An honest plea to Fusion 360 Development team

[O.Tan]

Hi,

so I've been using Fusion 360 for a year now and I've actually seen Fusion early days (when it was called Inventor Fusion) and I must say that things has evolve or improved quite a lot, I really appreciate how active the developers are in the forum, answering questions and solving and giving bug fixes. Fusion today is much more stable then last year, I don't get that often crashes so kudos to the development team in getting Fusion to be more stable and for the features added.

However, drawings is still pretty much incomplete since last year and I don't know how Fusion team is organised internally but I feel right now what Fusion needs to focus more is on Drawings, it's very incomplete and even with all the additions of the recent update, it's easily broken like getting unsolveable "A balloon can only be placed on a component" error, when I triple checked to ensure I've used the component selection and created a new drawing, yet the problem repeats. Perhaps it wasn't programmed to handle drawings that's generated from a sub-assembly.

Then there's basic drawings/drafting features that's found on other CAD software but not in Fusion, below is an example of how easy and fast it's to generate dimensions.

1. Basically I use coordinate dimensions for most of my drawings, notice how easy it is to generate coordinate dimensions.
2. Notice how each time I click on a feature it auto-aligns
3. I'm able to easily change dimension orientation
4. Dimensions is able to re-aligned with simple click + drag
5. Hole Callouts
6. Custom Callouts (symbols and etc)

And this is just a small preview of the software capabilities.

A simple analogy I'll use to describe Fusion Drawings is like, a pizza store made the pizza from the dough to baking and only to end up with not having a proper pizza box, and having to go next door to the competitor to get pizza box.

The whole drawings module is a mess, I'm not sure what Fusion team envisioned (or if any thoughts was even given on drafting/drawings during the initial Fusion conceptualisation) on how user should use or manage their drawings cause I notice that a single part drawing is linked to the assembly, so if I update the assembly and not the part, I'll have to update the part as well when nothing has changed on the part. The way how drawings is done now clutters the data panel since Fusion encourages multi-body environment (mixing both assembly and part files). So maybe we need something like a multi-drawings environment as well?

Finally, all that I mentioned is something that all other CAD software is able to do and for the most part, basic features, so I don't think this should be in IdeaStation as there's just too many things and it'll end up spamming the service.

Eventhough Fusion lacks many features like proper mirrored components, there's still some less elegant workaround, but when it comes to drawings, there's no workaround as the tools isn't there. Sure drawings might not be the most flashies of things but it's what seperates between an end-to-end CAD solution and not. Right now I'll have to export my work as STEP only to be opened in another CAD software to do dimensioning, not everyone owns their own CNC machine, so proper drawing tools is very important.

Apologies if it sounds harsh but this is something I felt that needs to be said once in awhile. Perhaps Fusion team could focus the first 6 months to improve on existing features (direct modelling needs more polishing, hole generation tool, bolted connections[supposed to be well in development last year but mysteriously disappeared]) then adding new flashy ones and the other 6 months to add those flashy features/fix rare bugs. This will also give more time to those working on bigger projects to get it done right (gather real-user feedback and etc) then rushing it up.

[yoshimitsuspeed]

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@Oceanconcepts wrote:

Maybe because I work in software some and have sympathy for the complexity- particularly in a cross platform implementation- but I think the Fusion team has done a good job of posting realistic timelines and updating them when it turns out a planned feature is not ready. Not everything, drawings particularly, is where I would like it to be, but I haven’t seen many specific features promised that didn’t come through reasonably close to the projected time. I’ve been around a lot of software for many years, and the communications- and ability to listen and respond- from the Fusion team are the most honest and direct I have encountered. It’s one of the main reasons I’m using the program. They are enthusiastic, as they should be, but I’ve never felt that they overhyped and it’s always been acknowledged that features important to some users were not yet included, or not fully implemented. 

