topic Re: Fusion - Drawing sketches, API, overall inadequacy in Fusion Design, Validate & Document Forum

Fusion - Drawing sketches, API, overall inadequacy

aleksei_ovsienko — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 16:23:26 GMT

Let me start with saying that in my opinion Drawing workspace needs its own forum section. Because there is just so many problems with Drawings that I feel like they do not get the priority they deserve because they get drowned to the bottom of the Design forum.

Forgive me if I'm being harsh here but Drawing seems like the worst part of Fusion package. Fusion has a rather deсent Design workspace, very nice Simulation workspace. Render is also pretty decent as far as I can tell and surpasses lets say Creo (I will be comparing mostly to Creo as this is what I have lots of experience with).

I do not use Mnaufacture or Electronics. But it seems like Manufacture gets a lot of attention in updates. And I can say little on Animation and Generative Design.
All of these other workspaces I had experience with in Fusion look and feel good, easy to use. And get a lot of useful updates as of late. It feels like there's lots of resources being allocated to their development.

But sadly not Drawing. Drawings still to this day gives an impression of an application developed as a half baked bandaid solution outsourced to an entirely different team and then largely forgotten. Most glaring issues do get fixed. And the introduction of limits and fits is good. But overall it does little to remedy the inadequacy of Fusion Drawing.
This issues I raise in this post are but the most glaring. There are numerous others scattered all around this forum section.

Skteches. I struggle to understand why sketching in Drawing looks entirely different from sketching in Design. A whole host of features are simply absent. There's no center rectangle, no project...
Just have a look.
Design:

And then Drawing:

There's no Project in Drawing skteches, I can't copy model lines into sketch and use them as references (for example to offset). A simple task of defining an area where I want roughness to be controlled on a part just turned into a half an hour struggle.

And then the killer feature - sketch dimensions in Drawing do not repsect the views scale. It took me back all the way to year 2000 when I was learning Autocad. I have to manually scale dimensions. And why would a sketch respect the views scale, one could ask, if it is not really associated with the view at all? It is nothing but lines on screen. Move the view without first window selecting everything and the lines will be left behind and you'll have to Ctrl+Z or you'll never make them fit again. This is a major issue if you need sketched geometry to dimension the drawing. You just can't trust that dimension, it's not anchored to anything.

How is it possible that stkeching in Design and Drawings are such drastically different experiences? My only explaination is that these parts of the system were designed by entirely different teams with no communication between them and perhaps years apart in time. And the only things in common is the visual design brandbook.

Then there's another issue that seems minor but also speaks to how much Drawings stand out of the rest of the Fusion systems. API and scripting functionality. Or rather lack thereof. Whereas Fusion Design allows you to programmatically do quite a lot of things, the only thing available in Drawings is PDF export. And even that is hardly straightforward and if you look it up in the API section of the board you'll see that people struggled to make it work for a long time before some smart guy actually found a workaround.

These and many other issues with drawings myself and others have previously raised here (dimensions loosing references, no access to parameters, no flexibility in drawing standards, etc, etc...) is what prompts me to suggest that a separate drawing section of the forum, dedicated specifically to improving Drawing Workspace be created.

I know that competing CAD developers also do not pay much attention to improving their drawing modules. Creo hasn't seen a major change in drawing functionality (not counting small interface improvements) since the 90s. But it is because they had it all figured out by then already.
Whereas Fusions Drawings are a single part of the system that is holding it back.

Another solution which would, in my opinion, be preferable is to re-write the whole Drawing workspace from the ground up, allocating substantial resources to the task and taking into account all the best practices long known to the CAD community and implemented in systems like Creo or Inventor. Because I suspect that a lot of the highlighted problems simply can not be solved without a major re-design that will most likely have a knock-on effect on other parts of the system such as Design.

This post has been edited due to: @lauri_barnhart added the product to the title to help more community members find this topic.

Re: Fusion - Drawing sketches, API, overall inadequacy

dsouzasujay — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 13:26:01 GMT

Hi @aleksei_ovsienko ,

Thank you for taking the time to share such detailed feedback about the Drawing workspace. I want to make sure I’m understanding your points correctly.

You feel the Drawing environment is lacking essential capabilities compared to the Design workspace, particularly with sketching tools, view-associated geometry, and dimensions not respecting scale.
You have also highlighted that Drawings feels disconnected from the rest of Fusion and that API support is very limited.
You would like to see a dedicated forum section for Drawing related issues so they get the attention they deserve.
And overall, you are recommending that the Drawing workspace needs major investment, possibly even a redesign, to bring it up to the standards of other CAD systems.

Please let me know if this accurately captures what you’re asking.

I’ll forward your feedback and requests to our XD and product teams so they can review these concerns in detail. Your input is valuable, and we appreciate you taking the time to outline the challenges so clearly.

Thanks again for sharing this with us.

Re: Fusion - Drawing sketches, API, overall inadequacy

aleksei_ovsienko — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 14:53:15 GMT

Correct. There are also other topics in this section that address different problems with Drawing module.

Here I address the most important point - the fundamental architecture behind Drawing and whats the problem with it-

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-design-validate-document/dimensions-on-drawings-loose-reference-automatic-hole-callouts/m-p/13787705#M317122

Also here - https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-design-validate-document/fusion-rule-0-how-to-effectively-learn-fusion/m-p/13786495/highlight/true#M319858

I think I've made other posts and comment on the matter.
I will happily go into more detail if anyone is interested.

Re: Fusion - Drawing sketches, API, overall inadequacy

dsouzasujay — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 14:59:40 GMT

Thank you @aleksei_ovsienkoovsienko for the confirmation and for sharing these additional references. they are very helpful. I have passed this information along, and I’ll ask one of our team to start looking into it. I’ll keep you updated as we learn more.

Re: Fusion - Drawing sketches, API, overall inadequacy

sandip_dumbare — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 09:15:08 GMT

Hello @aleksei_ovsienko

I've some updates regarding your request on Drawing sketch. Currently we are in a testing phase for some Drawing sketch functions like, View-linked sketch and dimensioning a sketch from a a view element.

I am really interested to connect with you to understand the gaps you experience while using Fusion drawing. Please feel free to book time on my calendar or email me at sandip.dumbare@autodesk.com