Fusion360 Education Version

[bnummerdor]

Hello, I am an educator who has had a frustrating issue this year.  The education version seems to update every 6 weeks.  Our IT guy has had a problem keeping the student's computers updated with the latest and greatest software (he is drastically outnumbered).  However when my students go home to do some work we have had an issue accessing the work because the firewalls at home are not as secure as we need them here at the school and they are working on a newer version.  I thought that since other software (MasterCAM) sends out a version in July of every year perhaps Autodesk could do a dump of all updates in June of each year for their educational version.  Have other educators dealt with this same issue or found a solution?

[dskinnerWMQCL]

Hey @bnummerdor, The only thing I came up with is to update the machines myself.  At least here at my school you do not have to be a local admin to download and run the executable updater and that's what we do here.  I know it's not the answer you're looking for but it's something.  You and your IT person can also get on the mailing list and you will get an email when the updates are about to be pushed out so that you know when it's time to update.

[RajkumarIlanchelian]

@bnummerdor Here is what is actually happening. 

1. On your school machines your IT is using what is called a lab/admin install. We have this install primarily for education institutions. We do this so that labs do not have to update every time a new update is available (we support versions up to six months old). Fusion updates almost every month. So with lab installs you do not receive an automatic update or what we call live update. The IT chooses when to move to the next version. 

2. Now students on their machines likely are installing the non admin/lab install which we refer to as streamer visions. This is what all our non - education customers use. In this version we force a live update for our customers (you have a snooze period of 14 days). 

About every 6 weeks we release a version of Fusion that has a "schema difference". What this means is that designs saved in a newer schema cannot be opened in an older schema. 

Workflow of what is happening is that say the lab has a version 100. Fusion deploys a version 101. Lab does not receive an update because it is a lab install. Students on the other had they move from 100 to 101. Now when they say a design in 101 they cannot open it back in the lab version which is 100. 

Couple of options to reduce this impact: 

1. Students can install the lab version on their machines so that they do not get live update (but this means after 6 months support of that version will stop and they have to sync with the lab)

2. Rather than a full install of Fusion on the desktop, have you explored the Fusion online version of education? https://fusion.online.autodesk.com/ This method does not involve any install on the lab machine and also gives the students flexibility to work in lab and home on the same version. 

[bnummerdor]

Thanks for the advice, I have asked multiple times for admin rights and still haven't been able to get them.

[bnummerdor]

Thanks, I will pass this on to my IT Guy, and it sounds like this might be a possible solution.