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Perhaps there is some that can be left up to interpretation. Maybe as a software developer you are used to expecting the least. Or maybe you have just had a much different experience than me.
Myself along with many others have been begging for more advanced drawing capability and one of the biggest requests is proper GD&T and in direct response to those questions there have been many answers from the AD devs saying things like they are going to be making huge improvements on dimensioning and tolerancing in the next couple updates. The roadmap would make similar claims. 5 updates and 8 months later we get the capabilty to actually tolerance a drawing. While I guess that falls under dimensioning and tolerancing in my opinion it is very misleading stating it in a way that makes it sound like proper GD&T capability will be available in a couple updates and then seeing almost nothing change for 8 months. These responses have happened time and time again in my experience. Maybe I just overestimate things when people use terms like "making big advances" on something or "You will be very impressed with what we have coming in the next couple updates". Maybe in developer terms that's similar to a road construction crew saying "We think you will be very impressed with how fast we get this section of road repaired."

It took 8 months from the time I reported an aligned dimension bug until they even acknowledged the bug. I still have to see if this update fixed it. At least I know it's on their radar not that it's been there for a year and reported for 10 months. 

[daniel_lyall]

that where the word soon come's in, that is what they should say so you know it is coming when don't know but it is, same with true 4th axis tool paths it is soon, not say some time next year maybe.

at lest it not as bad as asking for a wrapping function 4th ask 24 hours latter I had it and it works, I got no answer from ADSK, or most of the reseller's some did not know how it would work or even if it could be done and bugger me it was another user who did it. 

if the resaller's and staff are not willing to try to do something as simple as having sort line moves and swapping axis's what is just x, y, z moves and x or y changed to A and no G2 or G3 moves.

it can make a user a bit disappoint in ADSK that some staff stay inside a nice safe squire. thinking outside the squire can get you a long way to having something you wont, not all staff member are like this some deserve being called evangelist they earn it but are not. 

just like the expert elite they earn the title.

[yoshimitsuspeed]

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@daniel_lyall wrote:

that where the word soon come's in, that is what they should say so you know it is coming when don't know but it is, same with true 4th axis tool paths it is soon, not say some time next year maybe.

at lest it not as bad as asking for a wrapping function 4th ask 24 hours latter I had it and it works, I got no answer from ADSK, or most of the reseller's some did not know how it would work or even if it could be done and bugger me it was another user who did it. 

if the resaller's and staff are not willing to try to do something as simple as having sort line moves and swapping axis's what is just x, y, z moves and x or y changed to A and no G2 or G3 moves.

it can make a user a bit disappoint in ADSK that some staff stay inside a nice safe squire. thinking outside the squire can get you a long way to having something you wont, not all staff member are like this some deserve being called evangelist they earn it but are not. 

just like the expert elite they earn the title.

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Personally I think they shoule be able to give much better time lines. This includes the roadmap and I think part of that is more detailed descriptions of what will be implimented. 
For example "Improvements in dimensioning and tolerancing" is very vague. To me I would expect that to mean something like 50% implimentation of full GD&T capability with another 30% within the next update or two. To AD this apparently means adding one new feature that is related to dimensioning and tolerancing. 

Every time you give the dev team a hard time for making some massively noob mistake or insinuating they could improve in areas you get a snarky response that this ain't their first rodeo.
That would be the whole point of going with AD on developing software. You would think that after decades of developing software they could create a somewhat realistic timeline, stick pretty well to that timeline and give people a pretty good idea of how that timeline was going to look. I wouldn't even be surprised if the dev team has at least a more realistic time frame that they go off of but then I'm sure that marketing comes in and says "OMG we can't tell people this feature won't be available for another year. Let's twist it up a little bit so it sounds like it will be much better in a few months even though really only one tiny improvement will be made."
I have also started wondering if answering questions on the forum is like some sort of noob intern/employee right of passage. It seems like most the time AD posts a response it's a new face making new and naive statements. I can almost imagine the new group of interns shows up and AD traininer says. "Okay guys, part of your job is dealing with our customers on the forums. Some of them might sound a little irritated because from the outside we appear less productive than road construction workers so what you do is just sound as compassionate as possible. Tell them that their input is very important to us and then tell them that in the next update there will be big changes that will address their issue."
Then some poor innocent noob gets yelled at for spouting the same old rhetoric to a cranky jaded group who just wants to see stuff getting done. 

