Script / Plug-In Bounty system?

[drew]

Wondering if anyone in the API section of the community thinks the idea of offering bounties (rewards, cold hard currency) for needed abilities is a good idea?

The people that know how to write these things often have other things way higher on their own priority list than writing code for someone else's needs. They know what they'd do, but won't take the time to do it 'just to be nice'.

So, my idea is this:

Implement a bounty system for it.

Just like the up-voting in the feature request area that increases the likelihood of the actual Fusion developers to work on something.

But instead, it's a cash vote!

A request is made - clearly defined and described before anyone chips in any sum at all.

Users then have an option of making a deposit towards the writing of the plugin.

A pile of funds builds up - all small sums from many individuals tossed at it to show they are desiring the same thing, and then the people that know HOW to code these things have an incentive to write them and collect that pile. 

Importantly - all such plugins must get posted to the Fusion site as free downloads because the person that wrote it already got paid by the people that chipped in at the start.

I, for one, would be more than happy to contribute funds to the creation of specific plugins.

Examples of plugins or scripts that I would be happy to pay for are:

1) A calliper measurement in-program that can be used on any body or component just like a real calliper would be in the real world on a real object

2) A carpentry shop shop-floor-useful BOM tool, where parts are described in a human-relatable set of dimensions that describe the actual part, not the bounding box.

3) The ability to *automatically* create drawings of one or N-selected parts, all part of a single drawing file (multiple pages, one 'Drawing' in Fusion's "View Cube") Ideally with basic callout dimensions. (Many cabinet design packages offer this feature, including fully dimensioned automatic part drawings)

4) The ability to use standard materials somehow - like "2x4" or "18mmMDF" where the restricting natural qualities of each is passed to any component created from it. EG - creating a new component that is a 2x4x98 pine stick becomes something significantly less than the current seven to ten steps of defining it.

Egads, there are so many things I know Fusion CAN do, but DOES NOT do.

Fusion's developers have their own requirements and their own priorities, which is well and good because they keep making Fusion better.

But this idea might get usable tools in user's hands sooner rather than later.

So what do you all think?

[ekinsb]

I think collecting a list of desired functionality is great.  When the API was first introduced we needed to write some sample programs to demonstrate how to use it and to show some of the things that could be done.  Choosing what to write was difficult and having a list of things that people actually want would have been very useful.  At the time I did a quick scan through the posts on the IdeaStation and a couple of the samples were created based on requests there.  I haven't looked through it lately but there are probably several new requests in the IdeaStation that could be addressed today through a script or add-in and not have to wait for the functionality to be added to Fusion.

Another idea regarding payment for writing a program is that Autodesk occasionally sponsors a Fusion Hackathon where anyone is encouraged to write an add-in and submit it to the Autodesk App Store.  In the past they received $500 if their app was accepted.  I believe there are people out there that would like of list of desired programs and would choose one for the reward.

There are a couple of things I looked for as I looked through the items on the IdeaStation.  The first was if Fusion could do what they were requesting and second was if the API supported the needed functionality.  For example, there might be a request to update component descriptions from an Excel spreadsheet.  The first question was if Fusion has a component description and allows you to change it.  It does so the next question was if the API supports this, and it does.  So this would be a good candidate for an add-in.  If there's a request for the loft command to support some additional options, that's not a candidate because it's a limitation in Fusion itself and not something that can be addressed by automating existing functionality.  An example of the second thing is your request for automatically creating drawings.  In this case, Fusion is capable of creating a drawing but the API doesn't currently expose any drawing functionality so it's not possible to automate that workflow.