This is what we're doing about these outages

[prabakarm]

Thanks everyone for your patience as we worked thru the issue.  Fusion 360 has been back online for few hrs and we are closely monitoring the health.  As I mentioned in my update last night, I would like share what we are working on to make Fusion 360 more resilient and more importantly make sure you have access to your data all the time.

As Rahul (our chief architect) discussed in his blog, cloud software as compared to desktop software behaves in non-deterministic ways.  So our immediate focus is to make sure you have access to your data while we work the overall availability, resiliency and remediation.  We have three projects underway.  We will get specific on the timelines as we get closer to delivery but rest assured we are working as fast as we can.

1. A better offline experience 
   As many of you highlighted the data panel experience in the offline mode needs work.  First, we are working on improving the offline data panel experience so that it is closer to being online.  Second, preemptively detect outages or connectivity issues and transition seamlessly to the offline mode.  The data you are working will be cached so that you can continue to work in the offline mode.  The image below shows the improved experience in our dev builds.
   
   
2. Selective caching 
   Enable selective caching so that you can select projects you want to be cached in case there is an unexpected outage or connectivity issues.
   
   
3. Automatic caching without the need for Fusion 360 running 
   We have a project in the works which will have a similar behavior to box or dropbox where your projects can be cached in the background

Again, thank you for your patience.   Making Fusion 360 reliable is our top priority and we are 100% committed to it.

Prabakar

[bensbenz]

---

@prabakarm wrote:

1. Let us start with something as simple as Rename for example.  Renaming a SolidWorks part (without using special tools) will break any referencing assembly.  Moving a SolidWorks part will break any referencing assembly.  In Fusion 360 you can rename and move designs and any references will automatically know.  In SolidWorks every assembly always opens the latest version of the parts you have on disk.  Fusion 360 assembly references are version aware. This means when you roll back to an older version, you will see that assembly exactly as that version was at that time in history, including all of the child parts.
   

---

@prabakarmThe data management or rather ease of data management is one of the things that Fusion does that I really took for granted until this last outage. Naturally I freaked out a bit, downloaded Inventor and started to play. The very first obstacle I encountered was (surprise!) data management. I exported an orange vise model as step, imported into inventor assembled and clicked save. The resulting output initially shocked and then reminded me of the time before Fusion. A time when I used SW, when I had to deal with a million different files and folders on both my server and workstation. The pain and time wasted re-linking things that got moved or renamed ect ect.

In reflection, data management is probably one of the key things that makes Fusion so easy to get started with but also one that is simply overlooked by most of the users, myself included. Its really the way file and data management should be. The inefficiency of files and folders you manage yourself is immense, I say let the machines do the work!

The "I just want to save my data locally" argument is not even a logical one when you consider how the system works in its entirety. That said it would be awesome if you guys released something along the lines of a Hybrid Cloud solution, I would be on board with that immediately.  Being in IT I have seen almost every critical cloud service that started as cloud only move in this direction. Most of them offer an appliance that acts as the middle man should the internet or cloud go down, and it basically takes all the risk out of the equation. Every business I work with that refused to use the cloud, now uses some form of hybrid cloud. It could also be the easiest solution for you to develop. With VM tech being so advanced these days, you could roll out a virtual appliance, a version of the servers you run in the cloud now, and as far as the frontend client is concerned its all the same. Perhaps you could have another subscription level like Fusion 360 Business. When you have that, it would link your client to your own local appliance and that appliance to the cloud. Thats my 2 cents, thanks for the post and more detailed roadmap.

[EdDRM]

If I can have 100 days saved locally why not everthing?

Is there going to be any way of getting 3+ years of data downloaded and saved locally?

If I had everything saved locally and in the cload and offline mode was improved it would clear up any issue I can think of.

[daniel_lyall]

yep export them out when they are finished or down loaded them from your A360 page

[EdDRM]

Thank you for the reply.

Is there a tutorial on how to do this?
It sounds like an easy fix for my future work, but what about the work done in the past 3 years can I download it in bulk or is it a 1 project at time thing?
If there is no download all option this is something that I think might be needed at this point in time.
From here on out it also should be a very very simple task to save a finished project locally.
If this was the case and we had a perfect storm situation where the cloud was down and a customer needed a part that was made 2 years ago I would have access to all the data needed to produce the part and in most cases there would be no changes to the project.

[daniel_lyall]

You cant as far as I know do it in bulk.

What's coming when Bim 2.0 is finished, it will be fine then, but that is still don't know when it's coming.

Having fusion on 2 OS slows Dev down a lot they like to put both updates out at the sametime now the Apple users kicked up a stick last year with the windows version being a head of the Apple version.

If you downloaded them from your A360 they come out as .f3dz files what you can't just open when the cloud is dead.

If you export them out they are .f3d what you can use when the cloud is dead. I will whack out a screencast soon.

This was the second big cloud fail this year, what cost a lot of people. the fusion guys don't like there arses being handed to them, they will be doing there best to make sure they don't have a massive fail again.