[promm]

Thank you for your constructive criticism about how drawing workflows can be improved to act similar to the rest of the program.  Feedback like this adds valuable insight that we can take action towards.  I will make sure your points are passed on.

When I experience something awesome and get excited about it, I can find myself wanting more.  Not only that, but I want more now.  During the development of our drawings package we ran into dependencies and workflows that require more work than first expected.  While it is temping to focus on velocity, we want to make sure we get it right.  As we experience changes the Fusion 360 team will do its best to communicate to our customers.

I also want to address the overall perception of this thread that makes it seem like we are not focused on the right areas. In the last year we have added things like CAM and Simulation.  It would appear that we have taken people from the rest of our team to develop these features.  Let me assure you this is not the case; the new functionality came from specialized resources in these fields.  The majority of our team is focused on drawings, modeling and data management.

Cheers,

Mike Prom

[Oceanconcepts]

I started working on my first tasks in Project Forge, one of Fusion’s predecessors, a little over three years ago, and I’ve been closely involved as a user ever since. Maybe I can offer another perspective. 

First, while there are plenty of new Autodesk employees that appear here on the forum, many (most) of those responding have been active for years, and several regular Autodesk contributors you see here are working directly in leading and developing the program- including, not that infrequently, program managers. It’s clear to me that Autodesk, at least for Fusion, places a very high priority on listening to users. Because I’m located nearby, and I’ve been active, I’ve gotten to know a number of those working on Fusion. Visions of a corporate behemoth driving communications- and at odds with or disconnected from development- are I think far from reality. It seems to me to be a tight group of dedicated individuals, with a larger system of corporate support. 

Autodesk, with Fusion, is not just repackaging already existing CAD capability into another marketing container- it’s a fundamentally different architecture, and they have a very long term- 20 year- vision that includes things like generative design and fully integrating manufacturing processes. That means that to some extent this package needs to be built on a new foundation. This is a much bigger task than just producing a somewhat enhanced CAD system, an “Inventor in the Cloud”. This kind of stuff is hard, and there is always a tension between rapidly adding features and the risk of breaking functions for some users or losing reliability. My background may well give me a different perspective, but I’m in awe of what has been done in a short time. 

I’d ask: How many competitive programs there are that run natively on both Windows and OS X and offer 

3D solid modeling

Both Parametric and direct modeling

Distributed (cloud) processing for tasks like file translations

Joints, assembly simulation and animation

Drawings

Surfacing tools

T-splines sculpting environment

Integrated simulation- with distributed processing

Integrated rendering- with distributed processing

Integrated CAM

a decent user interface

in one package, for free or low cost? 

In some of those areas- particularly drawings, surfacing, and as I understand, CAM (I’m not a user of that function) some basic capabilities are missing or lagging, and that may be a limitation for for some users. But this is a very new, and rapidly developing, application.

Maybe because I work with developers (and experience some of this in my own work) I somewhat understand how many variables there are, and how complex their interrelationships.  Fusion is charting some new territory, you don’t know what you are going to run into- it’s not cooking from recipe book.  I don’t expect any timelines generated 6-12 months in advance to be much more than aspirational- and with that standard, Fusion has done pretty well.  There have been a few times when promised features were pulled from an update at the last minute due to reliability problems. I’m sure the Fusion team would love to provide more accurate timelines- I’m also sure that any failure to do so is more due to difficulty in the work than to any pressure from marketing. 

I’m disappointed in the current state of the drawings module as well, and second the specific suggestions in the original post. But as to the overall level of communication and support I see on this forum- well, if we had 5% of that level of support in our electronics software and IDE’s our life would be much easier.

