Can fusion not install in random places?

[Anonymous]

I installed Fusion on both OSX and Windows.

In both I was very distressed by how the installer worked:

1) It says it is working, giving no indication of what it is doing.

2) It eats up all your bandwidth.

3) Suddenly after several hours it is done, and installed on a random place you can't control, potentially ruining your setup (example: installing itself on C:\ on Windows, when I reserved C:\ solely for the OS and don't allow any applications there)

Although I am half-liking Fusion (you still have a looong way to go to become a great product, but compared to the other free stuff out there you are good), I really disliked the installer, and I am thinking of not installing Fusion when my new PC arrives, because I don't want to:

1) Download it again after dowloading it twice (once for Windows, once for OSX), the thing is gigantic (at least seems so, or your servers are crawling slow), and my ISPs (I have three connections) are all threatening to make my connection metered, or already made it metered, even the fiber optic one.

2) Install it on the wrong physical device. For the OSX this wasn't a problem, since I had a single-disk with a single partition, but my new machine will have several storage devices, and some of them for several reasons MUST be OS-only, I don't want Fusion installing itself entirely on the OS partition (I can understand installing some libraries or something on the library folders, but there is no reason whatsoever for the main binary and main data files to install in the OS files).

Also OSX issue: can you stop creating more dock icons every time I update Fusion? Also wtf is going on there? (sometimes dock icons randomly fail to work, sometimes they work properly... the only reliable way to launch fusion is using "spotlight")

[Anonymous]

Just noticed I wrote in the wrong forum...

Beside the meta (I can say: "THIS" is how your installer feels!), can someone move this to the right place please?

[baribak]

Hi Mauricio,

We're sorry to hear of your experience with the streamer install for Fusion 360.  I'd like to better understand your configuration as well as give you some insight into Fusion 360 requirements regarding your environment. Specific to your points:

1. The installer does run with an interface where the progress is prominently displayed. I wonder if this is when the initial client downloader is being downloaded? If so the only progress indicator is in the browser's downloads display.
2. On the installer bandwidth, we recommend a high-speed connection for use with Fusion as well as the streaming installer. The streamer itself is designed to use threading spread across whatever bandwidth is available in an effort to deliver compressed packages of the program to your hard drive as quickly as possible. If bandwidth is being used by another program/process its performance should not be affected by our package.
3. Regarding installing Fusion 360 to a drive other than "C" on Windows platforms, yes that is a limitation today. We are actively looking to allow for more install location options and hope to offer that option in a future release.
4. On the subject of dock icons on the Mac, we should only be creating one icon in the dock bar. There are 2 icons on the LaunchPad - Fusion 360 and Remove Fusion 360. If you are seeing more than 1 icon in the dock bar there could be multiple versions of Fusion installed. Did you install from both "autodesk.com" *and* the Mac Apple Store?
5. The overall disk space requirements for Fusion 360 is ~2gb. More will be required depending on what features, 3rd-party apps, etc. you are using.
6. For the issue of Fusion 360 taking hours to download and install I have to ask what you connection type is? cable? dial up? On a normal cable connection I see Fusion downloading and installing well within 10 minutes. I generally do not have any other apps running however even running an application such as Outlook only adds a couple of minutes (if it happens to be updating while I'm installing Fusion). So I am at a bit of a loss to explain why your experience is so much slower. Is this on a public network? Corporate? (If corporate does your company use a proxy network?)

We appreciate your continued use of Fusion and look forward to helping you resolve any questions or issues you may have.

Regards,

[Anonymous]

You missed some of my points I think.

Replying to your points directly:

1. The installer itself, show just some vague progress bar, without ever explaining what on earth it is doing, it should at least say it is downloading something... You see, I downloaded the installer from the site, thinking it was a installer, not a downloader... You should make then available a true installer, where you can download and reuse on several machines, and fix your interface, that is extremely unclear of what is going on.

2. Bandwidth issue is not it taking too long to install, it is making all other people in the network slow, and eating up metered connection, WITHOUT WARNING, since the downloader doesn't say what it is doing except having a progress bar.

3. Fusion install on C on Windows... AND also installs in whatever place it wants in OSX and Linux too, it is not a "windows platforms" issue, it is all platforms.

