Help us help you create better 2D drawings!

[TimeraAutodesk]

Hey all,

Here’s another opportunity for you to influence how we develop the 2D drawings experience! 

We want to do some comparative analysis of our internal drawings against your real-world drawings – created from Fusion or (even more interesting) from your other CAD packages. 

Feel free to reply to this thread with your drawings. If you want to keep your drawings confidential, email them to me directly at timera.hart@autodesk.com and we will keep them safe. Any and all examples of drawings you're making today to get your job done would be super helpful to us as we keep our eye on the prize of fullfilling our promise to rounding out the drawings environment.

We on the drawings team are still hard at work to bring you some great new features in the upcoming releases, with a bunch happening on June 22 (mentioned at the bottom of the June 8 what’s new post).

Timera

[TimeraAutodesk]

Hi @Anonymous, thanks for your feedback, are you referring to 2D sketching in Fusion 360's Modeling workspace, or are you talking about the 2D Drawings workspace (for manufacturing drawing creation). If you're referring to requests on the 2D Drawings workspace, can you please explain in more detail what your workflows and expectations are for these requests? If you could send samples along as well, as we requested in the original post that would be very helpful.

Thanks,

Timera

[bryan5]

Attached is a n example of a simple lift eye we will create at the water jet.

I don't need to have this 3D model. A model space where I can draw the geometry ( 1:1 scale) and a sheet tab where I can document it and scale it to fit the page I want to print the mfg drawing on.

I created the attached .dwg in Solid Edge draft.

Thank you

[bryan5]

I was just checking in to see if the example I posted of a model space tab in the drawing environment was enough information for you to work with?

Thank you

[TimeraAutodesk]

@bryan5, yes, that example is helpful, thank you for providing it. We are still evaluating when and how it is feasible to expose Fusion 360 sketch geometry inside the Drawings workspace, but it is good to see a use-case of it in your sample. I'm still curious as to why you don't need any 3D geometry... is it just for documenting some simple parts that you don't feel like modeling in 3D or are you looking to do ONLY 2D drafting in Fusion and no 3D modeling at all? 

Thanks again for the samples and detailed conversation, this is very helpful.

Best,

Timera

[ToddHarris7556]

@TimeraAutodesk... one example might simply be a drawing set cover sheet.

i.e. If we have 10 Fusion parts that we've documented in 10 drawings, then it is helpful to be able to create a cover sheet with a drawing sheet index. (A list of drawings, revs, dates, sheet titles, etc)

We typically want this to look the same as our drawing sheets, but it's difficult if we have to go create that in Excel (or Word, Illustrator, AutoCAD, whatever) and create a separate PDF.

[bryan5]

Thank you for the reply. I would like the freedom to either draw 2D or 3D. I design at a job shop which means I get all forms of information to make parts for my customers who range from the oil and gas industry, machinery, medical, power sports, etc. Information to create parts for my customers will range from a paper napkin, physical par, or an electronic file (2D and 3D). When receiving 2D .dwg files all I need to do is strip the .dwg of all layers that do not pertain to the 2D geometry necessary to generate code for our laser, plasma, or water jet. When creating geometry to send to a 2D cutter, there is no need to extrude the geometry to a thickness. All the CAM software needs is the 2D profile geometry to generate code.

One example is that we make shim plates for a customer of ours. The shims are to be cut in various thicknesses ranging from .03" to .250". The profile geometry is the same for each thickness so all I need to do is create a 2D profile drawing and when processing in CAM input the different thicknesses.

Being able to draw and documenting in a 2D environment keeps me flexible in designing product for our customers. There may be times when documenting a full 3D assembly in the drawing environment where I can add a 2D profile geometry that can be used in the manufacturing process that does not need to be in the assembly file. For instance If I am designing a piece of machinery and I need to create shim plates for it because the machinery is placed in different facilities and the grade of the area where it is mounted varies from location to location; I don't want to have the different shim thicknesses placed in my assembly of the machinery. All I need is the last tab of the drawing is to be able to draw the 2D geometry and note cut a certain quantity in a set number of thicknesses.

Does this answer your question?

Thank you again for the response.

[Anonymous]

In Inventor's drawing environment when I encounter a situation that Inventors' native tools can't handle, I can use the 2d sketch tools in the 2d drawing workspace to get around the problem.

Something similar in Fusion 360 would be real handy. Since currently the Fusion Drawing environment doesn't have weld symbols, tapped hole annotations, tables, Etc. This would provide a way for users to add the desired annotation content until such time that these features are added to Fusion 360.

Also Fusion 360 allows the importing of Autocad DWG for custom title blocks, why not allow other DWG or DXF geometry be imported as well?

Thanks

Greg

[Anonymous]

Forgive any redundancy as I didn't read everyone else's posts, but it would be great to be able to make drawings from a simple 2D sketch or be able to create a 2D sketch in a drawing.

[Anonymous]

There is a simple rule of thumb here: Some applications are already doing stuff, or doing stuff well before your own program discovers it, needs it or implements it.

Microsoft word borrowed features from other page formatting companies. Adobe's Indesign learnt many lessons from QuarkXpress. Adobe Illustrator took years to implement features from CorelDraw and MacroMedia Freehand. Instead of asking the community to supply all the features needed, grab some of your programmers who hopefully use Fusion 360 and get them to do intensive training on Adobe Illustrator. All your 2D drawing treatments, features and capabilities already exist in the Industry Leader, Adobe Illustrator. The 2D work has been done for you. Don't ask the community, then guess what needs to be added. Research Adobe Illustrator then implement that 2D professionalism into Fusion 360. Currently the 2D drawing side of Fusion 360 feels like something out of an open source program from 1995.