[yoshimitsuspeed]

My issue is not the rate of progress. 
I used to use Freecad. After going to them many times trying to see if there was any chance of accelerating development and them making it clear that this was a side project, would be nothing more and that development would be whenever it happened I decided to move on to something that was more complete, prodiuction ready and advancing quickly. 
At that point over a year ago F360 was already marketed as production ready. Didn't even have the capability to do drawings and marketing was already trying to sell Solidworks users on this software being an equally capable solution. 
Then when anyone complains about this not being production ready or suiting their proffessional or even amature needs AD gets all irritated for people having unrealistic expectations about the rate of progress or complaining that it doesn't have all the features production ready software should. 

Had Autodesk said this was Beta software and to expect it to be production ready in 2-5 years I wouldn't have any right to complain. If I were still here I would be here fully knowing that I had to deal with missing features and lacking capability in that time then I would have made that choice and would have to be okay with that choice. 
I am kind of amazed that you don't feel like this has been the theme here for the last year. 


I'll try not to hijack this thread anymore so I will create a new thread in this section to highlight my point. 

[daniel_lyall]

@yoshimitsuspeed is quite correct about what is said, I have gotten quite candid with some fusion staff over this some of the things they have on the web site.

what @O.Tan wants is something they should put a bit more into it is something important to all level of user's, I only have a cnc router, but I have access to lathes and mill's and yes I am a hobby user but since I don't have a cnc lathe or mill I design stuff to be made on a lathe or mill depending on what it is I am making putting it on a bit of paper by hand is sometime easier and better, than doing a drawing for the part.

also @promm the way he has replied is correct but other have got a bit upset and gone a bit silly, what is bad, constructive criticism from a person who has done years of cad stuff is usely well placed and is straight to the point no nice nice PC BS.

also when a user does something for a user what is something that fusion does not have, it would be nice to see a senior fusion team member thank them, and since it is just a couple of lines in the post prossess would it not be something to push out to users as something new fusion has now. if he has be thank privately all good.

[Oceanconcepts]

I think we have very different perceptions. I don’t ever recall anyone from Fusion ever claiming that it was- in all respects- equally capable to SolidWorks, or that it would be any time soon. In my opinion It exceeds SolidWorks in specific and very important areas, but clearly is not going to answer for those who need or use some functions- pro level drawings or advanced simulations, that Fusion hasn’t yet developed.  For my needs, Fusion has been a better solution than SolidWorks was.

Fusion is and has been “production ready” for the needs of many users. I’m evidence of that in that I have a fairly sophisticated product going to market in a few months that was designed in the Fusion of over a year ago. I know of a number of others who have done the same. My workflow, from concept to molds and machining is 100% digital, so the lack of drawings was almost- but not totally- a non issue. It’s one I could work around. That obviously would not be true for everyone, but I’ve never felt Autodesk was misleading about Fusion’s capabilities. It’s been a lot more than beta software for a while. That’s not the same as saying it meets the needs of every designer.

What baffles me is this:

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@yoshimitsuspeed wrote:

Then when anyone complains about this not being production ready or suiting their proffessional or even amature needs AD gets all irritated for people having unrealistic expectations about the rate of progress or complaining that it doesn't have all the features production ready software should. 

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I have never seen anyone from Autodesk be anything other than polite and professional on these forums, thanking users for even extremely critical rants. Including from me.  I may have missed something, but I have read a lot of posts over the years. True, sometimes the response is “We agree, but it’s not something we can address now.” Or “Please put that on the idea Station to see if other people feel the same way.” Sometimes it’s something that doesn’t fit with the road map. It may not be the answer the poster wants. But if Autodesk employees are irritated (as I’m sure they must be from time to time) they do a good job of keeping it to themselves. And I have many times seen users who provided help to others be thanked by Autodesk, and I’ve been on the receiving end of that kind of thanks many times myself.

A positive and supportive community is one of the best things about this program.

