Is Fusion 360 going under?

[yoshimitsuspeed]

It seems like updates are smaller and less exciting than ever.
Every development that is promised is pushed out further and further from it's original date.
Ideas in the idea station just keep getting more and more votes with zero attention from F360.
The AD team promises there are individual teams working on every aspect of AD and yet nothing is happening anywhere.

Is F360 stalling out? Should we be worried that this will end up as a failed attempt at something better and end up with years of work in a worthless file format?

What is going on AD? How can so many dedicated teams make a road crew look like the flash?

[kinsleymark]

I think many of us are OK with "less exciting" updates if that means that the development teams are focusing more on core functionality improvements, cloud stability, drawings speed, overall reliability, bug fixes, etc.

I know that I'm definitely willing to wait longer for flashy new functionality in exchange for a rock-solid base program that doesn't crash and a cloud network that doesn't go down at critical points.

[yoshimitsuspeed]

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@kinsleymark wrote:

I think many of us are OK with "less exciting" updates if that means that the development teams are focusing more on core functionality improvements, cloud stability, drawings speed, overall reliability, bug fixes, etc.

I know that I'm definitely willing to wait longer for flashy new functionality in exchange for a rock-solid base program that doesn't crash and a cloud network that doesn't go down at critical points.

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I'm not talking about flashy. F360 spends too much time on flashy. Stuff that will get people in the door and signing up. Then it falls flat on functionality.
We have been waiting years for flatten to 2D functions, sheet metal, improved drawings, and on and on and on and on.
Every time someone posts an opinion the AD response is post in the idea station but once you hang around for a few years you realize this is much more a tool to make people think they are being heard and that their ideas might be implemented faster because of it than it is any sort of actual tool to improve the software in and functional way.
When we complain that development should be focused more on stability and critical functionality and that we don't need such ridiculous rendering they say they are different groups working on things but then we wait years for even basic sheet metal. They have been promising sheet metal for years but if it goes anything like drawings did it will probably be nearly useless for another 2 years as they string us along with promises of improvements and tiny little updates.
But in all seriousness it seems the updates are getting less frequent and smaller. This spring in the road map they say "Stay tuned for big and exciting progress" And then every time there is an update and I check to see what has happened it's little bugs, glitches or something they messed up in the previous update.
It almost feels like development is slowing down and big features just get pushed further and further out.
Now if F360 does everything that you want it to do maybe this isn't a big problem. But if you signed up for it 4 years ago because they promised it was production ready and improving fast and if you find it very lacking in critical features that they have been promising for 4 years it is a lot less pleasant.

[daniel_lyall]

Get ride of the Apple side it will go faster 

[yoshimitsuspeed]

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@daniel_lyall wrote:

Get ride of the Apple side it will go faster 

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LOL don't tell them that. Then they would never even consider supporting LInux even though it is the most voted, viewed and discussed idea in the idea station. At least that hasn't been accepted or started on.
But I do like the Linux post floating up there as a reminder to AD and everyone else that the idea station really means jack.

[daniel_lyall]

The Linux side will be done it will be on the long range plan.

Things will change with fusion soon (under a Year I hope) once they get the cloud storage issue fixed It's way behind what was written about on the design and motion blog, dropping inventor is there as well.

They just need more forward planners with big brains not the next week lot.

Friday is going to be fun over there.

[Coscor_NPL]

hi @yoshimitsuspeed

I do agree with you, I jumped on the weagon in early 2016, so have not been a user for a very long time, still, I can also feel the change, in the beginning there were updates every 14 days, improvements, changes and fixes in every update... but well, if the updates come every 30 days or even 60 days and the updates will be bigger and better and safer updates with less bugs, i'm also up for that...

It all just seems not so enthusiastic as before, the 'we try doing something different' philosophy feels missing.

Like you say, the idea station seems left alone...

in my perspective one of these 3 scenarios is underway: 1. one of the major and important 'one man army' people in the company left, and now they all lack the foresight to continue 2. AD has realized it was a commercial failure or a too big endeavour 3. hopefully they have a nice, big, juicy and overhaul update in the pipeline almost finished and they are stalling to push it out...

in option 3 above, which I'm hoping for it is, this is where communication is key in a community like this, AD need to be open about problems and also future prospects or changes...

