topic Re: Proprietary Designs in Fusion Support Forum

Proprietary Designs

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 16:45:16 GMT

Where are the files stored? Can Fusion 360 work completely offline? Can we install Fusion 360 without the Internet?

Re: Proprietary Designs

James.Youmatz — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 17:46:11 GMT

Hi @Anonymous,

Welcome to the Fusion 360 Community!

Great questions! All of your data when saved to the cloud is stored on our A360 platform. We use Amazon Web Services as our service. Fusion cannot work completely offline - as it requires you to authenticate your login credentials once every two weeks (so two weeks is the max you can work offline before coming back online) at which time your data will sync to the online cloud servers. Fusion cannot be installed offline as it is a streaming installer. We do offer a lab installation that is offline, but it is a fundamentally different installer and is really only meant for educational institutions. I would check out our security white paper here as well as our Autodesk Trust Center.

Thanks,

Re: Proprietary Designs

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 18:39:45 GMT

James,

Thanks for getting back.

I read those documents and they provided the patented statements about encryption and stuff.
One peculiar question is how Autodesk handles backward annotation with encrypted files?
Who sets up the encryption passwords? I am assuming the user has a password with Autodesk adding the salt. Either way where is the encryption being done and undone? This means...is meta-data being passed to Autodesk via AWS and then encrypted (albeit amongst everyone else's projects)or is it a local function before sending to the dark cloud.

How about the full AutoCAD or Inventor? Do these allow fully offline installation and operation?

We are evaluating CAD packages other than Solidworks which works very well offline.

Re: Proprietary Designs

schneik-adsk — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 21:54:54 GMT

Inventor would be my suggestion. It is well suited to the completely disconnected workflows you are describing. I'll leave our security experts to address your specific questions on how Fusion's secure communications function.

Re: Proprietary Designs

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 13:01:53 GMT

Thanks again. What happened to AutoCAD and why Inventor over AutoCAD? Does Inventor accommodate CURA or other 3D printing support like Fusion 360? Does Inventor seamlessly integrate with EAGLE like Fusion 360? Does your version of EAGLE operate in an off-line mode? If so then we can still use EAGLE but need to do things the old fashioned way with Inventor...is that right. (The old fashioned way we are using EAGLE and Altium with Solidworks.)

Re: Proprietary Designs

TrippyLighting — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 16:54:12 GMT

What makes you believe that Fusion 360 integrates seamlessly with Eagle ?

The integration between Eagle and Fusion 360 is still in preview state and far from complete. It's not in a state I would consider for production work.

What I consider complete I've discussed in detail with the developers.

Re: Proprietary Designs

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 17:09:53 GMT

Well that's what they say...demonstrate. But then again we were supposed have flying cars by now. The propaganda videos look promising for an ECAD/MCAD relationship.

Re: Proprietary Designs

TrippyLighting — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 17:30:02 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
The propaganda videos look promising for an ECAD/MCAD relationship.

They do look promising and considering that I discussed some of these details with the developers just last year when I visited Autodesk University, what they have implemented so far is quite impressive, but I would still not use it for production work in a commercial environment.

All new software implementations contain some bugs. That's just the nature of the beast.

Re: Proprietary Designs

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 17:47:53 GMT

Thanks for the quick response. I've been using EAGLE and Solidworks since the earth cooled and now since Autodesk owns' EAGLE I thought I'd look at their stuff. The Fusion 360 package looks nice but the cloud really concerns me about proprietary work for my company and customers. I haven't received any good answers to how Fusion 360 uploads to their servers and manages reopening encrypted files (across all servers at that) to maintain updates. Does everyone get a different key, do I share my key with everyone needing the files, does F360 upload some kind of meta-data and then encrypts...which puts Autodesk completely in charge of encryption. Lastly I cannot figure out why a company the size of Autodesk is using Amazon...that's a cheap way out as I'm sure they've invested in quite a software/IT team. Bottom line is I like the F360/EAGLE mix but can't recommend using it for anything important (proprietary) to our clients.