[yoshimitsuspeed]

The refrence to Solidworks was more in regards to marketing content you see on the F360 facebook page and elsewhere. 
As for "produciton ready" I guess we are again at an impass of interpretation. To me production ready would mean ready to throw onto the production floor of your target customer base. 
I suppose that hasn't been perfectly defined either but most CAD is used in design and manufacturing. If you are a designer then drawings are about the most paramount feature in a CAD program. Heck a lot of big companies I work with prefer drawings over models when possible. They also expect them to be properly dimensioned and toleranced which up until now guarenteed I would have to import into another program. Even now I will still need to in many cases. 
So in reality that kicks F360 out of the design market. Which leaves manufacturing. Now any big company who can afford to actually pay for CAD programs are going to be big enough to have engineers and or designers and then manufacturers. In this case it is necessary to have a way of getting your idea from the designer to the manufacturer. This is largely done with drawings. 
So now any decent size manufacturer is out. 
So that leaves the odd jobbers and DIYers. Either people running a small business in  their garage where they do everything start to finish or someone doing the same for themselves. 
In this case in some instances F360 is a very good bang for the buck because you likely fall under their free user policy. 
I belive I still do. When I started using F360 like a dumbass I started paying for it because I wanted my money to support it's development. 
I only recommend F360 to people who do fall under F360s free user policy. Espcecially now that they have their more expensive ultimate version I think very few companies would be well suited for F360s current state. Yes it's cheaper up front but if you are paying an employee you will pay them for more lost time than you would spend on good CAD and decent CAM. 

I am glad that you have managed to develop a product using only F360. It sounds like you must be that 1% who can actually rely solely on it and that is great. If that was my only qualification I would have stayed with Freecad because there were people who successfully used that professionally and nearly solely as well. There were many others like me who had our dozens of workarounds like importing into draftsight to make a drawing. And then every time that drawing changed you would once again export, import, modify, save and export. 
It worked but it was not very efficient. I lost a lot of time using such workarounds. So I left a software that claimed to be Beta and very much not production ready for a software that claimed to be stable, and production ready and promised that all our dreams would come true within the next couple updates. 

You say F360 has been more than Beta for a while. I might agree with you that Beta may not be the right word but i might not go in the same direction as you. 

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/what-does-beta-software-really-mean/

What to expect from pre-alpha software: If a company or developer decides to release pre-alpha software to the public, you should drop your expectations all the way down to zero. Minecraft, a creative block-building sandbox game, released pre-alpha versions called “Indev” that were buggy, lacking in features, and prone to crashing. Public pre-alpha releases, which are extremely rare to begin with, are mostly for marketing and hype, though sometimes a developer will release them for no other reason than “just because.”


Sounds like a perfect description of F360 to me. 

Maybe somewhere between pre alpha and alpha? With the last update maybe beta? That depends on how many times it crashes on me in the next month. 

As for the F360 team getting irritated perhaps that is a strong word but even a more modest example is TimeraAutodesk in this thread. 
Getting all defensive about all that has been accomplished in the last year. 
I haven't been involved in development so I have no idea how impressive that list is. It's about half what I would have expected from my here on the boards, talking to AD employees, and following all the marketing hype. 
If it took other companies 18 years to do it then maybe AD should have said from the get go that it might take a few years to get somewhere close to what it was already marketed to be. 

It's cool that you have managed to make F360 suit your needs but if you think that represents more than a fraction of a percent of people who would actually pay to use CAD it makes me wonder how much involvement you have had in the industries that use CAD? 

[daniel_lyall]

Ron you are in the same boat as me, for some reason our fusion experience is a hell of a lot better than @yoshimitsuspeed, be it the computer used, how we use fusion, something is making there experience a nightmare.

and some employee's do get grumpy you just don't see it, they do it person to person not on the forum, and some employee's do get a bit defensive and get a bit carried away, yes this is a nice clean forum. 

[burnandreturn]

There is one thing that often gets overlooked on forums.  Many of the posters whether employee's or users are not native English speakers.   It is obvious that many of the staff for Fusion write in a broken English sort of way.  That is no crime of course.   What we should remember in our communications is that some expressions don't translate well.   I am American but live in Germany.  My wife is German and often when she says something to me I get my ruffles up as it sounds almost like an order and not a request.  It is a language problem!  ( At least I think that is the case!)

For example she will say,  "You have to do....."   When what she is trying to say is, "Could you do...."   or "It would be good if you would do......"