I love fusion, and the way it works, the idea behind it, the price model and the people behind it (people like Keqing Song) but I do fear that 'bad' changes is coming for us but hoping it is good changes 🙂

[daniel_lyall]

@Coscor_NPL Have a read of the design and motion blog https://designandmotion.net/  There is some info there that shows what is coming.

[Anonymous]

@daniel_lyall

I like what I read in the design and motion blog about Fusion 360.

"During the Autodesk Keynote, there was very little on Inventor (or Revit, or Civil 3D, or AutoCAD, or any desktop product). It was clearly apparent that Fusion 360 has the bling, the bam, and all the swagger. Walk around the AU exhibit hall and again it is all about Fusion and the customers who are using Fusion."

[PhilProcarioJr]

I think the thing everyone needs to think about here is a couple of big things:

1) In the grand scheme of software development Fusion is an infant and has a long way to go. Because of the fact that everyone can voice their wants and needs this makes development harder and slower because one persons needs effects another persons needs and the team has to find a happy medium. Coding stable, complex, multi-platform software is no easy task and it takes time to get things right. As CAD people we want it all and we want it now...but it doesn't work that way.

2) Everyone wants something different...some want Drawings others could care less about drawings, some want sheetmetal others could care less about sheetmetal...etc. They are never going to make everyone happy and there will always be someone that ends up feeling jaded...

I think the big mistake Autodesk made early on was claiming the software was production ready, to some this statement is true to others it is not even close, once again it depends on your needs. I think they learned from this mistake and are trying not to make these mistakes anymore. People like @yoshimitsuspeed were told things that didn't come to pass (yet). I can understand that frustration as I have been there myself. The big problem today is the cloud issues so I would bet that everything else is going to take a back seat to getting the cloud issues fixed although I could be wrong. Fusion isn't going anywhere. Now, when will Fusion have what everyone wants....never so as always as a user you need to decide if it does what you need, if so get work done and if not it's time to move on. Really it's a simple question with a simple answer.

Just my 2 cents...

[HughesTooling]

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@PhilProcarioJr wrote:

 Now, when will Fusion have what everyone wants....never so as always as a user you need to decide if it does what you need, if so get work done and if not it's time to move on. Really it's a simple question with a simple answer.

Just my 2 cents...

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Yes but it free so it must be what I need.

Mark

[Anonymous]

I'm sure this thread is being read and followed by many Autodesk employees, it's a shame that they all shy away and will not answer any of these valid questions.

[burnandreturn]

I have never seen a company be so open and transparent in developing a new product that is so revolutionary in its aproach.  Mega Kudos to Autodesk for sticking their neck out.

Most of the time Fusion pisses me off because it doesn't do things in ways that I am used too.  Old dog new tricks sort of thing.  Sometimes it is my fault.(ok, most times) sometimes not.

I watch a video and then try something along the same lines  and it doesn't always go great.

Now to speed things up I will be magnanimous and let Autodesk take heed of my ideas and needs/wants and ignore everyone else's.    That should relieve some of the burden and speed things up a lot.

!.  Drawings

2. Animation improvements. As in keyframes.

3. Make those round little circle dodads for joints behave themselves and do what I want them to do.

[Anonymous]

Software development is a risky and messy business, primarily because the complexity of the systems being engineered makes estimating how long tasks will take very difficult. Admittedly, we've been hearing about sheet metal (etc) for a long time and, yes, it's not ready. But we've also seen previews of enormous strides in that direction, and it's a huge feature. As a previous commenter said, this is the peril of being open about your development process, and for that Autodesk should be commended. Fusion is tackling some big problems right now, and I think if you compare it to other new applications like Onshape, it holds up very favorably in terms of what they've been able to accomplish in a particular amount of time. Everybody has a pet feature they want to see implemented (I have plenty!), but that isn't necessarily reflective of the overall trajectory of or progress on the product, which I think continues to be impressive.

The fact that iterations may be more widely spaced could just as easily be an indication of the scale of the problems being tackled is larger—a sign of increased confidence in Fusion and its future, rather than a de-investment in the product by Autodesk. Why would one assume otherwise? Autodesk has amazed me at every turn with their work on Fusion: 1) making it free for hobbyists and small businesses not earning much revenue, 2) adding features way more quickly than competitors, 3) being open about their roadmap, 4) not being afraid to change course based on user feedback. I thus am personally inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt in the absence of any specific evidence that the company is losing faith in the product. 