Your data is safe as They have it in the same places the DOD use so it's very safe.

[EdDRM]

Thank you Daniel for the comment.

Hopefully I will get an answer from an Autodesk employee.

[cekuhnen]

@prabakarm

Those plans look great - providing the ability so to store data in general with an important project.

Very excited to read about this.

@reeses

You are welcome. I think when users finally have the ability to pin a project we are all good.

If the server goes down then we will not be hit. Knowing Fusion uses Cloud data - it is smart to pin an important project

for local use anyway - specifically under a deadline.

With the cloud systems I use to store and share data I do the same. You as a user also have to plan ahead.

Thing is technology can always crash. And since I moved everything into the cloud I am not afraid of hardware failures

anymore. If somebody steal my computer I know my years of work are online.

@burnandreturn

Sorry to hear your bad experience. We use it quite successfully for academia and professional work.

Maine reason we also do not use OnShape is because it is only online. No internet no OnShape.

Fusion in that regards is dramatically better and you can work offline.

All that is missing is just a better user control over storing local projects where the user just can pin the project

for storing as long as it is pinned. The rest is present and works very well such as collaboration. What do you miss?

@fppf00

If all you do is machining what is then the need to tell the customer what software you use?

They will send you step files and such only anyway.

[fppf00]

"If all you do is machining what is then the need to tell the customer what software you use?

They will send you step files and such only anyway."

I don't need to tell them what software I use.

But some have very specific NDA's that deal with data storage, security, and data transmission.

In those cases cloud may not be appropriate.

I'm not asking for a huge change here.

Just take the export function and turn it into a save local function. And if I use the open from file option, let the save button save back to that local file.

All the code is there already under the hood, just needs some tweaks to the drop down menu and a extra case on the save button.

Doesn't derail the vision for the future. Just lets some users with specific use cases be able to use the software easier without impacting others.

[rahul.vora]

Good point about F3D/F3Z.

We have a project in the backlog to rationalize the Fusion archive to be a single F3Z format and to support importing of F3Z from the desktop. This will allow the user to archive data and restore it on the desktop, even when Fusion is in offline mode.

[rahul.vora]

We have a plan to allow Export and Import of Fusion "archive", a.k.a. F3Z on the desktop. So, with that you will be able to take a Fusion design and export it on the desktop as an archive (including all referenced files) and at any time restore that archive using Open from desktop,

[EdDRM]

If I can have 100 days saved locally why not everthing? Is there going to be any way of getting 3+ years of data downloaded and saved locally? If I had everything saved locally and in the cload and offline mode was improved it would clear up any issue I can think of. There was a great idea here of changing export to save locally. It sounds like an easy fix for my future work, but what about the work done in the past 3 years can I download it in bulk or is it a 1 project at time thing? If there is no download all option this is something that I think might be needed at this point in time. From here on out it also should be a very very simple task to save a finished project locally. If this was the case and we had a perfect storm situation where the cloud was down and a customer needed a part that was made 2 years ago I would have access to all the data needed to produce the part and in most cases there would be no changes to the project. Is there a tutorial on how to do this?

[JetForMe]

The data-integrity aspect is an important one. I only skimmed this thread, and you may have already said as much, but I'd like to argue for "local first." That is, save all documents locally, and sync them to the cloud in the background. When a document is opened, make a quick check against the cloud to see if it needs syncing, and if not, just open from the local store. Build everything around this model, and then if the cloud is unavailable (or the user so chooses), it will work seamlessly.

Note the difference from a local cache: the files are stored locally permanently, and not something that might be deleted on a restart or if space is needed (you might want to add this ability, but it adds complexity). That way, I would never run into a situation where a file I haven't touched in a while is suddenly unavailable because it wasn't in the cache.

[EdDRM]

JetForMe

There is a post in the idea station called "Locally Store All Files" by Josh.nelson sugestting just that.

Please vote for it we need all the votes we can get...there seems to be some push back with this subject.

[Coscor_NPL]

Sounds great! glad to hear it has focus, and it sounds like it is the right things to implement

[sambirchenough]

These outages are becoming a regular occurrence. It seems like Fusion has been down more in the past two months than in the previous two years. Any insight as to if that's going to change?

[cekuhnen]

@sambirchenough Odd - I only experienced and know about 2 this year. Could it be server Internet connection related?

[HughesTooling]

@cekuhnen The health dashboard history shows 21 problem since the beginning of October, you've just been lucky.

 https://health.autodesk.com/history

Mark

[sambirchenough]

@cekuhnen well I've had two emails from health dashboard just this week (Tuesday & today) saying it's down. Luckily neither affected me. There has been 3 outages in the past few months that have each greatly affected me though, so I distinctly remember them. I'm quite certain there has been at least 5 this year (today's was probably the shortest).

[cekuhnen]

@HughesTooling

Ah I see - I work on different platforms and apps so I might just have missed them when not working in Fusion at that time.

[PhilProcarioJr]

@cekuhnen

Those of us that use and rely on Fusion all day everyday have been hit by at least 90% of those 21 in the last few months.....