Integrate tightly with Dropbox, Box, or Google Drive

[kinsleymark]

I'm sure this has already been discussed before, but I wanted to share my take on it anyway.

With Dropbox, I already have a great cloud solution to store, collaborate, and organize my entire personal and professional digital life -- I don't need another. That solution is what I use to manage all my Solidworks CAD files, and it's the same cloud solution that I use to manage my documents, .PDFs, contracts, renderings, etc. With Drobox, any file I ever need is accessable offline on all my computers, as well as in the cloud and through my phone and ipad. I don't need Autodesk to try and reinvent a new cloud storage experience, I already have that -- I simply need them to make an incredible, intuitive, superior, and powerful CAD program.

It's very frustrating that each company wants to try and re-invent a new, proprietery cloud system. I have to have "Adobe Creative Cloud" to store my Photoshop and Illustrator files. Apple wants me to use "iCloud" to store my Pages and Numbers documents. And Autodesk wants me to keep all my CAD files with them in "A360". And rarely am I ever pleased with the performance of any of them.

In an ideal world, all these companies would just focus on what they were good at (Adobe focuses on Photoshop, Apple focuses on great hardware and software, Autodesk focuses on great CAD), and then each would integrate with a company that has already proven to be an expert at cloud storage (Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, etc). All my files would be accessable in one place. And even more importantly, they would be available OFFLINE indefinitely. (Dropbox does a great job of this --- simply save a file, and immedietely every computer with that dropbox folder has an updated copy saved locally). The added benefit is that I can quickly and completely organize, move, transfer, search for, preview, and delete files from my desktop (which will always be far superior to using a browser to access an online folder structure to make changes).

I understand that Autodesk wants to focus on Social Collaboration. I agree this is important (although something that I would not use as often). My hope would be that they find a way to work collaborately with a company like Dropbox or Box to be able to do this.

Anyway, again, this is just my personal feedback. I really love what I've been able to do with Fusion so far, and I look forward to the day when I can drop Solidworks for good!

[Anonymous]

My take:

Fusion team is so married to the idea of this being game-changing cloud-leveraging software that they will not allow their users to employ a time tested, and arguably better workflow... physical storage and backup mediums. (I consider Dropbox a backup medium with a lot of amazing features.)

I think that the Cloud features that IMPROVE upon physical storage CAD systems are great. But I can only think of one feature, version handling.

Oh wait, Dropbox already does version handling.

So yeah, nevermind.

That said, I don't want them to drop the Cloud. In an ideal world they allow users to choose which they wanted to use. I'd like the option to go offline FOREVER and update as I saw necessary. Why? Well, for starters, my CNC computer would love a copy of Fusion and it doesn't even have an internet connection.

OH. And by "integrate tightly with Dropbox" I assume you mean allow us to store files on a harddrive... Lol.

/ramble

[daniel_lyall]

who is there cloud services is it there own or are they renting space 

[Anonymous]

They use Amazon S3 I believe, which they claim is the best for security, but I believe Snowden has made claims about Amazon leaking data on purpose, so I don't consider them to be that great for privacy, even though the protection of 'trade secrets' is probably best in the industry. I just feel better with offline storage for sensitive data, and many have brought up the issue of strict NDA.

If you have secret clearance and are working on a project, will they even let you use Fusion because of the cloud? Many contracted jobs offered in mechanical engineering require secret clearance... that whole trillion dollar defense budget thing.

Actually, come to think of it, anyone who uses Fusion essentially can't work in the defense field, which is the largest engineering field in... the world? Certainly the USA. Cloud storage, no drawings.

Actually I can see the promotional video now, Kickstarter glockenspeil music in the background, Fusion on a Macbook with a well groomed 24 year old male sipping coffee in a well light room, pans in and he's drawing thrusters for Tomahawk missiles collaboratively with a Chinese job shop, "cloud storage for collaboration on FREEDOM!"

Also, I made this a few days ago: http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-ideastation-request-a/revamp-offline-use/idi-p/5495669

[Anonymous]

You'll probably notice that Fusion team never responds affirmatively to threads on this topic. I suspect it's because they are struggling with this internally; sticking to a cloud service versus giving customers an "outdated" and better way to handle sensitive and valuable data.Who knew "Save" would ever be a question?

[carl_bass]

We use a combination of our own servers and amazon

[cekuhnen]

I can see the advantage of their cloud but sometimes I also wish just to store my stuff locally.

[Pontooon]

We use Box for our storage and it works fairly well. One thing to consider is that box/dropbox/google are all blocked in China. Collaborating with users in China is huge for us, and having a server outside the popular ones would be nice so that we don't need a VPN. One thing to be aware of is China potentially blocking the Amazon servers.  

China is a huge opportunity for sharing, and having the cloud service available there is one way to actually get some of the millions of engineers there to pay for the service. So just make sure your cloud servers won't get blocked.

[promm]

Kinsleymark,

Thank you for your idea.  We have no plans to integrate with a program like Dropbox, because it only offers a part of what is needed in the design and manufacturing lifecycle.  Fusion 360 uses A360 for more than a place to store files, A360 is our built in data management system.

Traditional CAD packages require large, expensive and highly complex tools to manage their data and collaboration.  Currently you can create versions that you can restore, share files with a click of a button, capture decisions made and render all inside of A360.  Our roadmap plans for A360 will allow users to branch and merge, provide version management, relationships, real time collaboration and collaborator + stakeholder sharing; these are the key benefits. All of this is included without traditional annual updates where you have to worry about your SQL being out of date or where your data management program is not compatible with your newer version of CAD.

On top of this we are working on an experience where you can seamlessly sync your design through a local folder with A360.  We are designing this desktop connectivity project to provide you with a familiar and delightful data management solution a that meets your needs.

Cheers,

Mike Prom

[daniel_lyall]

the last bit sounds good