The 2D output side of Fusion 360 needs to get better fast.

[ToddHarris7556]

With all due respect - 

We're a creative design/build studio. We have graphic designers, industrial designers, mechanical and electrical engineers. We have Adobe Creative Suite and Autodesk Product Design Suite Ultimate subscriptions, and we use all these products every day. 

I would humbly submit that Illustrator is a fantastic tool, and certainly an industry leader. But for 2d drawings? No, I can't think of anyone who uses it for that, or imagine why anyone would.

There is a lot of room for improvement in Fusion 360's drawing module. Most would probably agree it's the Achilles' heel for the product. It's headed in the right direction. With a couple more updates, it will hopefully become usable for us in a production sense. Some people are already able to use it - good for them. We're still using Inventor to produce production drawings. (multi-sheet, control over text styles, fractional dimensions) 

Maybe we've been underutilizing or misunderstanding Illustrator, but fundamental 2d drawing features like projected drawing views, titleblocks and BOMs would be tricky at best. 🙂

[ToddHarris7556]

As greg suggested up above - when Inventor's capabilities fall short, the 2d sketching environment allows us to workaround issues. 

Quick example - I have a part in a Fusion assembly that's located by the mid point of one side, at an angle to the origin planes.

There's no way that I know of to dimension this in a Fusion drawing.

All I need to be able to do is either grab a midpoint, or else create some quick projected geometry and dimension to that. 

. 

[TimeraAutodesk]

@Anonymous - Thanks for taking the time to post here. I just want to be clear that this thread is dedicated to the 2D Drawing workspace in Fusion 360, not 2D sketching. 

@ToddHarris7556 - I appreciate your candor, and we hope that soon you'll be able to use Fusion for your manufacturing drawings as well. Just to give you a small heads up, Fractional dimensions will be coming out next month, and the team is in the last stages of developing multi-sheet. I don't have a release date for it quite yet but know that it is on it's way. Can you give me some more clarity on what you mean by text styles? We have some basic text styles available through the Annotation Settings (below), but I'd love to hear what else you're looking for to make sure what we're planning is in line with your expectations.

Thanks guys!

Timera

[ToddHarris7556]

@TimeraAutodesk - 

Working examples of text style limitations in Fusion:

• Fusion currently assumes that ALL text on the sheet is intended to be the same size. (We typically use .125" for headings, and .094" for body text/notes. Inventor allows the creation of many styles, each with different characteristics. i.e. Big Title, Revision Note, CNC notes, Body Text are all styles that we might typically call out differently)
• Fusion currently offers .1, .12 and .24" text with no ability to customize that list
• If a text size is manually overridden/entered in the text box, it appears to be a multiple of the current Annotation settings default. i.e. if the default is .12, and I enter text manually as .094", then the default is changed to .1, the previously-entered text will shrink to .074". So the manual override / default setting need to be managed carefully together, or text will be unpredictably sized.
• We typically use our Inventor styles/layers to, for example, make all of our dimensions dark red and thin. They are completely distinguishable from object lines. Fusion object lines and dimension lines are the same. I do acknowledge this is a dimension issue, not a text style issue.

Thanks for the update re: frac dimensions and multi-sheet. I know lots of folks will be excited to see these go live 🙂

[TimeraAutodesk]

@ToddHarris7556 - this is level of detailed explanation is awesome, thanks for taking the time to shoot it my way. We have a project on the roadmap to expose layers so that you'll be able to edit the attributes of layers like text more precisely which I think will satisfy your workflows. In all transparency, we likely won't start on that until end of the year (we can't start until after we get multi-sheet out), but I'd love to circle back with you then and give you a look at the designs when the time comes so that we can get your feedback. 

Thanks again Todd!

Timera

[Anonymous]

I gave the model to drawing function a quick test and was very impressed.

[TimeraAutodesk]

Hi All,

I want to give one last shout-out thank you to each and every one of you who took the time to respond to this forum thread.

We have been hard at work gathering and analyzing all of the feedback and samples that you all have sent in. We used it all to aid in the next phase of prioritization for Drawings.

A blog post went live today which outlines in detail an overall update on Drawings as well as our near-term roadmap. Check it out here.

Thanks again, and keep in touch!

Best,

Timera

[TMC.Engineering]

@TimeraAutodesk

thanks for the update, maybe in the bubbles you could add timing estimates?  something like Q2 2017,  for me at least the size and color of the bubble doesn't mean to much

[TimeraAutodesk]

@TMC.Engineering, good feedback. We specifically didn't add timing because we are still unsure on when these items will be done (other than Browser, which we noted as coming out in November), but we wanted to be transparent about what the teams are currently working on. The broader Roadmap Blog will be updated when we have Quarterly estimates for the rest of Drawings and other Fusion features, so keep your eyes peeled there, too. 

[O.Tan]

Just saw the blog post, excellent! And the transparency is much appreciated. Thanks!

[lemelman]

Hi Timera,
Your blog says Office Hours will commence on Monday 2nd November, but the
2nd November is not a Monday.
Should it be Monday 7th, or Wednesday 2nd?