App to Fusion 360 Communication

[Anonymous]

I would like my app to be able to alter the parameters within a Fusion 360 file. Preferably, this would take place on the server side with my app connecting with the cloud side of Fusion 360. However, if the file has to be open before Fusion 360 can update it, then that's fine too. Can someone point me to the documentation that would facilitate this handshake? There are other apps in the partner program that do this, so I know that it is possible. Thanks.

[BrianEkins]

You can think of Fusion as being two parts; the cloud side and the desktop side.  For the Fusion the cloud side is primarily the storage mechanism for files.  The desktop side is the CAD engine.  To make any changes to a file it needs to be loaded into the desktop client and the changes made there.  The cloud is not involved in this other than serving up the file to be downloaded by the client.  It's then opened and edited by the client.

The API is not accessible from outside the client.  There's one small exception to this that you can read more about here:  http://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=GUID-8A2C4ECD-7D82-4E56-AFE8-4FA72464AE66

There are some other products that are supporting some editing on the cloud through Forge, but currently Fusion is not one of these.  The other products are AutoCAD, Revit, and Inventor.  Revit and Inventor are currently in beta.

[Anonymous]

This is very confusing to me.

What is the purpose of the partner program if you can't interact with the platform?

There are apps on the partnership platform that expressly state that they integrate with Fusion 360. How are they able to make that claim if there is no communication between Fusion 360 and outside apps?

(Sorry, the link didn't work for me)

[BrianEkins]

I'm sorry but I don't understand your confusion.  Anyone can write apps that are installed locally and add additional functionality to Fusion.  Desktop applications have been supporting API's to allow this for a long time.  Think of Excel and it's API.  Typically people are using VBA and writing simple macros but that's just one way to access and use the API.

With Fusion you can also think of the cloud as the place where files are stored.  Using Forge you can access this storage and do things that Forge lets you do, like translate them to other formats.  But to make much use of the contents you need to open the file in Fusion.

[Anonymous]

I think that I was initially confused because Fusion 360's files are stored on the cloud. I therefore viewed the APIs as something that would allow my server to interact with the servers containing the Fusion360 files. In this manner, I could alter parameters in Fusion360 files to drive designs without having to have those files opened. If every file that I am interacting with needs to be open locally, the benefits for me are severely lessened.

My application is web based and accessed through web browsers. How would I write an API to interact with Fusion 360?

[BrianEkins]

With what's there today it's not feasible to do what you want.  Maybe in the future but Autodesk will need to provide something different than what we have now.

[Anonymous]

There is an app called swiftcalcs that I believe locally updates Fusion 360 files from a web page - likely using some sort of program that they wrote. Any ideals or suggestions as to how I could do that? I could spin up a Python server, maybe?

[BrianEkins · Accepted solution]

They're using the functionality described here.  I don't remember the details of the integration but do remember they were using this functionality.  It's also important to note that they have an add-in that's running inside Fusion and it's that add-in that's doing the work inside Fusion on the currently open document.

[Anonymous]

Appreciate the help.