Redo drawings

[roambotics_scott]

By which I mean you should throw out the current drawings capability and start from scratch.

I had to do some renderings for a patent application and noticed that this was there now so thought I'd try it.. to my great frustration and disappointment.

On one hand, it can make very cute renderings so that's something.. on the other, it's incomplete and broken to the point of being useless.

In almost any use case I can imagine, I'd want either independent sheets with different / standard views (Front, Top, Side, Perspective, and optionally Bottom, other side and other perspective angles for things that aren't symmetric).

By default though I'm stuck dropping one face into a random location in the drawing, then adjusting the scale to get it roughly to fit which immediately breaks the positioning (unless the user is clairvoyant with precognition, they'll have placed it in a location that will end up overlapping the drawing with the key or having it go off the page).

It would be completely trivial to just open it up and magically see the standard views with reasonable scaling and dimensions and tolerances (if they were actually there - note they're not) keyed properly.

On top of that, all of the view orientations are impossibly wonky.

Right is somehow actually Front but rotated 90º. Top is another face, I don't think there's a single view angle that I tried that actually corresponded to the ones in the design. How can the orientations be that far off?!?

Once everything was in there and in a reasonable orientation (after restarting a couple of times due to hangs and crashes), I had to delete the key - obviously to do that you just click the «delete» tool but that only selects the object to delete and it was only through random fumbling that I was able to discern that I needed to do a two-finger-click and then hit «OK» to actually delete (I've still not managed to figure out how to move a drawing).

There is no way to select the line or filling style.

Aside from just working as engineering drawings [if a bunch of things were redone and fixed], these drawings are sooo close to something that could be used for a design patent application yet sooo far away.

Selecting hash filling options, line styles, and 2D representations of 3D shading would go a huge way in that direction.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills because it seems insane to me that this is actually an «Ultimate» paid edition of a product from an established company. Sure charge and make money for it but at least label the thing «alpha» / preview-release.

[Anonymous]

I have a very similar distaste with Drawings. It's not real. It should have never been released.

Fusion is a toy for me right now. But I dropped down the money with the hopes that it will all come together in the near future. I'm a student and the only reason I spent the money was to lock in 3+2 axis at the $300/yr price for the future.

Anytime I need to get real work done it's SolidEdge and Mastercam.

The fact that they want to charge $1200 a year for Ultimate right now is an absolute joke. I can get SolidEdge subscription for $150 a month. This is what one of my professors uses on the side to do manufacturing quotes, drawings and work that he does for Toyota. If I had to send something from Fusion to Toyota I would probably jump off a cliff that night out of shame.

It doesn't make any sense to me either. Perhaps there is some kind of compatibility issue, but couldn't they just slurp the majority of AutoCAD's drawing features and plop it into Fusion? It seems like they used this strategy with HSMWorks and Fusion's CAM side.

It is a pretty neat Industrial design program, though.

[TimeraAutodesk]

Hi All,

Thanks for your comments and candid feedback. A couple of notes:

- The Drawings workspace is *not* an Ultimate offering. Drawings is currently in Tech Preview, and will be available as a Fusion 360 base (i.e. $300/yr) offering when it graduates because we know that this is so fundamental to what our users need to accomplish to bring their products to market. 

- The Views in Drawings respect the default Named Views in the Modeling workspace. If you've modified those views, it's a known issue that the experience will be inconsistent in the base view command in the Drawings workspace.

- To delete a view or annotation, select the desired object to delete and then click the delete button from the ribbon - or - click the delete button from the ribbon, then select the object and hit the delete key on your keyboard

- To move an object, click on the desired object to move, then click the gripper to drag it to another location and click again to commit -or- click the move button on the ribbon, select desired object(s), press enter to commit, and then select a move point to drag the object(s) to another location.

- There is some helpful getting started videos and help content on the fusion 360 help site if you need assistance getting up and running with Drawings. 

(http://help.autodesk.com/cloudhelp/ENU/Fusion-Fabrication/files/GUID-A476C8D8-1EE2-4AA1-9A97-88DB74A...

We have a large team working together across the Fusion 360 and AutoCAD teams to mature the drawings workspace and functionality, so stay tuned.

Thanks,

Timera

[Anonymous]

Hi Timera,

There seems to be some belief by Autodesk staff that since drawings is included in the Basic version of Fusion that somehow exempts Ultimate from meeting the expectations of a $150/month CAD program. I know many are glad that the Fusion team decided to offer drawings in the Basic version, but those forking out the cash for Ultimate still cannot make drawings that are worth squat.

The Autodesk Fusion team has positioned themselves for failure as far as delivering drawings in a way that meets their customers expectations. By stating that Drawings is a feature to be available in basic means that you are obligated to provide Drawings to basic users. The issue here is that the average Basic user may not need, or even understand, the complexity required for creating drafts that meet ANSI/ISO requirements. You have lost a value prospect of better Drawings in Ultimate, and have lost the INCENTIVE to deliver anything more than renderings and basic drawings for Industrial Design uses. So either way the Fusion team loses because complete drawings are too complex for Basic, and incomplete drawings will make Ultimate not an option.

Ultimate has positioned itself in a way that threatens to redefine the true value of CAD/CAM/CAE software. Many people in the mechanical engineering fields will consider Fusion 360 over the industry leaders. These are the ones that need Drawings to be on par with SolidEdge, Solidworks, NX, Catia, Pro/E, AutoCAD, if they are to... well... do anything other than play around and 3d print stuff for fun. There's no point in purchasing new software and paying for training and transitional losses when you can just plug an *.STL file into your Makerbot from whatever software your business already uses.

But I do commend the Autodesk team for taking these critical comments with the utmost professionalism.

[laughingcreek]

+1 to what lukepighetti said.  It's great that you are offering drawings in the basic subscription, but that doesn't change the fact that the Ultimate subscription doesn't have a useful drawing function.

[TimeraAutodesk]

I'm archiving this since it has multiple ideas in it - many of which we have or are addressing currently in Drawings. If you have additional ideas, please post them individually to the IdeaStation so they can gather community support.