One must learn to translate the English to English!  Try to get the meaning of the statement and not be so literal.  Sometimes it takes a lot of work to figure out what someone really means!

Now that being said,   I want faster servers,  better drawing capabilities,  less crashes,  more reliability,   and those darn little round circles that get used for contrainsts to stay put when I try to click on them!

[daniel_lyall]

well that has not a lot to do with anything being discussed here and I find that a bit offensive English is the second hardest language in the world. and employee's mentioned in this thread are American English speakers. there is no one being non detrimental to any non native English specking person in this forum some of the expert's are non native English speakers, everyone gets taken at faces value in this forum no mater what they may word wrong. that's why there is a ranking system any AHOLE get left at 1 or kicked off very fast. 

[burnandreturn]

Thank you for making my point perfectly about language difficulites!   There is nothing in my post that could possibly be construed as offensive or insulting.   And what I wrote has everything to do with the topic of this thead.  

What I wrote and meant is we should not take offense to some of the things that get written because the writer possibly is phrasing things in an offensive manner but that was not their intention.

Sometimes they are trying to be offensive as in Danial's reply to me!  

[daniel_lyall]

I spent 20 years working with and training non English specker's most of the time I was the only one who spoke English. I took what they said and if they said something wrong I had not a single problem why I would say to them how you said what you said is wrong because of bla bla on a one to one base's you should of said it this way but at no time did I take any offences to what was said, why I new it was wrong but they did not know better so I trained them to say what they wonted to say, to just say it and if it was wrong I told them why in a very nice way. when some one sparks of at a comment that I find offensive well boom. non of the statements being said in this thread have been a attack or bad,  they are peoples opinions nothing more nothing less they mean what they say and that's it no one has taken it the wrong way at all, the person who started this thread where is he from I don't know but I take what he said as what it is meant to convey same as all other's they are not happy about some bits missing from fusion and how the marketing department advertise fusion, bring in they may not be non native English speckers is not nice they may say the same to you how would you feil  

[burnandreturn]

Daniel give it a rest.   There is no need to clutter up this very valuable thread by going on about your incorrectly percieved notions.  I only wrote we should be more understanding of language differences.

[Oceanconcepts]

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@yoshimitsuspeed wrote:

.... As for "produciton ready" I guess we are again at an impass of interpretation. To me production ready would mean ready to throw onto the production floor of your target customer base. 
I suppose that hasn't been perfectly defined either but most CAD is used in design and manufacturing. If you are a designer then drawings are about the most paramount feature in a CAD program. Heck a lot of big companies I work with prefer drawings over models when possible. They also expect them to be properly dimensioned and toleranced which up until now guarenteed I would have to import into another program. Even now I will still need to in many cases. 
So in reality that kicks F360 out of the design market. Which leaves manufacturing. Now any big company who can afford to actually pay for CAD programs are going to be big enough to have engineers and or designers and then manufacturers. In this case it is necessary to have a way of getting your idea from the designer to the manufacturer. This is largely done with drawings. 
So now any decent size manufacturer is out. 
So that leaves the odd jobbers and DIYers. Either people running a small business in  their garage where they do everything start to finish or someone doing the same for themselves. .....

I am glad that you have managed to develop a product using only F360. It sounds like you must be that 1% who can actually rely solely on it and that is great. ...

It's cool that you have managed to make F360 suit your needs but if you think that represents more than a fraction of a percent of people who would actually pay to use CAD it makes me wonder how much involvement you have had in the industries that use CAD? 

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I think the above may be at the crux of our differing perceptions re. Fusion. I certainly don’t fit the traditional CAD user model. I believe Autodesk understands that there is a significant shift happening in how many products get designed and produced, and are positioning Fusion to fill that need, not so much the needs of CAD use as it has been in the past. I’ve seen other transitions of this sort- I’m old enough to have worked in an environment where crusty old guys in overalls used blueprints and calipers and carved casting patterns out of sugar pine. And I learned how to design on paper and ink drawings- still have the tools, so if electricity disappears, I’m good. 

