Inspect->Measure

[Anonymous]

I've said it before, and I will say it again - The Inspect->Measure feature in Fusion absolutely sucks!  It is, far and away, the single WORST feature of this software!  It virtually never gives me the very simple measurements I want, and what measurements it DOES choose to give me at any give time seems to vary completely at random.  I just selected two parallel faces, wanting to know the distance between them.  Seems like a simple, and obvious thing, right?  But does it give me that?  NO!  It gives me the areas of the two faces, and their path lengths!  NOTHING else!  WTF???  So, I instead select two parallel edges, one edge on each face, hoping to be able to get the delta X/Y/Z distances.  But, it does not give me the option of seeing the deltas!  This is just ridiculous!  In Solidworks, Inspect->Measure works very consistently, and predictably, and it is rare that I have trouble getting the measurement I want.  In Fusion, it almost NEVER gives me the measurement I want, no matter how simple and obvious the request, and whether I can get the delta measurements at all seems to be purely a roll of the dice.  The measurements it does give me are almost always useless.  The option is sometimes there, sometimes not, but if there is a logic to it, is completely eludes me.  All I know is this feature almost NEVER gives me what I need. Why on earth is such a critical capability so horribly implemented??

One other thing:  When one or more features are selected in the Model space, like two faces, SOME measurements related to them pops up in the lower right corner of the window in BLACK text which is, FAR more often than not, completely unreadable unless there is nothing in that area of the workspace.  Couldn't the color of that text be based on what is BEHIND it?  i.e. - if a black or dark gray object is behind that area, then display the text in white.  As it is, I nearly always have to do a Roll/Pan/Zoom to be able to read that text.

Regards,

Ray L.

[mike.tessier]

Hi @Anonymous,

Thanks for posting! I'm sorry that this tool has been proving problematic!

I just tried to recreate the issues you were having to see if maybe we had some bugs with the Inspect tool, but I found that I was able to get the desired results fairly easily. Would you mind recording an Autodesk Screencast of some of the issues that you are having? It would be very useful to see your picks and clicks.

Thanks in advance and please let me know if you have any questions or concerns!

Cheers,

[Anonymous]

Mike,

I will do that next time it happens...

Regards,

Ray L.

[mike.tessier]

Hi Ray,

Thanks for getting back to me! Awesome - I'll be on the look out for that!

However, I was curious and had performed some more testing on this behavior while I waited for your response, and I actually was able to reproduce the issue sometimes! I think it might have something to do with the "normal" of the face but am a little uncertain because I have found that theory to be inconsistent. However, I am in the process of logging up a bug to have this looked at and will circle back here shortly to let you know the defect number so you might track it!

Cheers,

[Anonymous]

At least it's not just me!  🙂

Regards,

Ray L.

[mike.tessier · Accepted solution]

Hi Ray,

Nope - definitely not just you! I just finished this up (logged as FUS-32245 for your reference). I went ahead and linked the defect to this post, so that way once it's fixed, I'll get a notification and be able to circle back here to let you know!

Thanks for reporting this! We greatly appreciate your efforts in helping us improve Fusion for everyone!

Cheers,

[poplawa]

Here is my issue with this tool:

Those black numbers are completely useless

Where are X, Y, Z deltas?

image below:

[HughesTooling]

If those are holes select the edges not the surfaces or if they're cylinders select the end faces. I don't think it works with surfaces because where along the length would Z zero be?

You only get deltas between point to point or circle to circle.

Mark

[poplawa]

Much better, thank you 🙂

[Anonymous]

This is, BY FAR, the single WORST feature in Fusion!  The Measure feature in Solidworks is great - it is VERY easy to get the measurement you need.  In Fusion, it is, FAR more often than not, impossible to get the exact measurement you need, and often you can't even tell what the he11 it IS measuring.  It seems to me completely obvious that if you select a circular edge and a straight edge, or two co-planar circular edges, or two hole faces, or a hole face and parallel flat face, or a circular edge and perpendicular flat face, etc.,etc. - in ALL of these cases, you should get center distances, as well as X/Y/Z distances.  But, no. in most cases you get a single distance, that is something useless like the straight-line distance between two points in the edges, or something equally useless.  I absolutely HATE the way Measure works, have nearly given up on using it, and will instead generate a temporary sketch to get the dimension I need.  And, yes, even on those exceedingly rate occasions where it DOES give the dimension I need, it displays all the dimensions on top of each other, so NONE of them are legible!  This feature absolutely SUCKS!  SOMEONE at Autodesk should look at Solidworks to see how it SHOULD work.