4. I installed only from autodesk.com, and yes, there ARE two versions installed, when Fusion updates, it creates a new dock icon for the new version that just installed, and break things, someone just made a post complaining about it: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/design-validate-document/fusion-360-disappears-completely-after-quitt...

5. Disk space is not an issue, breaking policy (there are several reasons to not install stuff on boot partition) is, redownloading and wasting metered connection is, redownloading and making the network unecessarily slow is an issue, and so on...

6. Connection is a small business, no proxies, fiber optic, according to speedtest can reach download speeds of 10 megabyte (not megabit) per second, usually when I download random stuff from US or Europe I see around 3 megabyte per second of speed.

[Anonymous]

Hit send too early.

By the way, the "hours to install" I mean literally, Fusion took about 4 hours and 30 minutes to install on my OSX machine.

[baribak]

Hi Mauricio,

Thanks for the reply. My replies are inline and in green below:

1. The installer itself, show just some vague progress bar, without ever explaining what on earth it is doing, it should at least say it is downloading something... You see, I downloaded the installer from the site, thinking it was a installer, not a downloader... You should make then available a true installer, where you can download and reuse on several machines, and fix your interface, that is extremely unclear of what is going on.

KpB:  I'm sorry for your confusion regarding the downloader. Our current streamer implementation attempts to reduce the local footprint most installers require. We do this by downloading and decompressing files as they are installed on your system. As for the level of detail we provide during the install, yes we do display a progress meter but do not show anything else with regards to what files are being installed, their locations, etc. All of that information is stored in our installation log file. That can be found in c:\users\<username>\appdata\local\autodesk. Additionally, regarding a "full program" to download we do offer a self-contained installer. Unfortauntely it is designed to work in lab environments and installs the program globally for multi-user systems. I will add a request to offer a self-contained installer for local installs.

2. Bandwidth issue is not it taking too long to install, it is making all other people in the network slow, and eating up metered connection, WITHOUT WARNING, since the downloader doesn't say what it is doing except having a progress bar.

KpB: Unfortunately we do not control how much bandwidth is allocated. We use whatever is available in attempt to expedite the installation process. You can control bandwidth allocations through 3rd-party utilities but like other programs we use what's there.

3. Fusion install on C on Windows... AND also installs in whatever place it wants in OSX and Linux too, it is not a "windows platforms" issue, it is all platforms.

KpB: Regarding the ability to install to a drive other than "C" we do recognize the need for this in some environments and hope to be able to provide this option in a future update. In general we follow Windows installation guidelines and put most of the files we install in c:\users\<username>\appdata\local\autodesk for Windows and for OSX users in  /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Autodesk as per Apple recommendations.

4. I installed only from autodesk.com, and yes, there ARE two versions installed, when Fusion updates, it creates a new dock icon for the new version that just installed, and break things, someone just made a post complaining about it: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/design-validate-document/fusion-360-disappears-completely-after-quitt...

KpB: This sounds like you may have pinned an icon to the taskbar which wasn't updated when Fusion was updated. If so and you want to use a Taskbar icon, right-click on the desktop icon and pin that to the taskbar. This points to a file that doesn't change locations after updates and should be functional moving forward.

5. Disk space is not an issue, breaking policy (there are several reasons to not install stuff on boot partition) is, redownloading and wasting metered connection is, redownloading and making the network unecessarily slow is an issue, and so on...

KpB: Again, we are aware of this request.

6. Connection is a small business, no proxies, fiber optic, according to speedtest can reach download speeds of 10 megabyte (not megabit) per second, usually when I download random stuff from US or Europe I see around 3 megabyte per second of speed.

KpB: I can't really comment on network performance as every network connection is different. I do know that installations on either Mac or Windows from my office or home generally take between 10-20 mins (office is faster). So I'm not sure what would cause Fusion's install to take that long but I believe the place to start is the network connection itself. It sounds like the bandwidth was being reduced as the streamer was running. Sometimes the time of day when you try can also play a role in network speed. If it is that slow I would see if another time of the day works better (less people on the internet).

Regards,

[Anonymous]

OSX users in  /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Autodesk as per Apple recommendations.

