Fusion 360 Work Offline

[Anonymous]

I see that there are older posts about this already, but I just downloaded Fusion 360 and I am really struggling with the fact that I cannot find a way to work offline. Am I missing something or does Autodesk now keep all of my work? Regardless of the fact that the software is free up to a certain point, it seems a bit odd that I would not be able to organize my own files, on my own hard drive, the way I want to (like any other software package).

Am I missing something here? Can someone please tell me that I am wrong?

Please help,

Jereme

[sanjay_jayabal]

Hi Jereme,

Fusion 360 is cloud based and when you are connected to the internet, your data is saved to the cloud.  However, you do have the option to work offline (click on your login name that displays in the top right and select "work offline") where your designs get cached locally until you connect again.  Once you are online, the data you created while Offline will get uploaded to the cloud storage.  

You also have the ability to export your designs to store a local copy,

1. File > Export will allow you to store a local copy in neutral file formats as well as in .f3d format (except for assemblies that contain external references - components inserted into the assembly)

2. You can also punch out to A360 (the triangle icon in the data panel or click the "i" on an item and select 'Open details in A360') from where you can export your design to a variety of formats.

The intent is for easy collaboration amongst distributed teams as well as allow access to your data anywhere as long as you have an internet connection.

best regards,

Sanjay Jayabal.

[Anonymous]

Hello Sanjay,

Thank you for the response, but it appears that Fusion 360 does not work like a normal design application (even AutoCAD or Inventor). When files are saved (online or off) the application asks what you want to save the file as EVERY time you press Ctrl+S. This brakes up the workflow of anything that you are working on, unless you don't have a habit of saving your file frequently.

Along with this, the ability to organize files is extremely complicated, because the application does not save to your hard drive and THEN upload to the A360 server. It saves directly to the A360 server. This makes organizing a file system extremely complicated, and makes working in multiple software packages considerably more complicated to manage. If I want to design something in Fusion and bring in into another program to run a structural analysis or FEA, I have to save to A360, export to STP, download to my local machine, save that in a completely seperate location from the original file and then run the FEA.

I like the concept of Fusion and I appreciate that it is free for hobby-use but from previous Autodesk applications, I feel that the workflow of the software is severely lacking. Just opening a basic file from the browser is exponentially slower than if the software would allow you to open work off of my hard drive and backup to A360 upon saving. Conceptually I like the software, but unfortunately in execution, by design, it is horribly inefficient.