Regards,

Ray L.

[Anonymous]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

This is, BY FAR, the single WORST feature in Fusion!  The Measure feature in Solidworks is great -

Regards,

Ray L.

---

I agree. It isn't just SolidWorks. Pro-e, Creo, most 3d modeling softwares.... all are better and work as they should.

[Anonymous]

How about posting one or two links to IdeaStation posts related to the measuring tools which give constructive suggestions on how it should work?

I very much agree that the measuring tool is lacking, but I think shouting out complaints in the forum with "somebody please fix" is not extremely helpful. It's a bit helpful as it raises awareness, but if you really care about Fusion and having it improved, it helps a lot more to have some constructive criticism with suggestions to improve (and vote on).

"Look it up in SoftwareXY" is also not the most constructive help, in my opinion. (I, for once, don't own/use any of them so I can't say if I would agree with that behavior or not.)

If I'd see some useful links here, I'd sure vote on them! (And others might as well...)

[Anonymous]

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-ideastation-request-a/make-measurements-legible/idi-p/7471...

[Anonymous]

You have worded it stronger than I would have, but I could not agree more about the uselessness of this Fusion 360 feature. I just tried to measure the center of a hole to an edge of a 3-d part. After many attempts in different ways, it became obvious that the measurement tool was not going to let me pick the center of the hole at the surface--even with the snap option selected. The snap option would let me see an indicator for the center when I placed the cursor over the edge, but the moment the cursor was moved to select it the center indicator disappeared. Very frustrating. Sadly, a part can be drawn and extruded in the time it can take to get a simple measurement off a 3-d part. The 2-d use is not near as glitchy.

Will add screencast once it is installed.

[Anonymous]

https://autode.sk/31wz2Wk

[manuel.fr]

i had my problems with the meassurement tool at start too. i worked with CATIA for 13 years, and this works a very different, you have tons of options when meassuring, in Fusion not.

i want to learn fusion for private purposes and a small hobby business. I looks great, runs on mac, is innovative and a lot of very simple things works here where catia just cant keep up. catia is stuck in the 80s.

back to topic.... first i had to learn that i can choose if i want to meassure bodys or surfaces. If you select Bodys and simply click to bodys you geht the minimum distance, very nice.

A simple case is, you have two shafts and want to know how much space is left between them, in catia it is not easy, here it requiers two clicks.

but what if you want two measure the centers of them? not possible?! Of course it is. Simly activate the snap points, hover over the surface, hold cmd or shift, not sure what it is right now und you can move the mouse to the points without dissapearing these. After clicking both this way you get the Deltas, pretty cool i think.

But of course, the meassuring feature lacks a lot of features and options, but it is enough for the basics. Sometimes its hard to figure out how to get what you want, and sometimes it is not possible atm.

I hope that it will be improved someday soon.

[Anonymous]

Thank you.

I like Fusion 360 because it can run on platforms that do not have the 16 GB of RAM required by SolidWorks, so it works well for the students I tutor/mentor. The ease of multiple people sharing files they work on or need to access the work of others to ensure compatibility. It has crashed on me several times, and I lost hours of work because the auto-recovery lapse was far too long and because I got overly focus on the drawing and forgot to save--both my fault. 

However, the measurement thing frustrated me, but your suggestions will be tried, and hopefully that resolves my issues.

[gbha4706QHY6N]

Yep, try this one. Sure, in this case, I don't actually need to click on the point in the centre. I don't fully understand what's happening here, but I suspect it is due to the translation of the object after it is inserted. I think it is reasonable to expect the tool to tell me the distance between those two points.

Here is a second example in the same model.