You must be ****ing kidding me.

No wonder Fusion is so buggy on OSX (creating infinite dock icons, never being found on spotlight, being a pain to find any folders related to it, problems to install, etc...)

Nowhere Apple recommend such madness, because it is madness!

On OSX applications should go in one of three places:

1. A .app bundle in the Applications folder, as defined by Apple (and they are slowly moving all their software to this model, sometimes adding symlinks from old folders to the Applications)

2. Some appropriate Unix-style folder (for example /opt/ that is where most unix-style installers and package managers install non-OS software)

2. Let the user install in whatever place he wants, probably defaulting to his home folder or Applications.

Application Support folder, is supposed to be used exclusively to save stuff of your application that is NOT required to make the application run, most apps shouldn't even use it in first place, Apple asks you to use it when you add iOS-style sandboxing to your app, when sandboxed the software can't access folders that don't belong to it, and get a Application Support folder to itself so it can work (donwloading file,s saving, etc...)

If you don't believe me, you can read the quote I will paste, or look in your developer documentation for "OS X Library Directory Details"

Quote from that file, emphasis mine:

Contains all app-specific data and support files. These are the files that your app creates and manages on behalf of the user and can include files that contain user data.
By convention, all of these items should be put in a subdirectory whose name matches the bundle identifier of the app. For example, if your app is named MyApp and has the bundle identifier com.example.MyApp, you would put your app’s user-specific data files and resources in the ~/Library/Application Support/com.example.MyApp/ directory. Your app is responsible for creating this directory as needed.
Resources required by the app to run must be placed inside the app bundle itself.

[Stuart-H]

I think the days have past into ancient history when we install the OS on a seperate drive OS sand boxing has come a long long way and it's the slowest way to run a modern OS 

broadband speed end I have a 200 meg down and 12 meg up fusion only takes me about 3 mins to install on my iMac 

you say I only allow my OS to be on C I bet there are portions of your programs on there as well they need to be , do a search fore Adobe ( if you have any Adobe products ) they spread like a virus and are the worst offenders 

my advice to you is let the programs install to there correct place as required by the developers get a better BB 

btw we do not have drive letters in OS X 😀

My coments as my own and will be at odds to some so no offence is intended just the comments o a OS X app developer 

Stuart 

[MartinMajewski]

@baribak In times where Gigabytes and Terabytes are cheaper then one Liter of bottled fresh water "local footprint" is the least problem Autodesk should be concerned about. I would like it also much more if I could download all the "basic files" of Fusion 360 as one package and store them as long as I want on my hard drive. Especially in cases where one wants to install an application on several machines this is a much better approach then re-downloading all files again and again. Internet speed is still a big issue in many places! Don't be so arrogant to deny it just because you sit on a Gigabit connection.

But if you're concerned about keeping Fusion 360 up to date and old installers could prevent a fluid update, your installer could check for a minimal required version and prompt the user to fetch a current version and warn the user of potential issues otherwise.

[Stuart-H]

To dl and store ia app/program is a bad way 

1. you will have out of date files which could cause problems in the future

2. its better to DL a freash up to date copy . less redundant files present on your system

there are very few update to most apps in OS updates that completly remove redundant files so a up to date version is the better way to reinstall if requred

note with OSX the remove app will note completly remove all of F360 ( hope they make it so ) the do however have info sheet on how to do it.

i have had a problem with installing a add on to F360 using the remove app and reinstalling from a freash install did not resolve it but following the info sheet that directs you to remove some hidden files then a rinstall did sort it out 

just my view no offence intended to anyone

Stuart

[baribak]

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback. We are always appreciative when people take time from their busy schedules to help us better understand what affects them. 

Regarding disk space, our main objective is to minimize any impact to the user or their system. Unfortunately configurations, environments, and requirements change rapidly and will continue to challenge us. But we hope to meet those challenges as we encounter them. 

Additionally, if the location(s) of where application files are installed is problematic, you do have the option of removing that version of Fusion 360 (that you installed from autodesk.com) and install from the Mac Apple Store. The MAS version will install Fusion to the Applications folder, etc. and any accounts you have will still be usable. 

Thanks again for the feedback and thanks for using Fusion 360!

Regards,