I don’t believe your assumptions about what size company can afford CAD programs, how many employees they might have, their even wanting to employ (directly, anyway) engineers and designers, or everybody else being “odd jobbers and DIYers” are valid any longer. Those assumptions are going to become less valid as time goes on. We’re a very small business in terms of numbers of employees, but I would absolutely maintain SolidWorks if I thought it were a better tool for me- we maintain a number of packages in the electronics/ embedded design realm that are much more expensive. I’m using Fusion because it is- right now, in its current form- a better fit. I would not buy any software based on what I thought it might be able to do in the future, only based on what it does now.

I use CAD because it makes other parts or our design precess easier and better, and because we can make better products with an iterative process that integrates electronics, firmware, and physical design, rather than splitting them into different divisions as a larger company would probably do. We design specialized instrumentation, and the vast majority of the work we do is embedded systems design, electronics, UX, and firmware. Fusion is a perfect match for me- someone who is a full time designer, but not a full time mechanical CAD user. 

So, we’re not a big company- two full time employees- though we contract specialized engineering services frequently. But we’re not exactly an odd jobber or a DIYer either. We basically develop and license technology and designs. Over the last 17 years we have put out some products that have been very disruptive to far larger companies- who would probably be shocked to know there are only two of us. We’re responsible for many millions in sales, quite a few local jobs in manufacturing, and we are- to nearly everyone- completely invisible, in the background. That fact is that it’s possible now for small groups to design very sophisticated devices and compete successfully with far larger companies. This is a profound shift in the landscape. I know from what I see at our contract manufacturer that there are a large, and increasing number, of businesses that are operating much like ours. Tools like Fusion help facilitate this shift. 

Fusion may not have some capabilities that are very important to you, or to others. That’s something that one can figure out with a trial. But I don’t think you can make categorical statements about, for instance, how designers communicate their intent to manufacturing- companies I work with- who are “decent sized”- have been using an all digital workflow for years, particularly with overseas molders and fabricators. Maybe because we’re in technology we work with companies that are adopting newer ways of working. Fusion’s superior cloud based file translations are worth more than drawings in this context. Drawings are used mostly for documentation. For me, the main reason for any 2D format- electronic or printed, is to communicate with PCB layout packages. While I’d like to have better drawings, better DXF file output would actually mean more to me. 

There are a good number of pro level users like us for whom Fusion is a good fit- I doubt any of us are 100% satisfied, but we’re clearly not having the same experience you are. 

[yoshimitsuspeed]

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@Oceanconcepts wrote:

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@yoshimitsuspeed wrote:

.... As for "produciton ready" I guess we are again at an impass of interpretation. To me production ready would mean ready to throw onto the production floor of your target customer base. 
I suppose that hasn't been perfectly defined either but most CAD is used in design and manufacturing. If you are a designer then drawings are about the most paramount feature in a CAD program. Heck a lot of big companies I work with prefer drawings over models when possible. They also expect them to be properly dimensioned and toleranced which up until now guarenteed I would have to import into another program. Even now I will still need to in many cases. 
So in reality that kicks F360 out of the design market. Which leaves manufacturing. Now any big company who can afford to actually pay for CAD programs are going to be big enough to have engineers and or designers and then manufacturers. In this case it is necessary to have a way of getting your idea from the designer to the manufacturer. This is largely done with drawings. 
So now any decent size manufacturer is out. 
So that leaves the odd jobbers and DIYers. Either people running a small business in  their garage where they do everything start to finish or someone doing the same for themselves. .....

I am glad that you have managed to develop a product using only F360. It sounds like you must be that 1% who can actually rely solely on it and that is great. ...

It's cool that you have managed to make F360 suit your needs but if you think that represents more than a fraction of a percent of people who would actually pay to use CAD it makes me wonder how much involvement you have had in the industries that use CAD? 

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I think the above may be at the crux of our differing perceptions re. Fusion. I certainly don’t fit the traditional CAD user model.

