Functionality

[marcusfriesl]

I have searched the forums and a few of these issues seem to date back quite a few years, and maybe I am missing something but:

• I can't seem to reference driven dimensions in a sketch. This seems to be an ongoing issue for many years, any idea when it will be resolved?
• In a 2D sketch, lines can not be tangent to or perpendicular to an ellipse or a control point spline.  Why is this not possible?
• An ability to dimension the arc length would also be great.
• In a drawing, why only the limited amount of page size options?
• In a drawing, why is showing an alternate dimension (x in [x mm]) not a universal toggle but one that has to be activated for each separate dimension created?
• When creating a new titleblock or border, why can't lines be dimensioned?
• When creating a section through a part with multiple materials the hatching shows as all the same.  For legibility, it might be great to have each material group have its own hatch, just so that you don't have to go and manually change everything to make the drawing legible.

Long time Inventor user, trying to work my way into Fusion aspects are great, others are a bit confusing.

Thanks.

[ClintBrown3D]

Hi @marcusfriesl 

Hopefully I can help with your 2D Drawing questions. I can't answer specifics about modelling, but maybe @jodom4 could help.

Arc Length Dimension: We don't currently have an Arc length tool in 2D drawings, but this feature is under future consideration. It will be added to the public roadmap soon.

Page Size options: We have a project planned to let users create custom sheet sizes. The sizes that were initially included with Fusion are based on standard ISO and ASME paper sizes. But we understand that users might need to create drawings on "legal" or expanded architectural paper sizes, or even any custom size to suit. This project is listed under "Management" on the public roadmap.

Alternate Dimensions global toggle: The development team is currently building this feature. It's listed under "Annotations" on the public roadmap, although we haven't advertised this specific functionality yet. We hope to make this available in an upcoming build.

Title block Dimensions: The title block editor does not include a dimension tool, but there is feedback at the tooltip showing the size of the lines being drawn.

Hatch by material: We have had a few requests for this option, I have added your request to our database. We use all of these requests to help us prioritise which features to work on next.

I hope that this helps, if you have any questions about the drawings roadmap, feel free to drop me a mail - Clint. Brown {a} Autodesk.com

[TrippyLighting]

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@marcusfriesl wrote:

Long time Inventor user, trying to work my way into Fusion...

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What is your motivation behind this ?

The reason I am asking this is because Autodesk aggressively markets Fusion 360 against Solidworks. In some areas that is justified and Fusion 360 has a solid price/performance advantage. For example in the area of CAM.

In other areas Fusion 360 simply lags years behind. 

[marcusfriesl]

Thank you for the reply Clint.  I hope these get implemented.

[marcusfriesl]

@TrippyLighting with Inventor, I feel you spend a lot of time setting up assemblies and components, linking the components to a spreadsheet to allow all our universal variables to be read.

It gets tedious.  Fusion has a great "assembly" structure.  The variables (except for those that are driven) are easily accessible throughout the stack.  I also feel, and this may be totally wrong, it does a better job of rebuilding.  For me, it seems to save a lot of tedious time.

Also separating the feature list from the grouped sketches, solids, and construction planes is fantastic.

We do a lot of complex shapes, hence the sketching questions.  On the fabrication side, the model is all we need. But we do present "shop" drawings to the client.  They need to be easily understood, clean and good-looking.  Fusion is really lacking on the drawing front.

I have been trying every few years to do a small project on Fusion to see if we can switch, and there are always a few little quicks that hold us back.

I also like that it is available on both Windows and Mac.  Inventor is the only piece of software keeping me on Windows.  I like options.

[barry9UDQ6]

@marcusfrieslI agree with all the points you are raising.

I started on Inventor 2012 and have been using Fusion for just over a year.

The modeling environment is awesome, only lacking a couple of sheet metal tools like insert bend and lofted flange (like Inventor has!) for me.

I agree that the drawing environment is lacking in comparison, although I feel that is not what Fusion is concentrating on. Drawings of larger models are extremely slow to load and work with.

Without access to layers there is no way to change dimension lines to blue etc.

A feature that I really miss (from Inventor) is the ability to change the colour of my 'background' sub-assemblies.

So I am exporting my drawings to DXF, and prettying them up in AutoCad.

And something that I struggle with is the design version. Whenever I save my model, every derived part, derived flat pattern for nesting and drawing wants to be updated. Even if my last save made no difference to the referenced geometry. I would personally prefer a current version that stays at the top, and is automatically the one referenced. And if needed I could override that and reference an older version. Every time I save it is because I am making improvements, not creating 'alternative facts' versions. But that's just me.

[TrippyLighting]

Good points!

Trying to do a complete project with Fusion 360 is also what I usually recommend to evaluate whether or not Fusion 360 might be the correct tool for a user or company.

It certainly has a firm place in my workflow. And for top-down concept modeling and rendering it is indeed very fast.

It is surprising how often the Drawing Workspace comes up as an area of concern.  While it has grown substantially, I also find it very slow/laggy to work with compared with the other CAD software packages I am used to (SolidWorks, Alibre Design, ZW3D). 

[ClintBrown3D]

Hi @marcusfriesl 

Just following up on this post. I hope you have seen the updates that we made to drawings:

We added More dimension units in Sept 2021, this allows for global alternate units.

 

Arc Length dimensions were added to the latest major release of Fusion: