are not associated with views either and you have to constantly mind it while moving things. You can't just drag a view and expect things that belong there to follow.
Also individual leader annotations need to be able to change the tip from arrow to dot to circle to nothing to whatever. Right now you either change all of them or nothing.
The ability to point a leader note or bubble to a surface instead of object (and keep the association) is very basic as in many countries pointing at surfaces is a prescribed convention.

Re: Some simple feature requests to streamline design

bwalker145 — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 12:10:00 GMT

Agree with all your points, the drawing environment definitely needs some refinement.

Sketched objects are not associated with views either and you have to constantly mind it while moving things. You can't just drag a view and expect things that belong there to follow.

Not sure if you're already doing this, but I've been adding sketches in the Design environment that I need to stay associated on the Drawing, and just turning visibility on. Not perfect solution for all use-cases of sketches on drawings, but works well for a lot of my purposes.

Re: Some simple feature requests to streamline design

TrippyLighting — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 12:50:13 GMT

9. Can you provide a link to that plugin?

10. You can do that with Configurations. Here's a link to the documentation that describes this functionality.

Re: Some simple feature requests to streamline design

byronandgomez — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 15:13:52 GMT

9. Here we go, it's called "Cut/Join by Component", I can't recommend it enough (and it's free!)

https://apps.autodesk.com/FUSION/en/Detail/Index?id=488231789610483988&appLang=en&os=Win64

10. Thanks, that looks ideal.

Re: Some simple feature requests to streamline design

byronandgomez — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 15:17:28 GMT

Thanks, thats a good workaround, I hadn't spotted you could do that.

Re: Some simple feature requests to streamline design

TrippyLighting — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 16:30:44 GMT

@byronandgomez wrote:

9. Here we go, it's called "Cut/Join by Component", I can't recommend it enough (and it's free!)

https://apps.autodesk.com/FUSION/en/Detail/Index?id=488231789610483988&appLang=en&os=Win64

10. Thanks, that looks ideal.

Ah, that is what you meant. I asked the Fusion team a good while ago (a year ?) to at least ship that plugin with Fusion. It would be helpful if it would, eb "hard coded" into Fusion.