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Yet you are defending F360 as a CAD program universally.
If AD advertised it as you explain it as something that might work for unique users in unique situations but most likely won't work for most CAD users things might be different.
If people came on the forums a year ago and said they absolutely and urgently needed full featured drawing capability and had AD suggested to those people that they check back in a couple years or deal with it till then things would be different.
You say someone could determine whether F360 would work for them with the trial. You are correct there and maybe I have learned to base judgement more off what I see here and now instead of trusting what developers or marketing tells me. I always took marketing with a grain of salt but I have always tended to trust developers. Maybe that comes from being more involved in the FOSS side of things where no one has any investment on whether you stay or go so they will tell you straight up as accurately as they can.
So my bad, I guess I should have taken one look at F360 and walked away because at that point it did not do everything I needed. But I didn't. You live you learn I guess.

[promm]

First off, I would like to thank everyone on this thread for being very passionate about Fusion 360.  We appreciate candid feedback about your frustrations with constructive intentions.  As we have seen in several of the posts, different users have different levels of requirements for Fusion 360.  This includes what users need in drawings; what is a high priority for one person may not be the same as another.

With this in mind I would like to address the three core requests in this thread:

1. When an assembly containing a part is updated, the drawing referencing that part will message that there is an update. The workflow you are experiencing is a part of our distributed design architecture.  There is a team working on this project and the teams priority is deep update, derivedassets and in placeedit.  We continue to work with the community on the way users interact with updating references.

2. The creation of custom title blocks.  Often title blocks are populated using parameters from the model.  With Fusion 360 using A360 as a built in data management system it needs to fit into the larger cloud based architecture of Fusion 360.  We are making sure that the solution addresses all of the dependencies and works coherently with the entire product.

3. Multi-sheet drawings is a large project and requires the teams focus for several months.

Due to the nature that all three of these requests are large projects, and the fact that smaller projects will provide more value to a larger amount of user’s, they are currently prioritized after other projects that we are currently working on.  We recognize that this may be a point of frustration for some, but I hope you can see our logic in the prioritization.

Thank you,

Mike Prom

[Anonymous]

I particularly liked Ron's perspective and thanks for the explanation on your prioritisation Mike.

I'm a DIYer I guess, making one off boats and unique furniture and other pieces, including some sculpture. My most used tool is a home-built large frame CNC router. The priorities Mike explained work perfectly for me because in my workflow I go from design through to CAM in one foul swoop. Even when I'm using hand tools I take my iPad into the workshop and work straight off the model.

My designs never go to drawing, they are model based and Fusion is perfect and unique in its ability to model and develop in CAM. More recently I have begun experimenting with bronze casting from 3D printed models. The possibilities in this work flow, for me are staggering. Using Autodesk Spark I'm beginning to develop workflows that could mean manufacturing a part is as simple as hitting print on my model part.

And it's not just the DIYers and job shops who think this way. I recently read about the development of the Xian-Y20, China's newest military heavy lift cargo aircraft. The designer made "MBD [Model Based Definition]... mandatory for all contractors and sub contractors of the Y-20 program." Boeing and Airbus are also adopting compulsory MBD programs for their subcontractors. The process of design and manufacture is consolidating. The day is not far away when drawings are considered quaint anachronisms, little more than mud maps.

I think Autodesk has their priorities right. Now back to work on sheet metal so I can develop and flatten my boat chines and planking. 😉

[O.Tan]

"And it's not just the DIYers and job shops who think this way. I recently read about the development of the Xian-Y20, China's newest military heavy lift cargo aircraft. The designer made "MBD [Model Based Definition]... mandatory for all contractors and sub contractors of the Y-20 program." Boeing and Airbus are also adopting compulsory MBD programs for their subcontractors. The process of design and manufacture is consolidating. The day is not far away when drawings are considered quaint anachronisms, little more than mud maps."

sorry but that future isn't likely to be realized in the next decade as from the sounds of it MBD is like 3D PMI and Siemens has been working on it for a long time yet till today, hardly make a dent to the manufacturing industry. 

I hope AD will prioritize finishing drawings first before getting into 3D PMI. Heck, even the sponsored MakerBot will have to be dimensioned in Inventor to get it fabricated.