AutoCAD LT & Fusion 360

[rpayne]

If I subscribe to Fusion 360, do I need AutoCAD LT?

[john.vellek · Accepted solution]

HI @rpayne,

Fusion 360 should work fine on its own depending on how your plan to implement it in your workflow.  Here is a link that gives a brief overview of its features.

I suggest you download a Trial version to see how you can put it into your design process.

Fusion 360 can interact with AutoCAD but you might not ever need it to!.

Please select the Accept as Solution button if my post fully solves your issue or answers your question.

[john.vellek]

HI rpayne

I am checking back to see if my post helped you with your problem. Please add a post with your results so other Forum users can benefit.

Please hit the Accept as Solution button if my post fully solves your issue or answers your question.

[rpayne]

Being still new to selling Autodesk products, I have not learned all of the features of all the programs.  I am promoting Fusion 360 to customers that have traditionally been anchored in older versions of AutoCAD, especially very heavy in 2D drawing.  I have a new prospect that would like to begin introducing 3D into their processes, but fears that they would not be able to work with any of their old 2D drawings (some going back pre-2000).  I assured them they would be able to open the files and work with the 2D files, but they would save a new revised file in a current version of DWG, or PDF.   Any one still working in an old ACAD (2010), would not be able to open the new Fusion 360 2D drawing. Is that correct?  Does an old ACAD user need to relearn all of their skills to use Fusion 360 in doing 2D drawings?  Does Fusion 360 have the same capabilities as  ACAD or ACAD LT?  Why would someone still want ACAD LT instead of Fusion 360, which is higher in price?

[pendean]

AutoCAD LT is not a 3D product design tool: it's a 2D drafting tool. You are comparing two products that are not competing with each other at all.

[john.vellek]

HI @rpayne,

As Dean mentions in his post, the two products are quite dissimilar. AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT are typically used for drafting and documentation whereas Fusion 360 is more a design tool for part modeling that enables integration with CAD-CAM.  There are comparisons for Autodesk software online that might give you a better feature by feature comparison. Link Here and Here and Here.

As far as AutoCAD opening older files, this is part of the functionality in AutoCAD. Drawings can also be saved to previous file versions but doing so might result in some feature loss.

Note too, AutoCAD LT is a 2D platform and Fusion is 3D.

[alendamichael]

Can you bring a 2D drawing from AutoCAD LT into Fusion 360 to create a 3D drawing?

Thank you,

Alenda

[pendean]

Yes https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/fusion-360/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/How... but Fusion 360 will not automagically convert a 2D into a 3D.if that is your intent.

[edcorusa]

I have been using AutoCAD LT for years. I only do mechanical drawings with it. I have been using Modo to do 3D modeling for product images. I was think about using Fusion 360, to help in the modeling and mechanical drawings. If I switched I would drop AutoCAD LT and just use Fusion 360. I have a number of drawings done in AutoCAD LT with text and annotations. Is there a way to open them up and edit them in Fusion 360? Or, would I need a different program? I would only need to edit the text and annotations. Just incase if I need to edit a little information on the drawing and not have to create a new drawing.

[pendean]

The folks in the Fusion360 forum could probably best answer your questions https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360/ct-p/1234

Repost: include a sample DWG file too.

[john.vellek]

Hi @edcorusa,

Can you attach one of your files to a post so I can test it in the LT to Fusion 360 process? I would like to see the complexity of your file and the way you have it built.

I am happy to test a few ideas to see the best method to get this to work for you.

Please select the Accept as Solution button if my post solves your issue or answers your question.

[B.Student · Accepted solution]

@john.vellek I have F360, and in many cases use it to draw parts that are effectively 2D (e.g. parts I might cut from acrylic sheet) ... I am trying to ascertain that if I purchase Autocad LT, I can use it to do a lot of the 2D work offline without depending on the cloud, export that work to 360 as-needed, and with a few caveats and limitations, I can also re-import 2D objects from F360 into Autocad LT.

Can you confirm or refute that my rough sketch of the proposed workflow above is correct?

BStudent

[john.vellek · Accepted solution]

Hi @B.Student,

I can't think of anything that would negate this workflow. Please download a Trial and test it for yourself.  I suspect that using DXF format between the two applications will make the process pretty smooth.

Please select the Accept as Solution button if my post solves your issue or answers your question.

[B.Student · Accepted solution]

@john.vellek    Accepted  -  I know DXF works fine on the 360 side.