[yoshimitsuspeed]

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@Coscor_NPL wrote:

hi @yoshimitsuspeed

I do agree with you, I jumped on the weagon in early 2016, so have not been a user for a very long time, still, I can also feel the change, in the beginning there were updates every 14 days, improvements, changes and fixes in every update... but well, if the updates come every 30 days or even 60 days and the updates will be bigger and better and safer updates with less bugs, i'm also up for that...

It all just seems not so enthusiastic as before, the 'we try doing something different' philosophy feels missing.

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It's not exactly the frequency or what is done during the updates but definitely a combination of the two.
They say stay tuned for our release of sheet metal in the next couple months. So then for months and months and months every time there is an update I check to see what big new improvements they have been promising for years have been completed and for months and months and months it has been little things and mostly back end fixes.
And I am all about back end fixes. I would love it if F360 were more stable. It still crashes on me with regular frequency though so I haven't noticed any improvement there either.

I am actually glad if they get rid of a little bit of that let's try something different philosophy. At least getting it to the point where they have something solid before releasing it in the main branch. Which brings another point that we have been requesting a dev or beta branch for years. But they kept screwing up stuff with their excitement to try something new. We had an awesome file and data management system years ago. I guess a bunch of mouth breathers found it too complicated and overwhelming so they implemented the data panel while it was barely functional. Instead of having both available and letting people decide what they liked they removed the old file management system when the new data panel was barely functional.
They have done that time and again with other features. Dumping things down or implementing new less capable solutions and getting rid of more mature solutions.

So I have seen less stupid moves like that recently but mainly because I haven't seen anything new or interesting lately.

[yoshimitsuspeed]

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@PhilProcarioJr wrote:

I think the thing everyone needs to think about here is a couple of big things:

1) In the grand scheme of software development Fusion is an infant and has a long way to go. Because of the fact that everyone can voice their wants and needs this makes development harder and slower because one persons needs effects another persons needs and the team has to find a happy medium. Coding stable, complex, multi-platform software is no easy task and it takes time to get things right. As CAD people we want it all and we want it now...but it doesn't work that way.

2) Everyone wants something different...some want Drawings others could care less about drawings, some want sheetmetal others could care less about sheetmetal...etc. They are never going to make everyone happy and there will always be someone that ends up feeling jaded...

I think the big mistake Autodesk made early on was claiming the software was production ready, to some this statement is true to others it is not even close, once again it depends on your needs. I think they learned from this mistake and are trying not to make these mistakes anymore. People like @yoshimitsuspeed were told things that didn't come to pass (yet). I can understand that frustration as I have been there myself. The big problem today is the cloud issues so I would bet that everything else is going to take a back seat to getting the cloud issues fixed although I could be wrong. Fusion isn't going anywhere. Now, when will Fusion have what everyone wants....never so as always as a user you need to decide if it does what you need, if so get work done and if not it's time to move on. Really it's a simple question with a simple answer.

Just my 2 cents...

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I have seen no change in the promises. They keep promising everything and keep delivering very little. Yes my biggest frustration is the fact that they have advertised it as production ready and the fact that they continue to make it sound like solutions will be available much sooner than they were.
I am already too far in with F360. By the time the illusion became visible I already had so much time, so many designs and so much work in f360 I didn't really have an option to change my mind. So now they are stuck with me and I get to sit here and remind them of their mistakes because apparently most peoples attention spans are too short to notice.
You say they have tried to stop misleading people in that way but where the F is sheet metal? That has been a promise that has been pushed out and out and out for ages.
ADs marketing team obviously hasn't gotten that memo either. I followed their FB group hoping for useful information for F360 users, info about updates etc but all it is is a marketing platform and if F360 was half as good as the marketing team makes it sound they would hear from me a lot less.

As for it being challenging to listen to everyone's ideas I totally agree and I have been trying to make suggestions on that for years too. Many of these changes I complained about happened because apparently they value everyone's input equally. Too many new people learning CAD find something challenging or difficult and F360 dumbs it down to the lowest common denominator.
Apparently Kids learning in school, Diyers messing around in their basement and everyone else have just as much say as people who actually pay for the software or use it professionally.
If they were smart they would design the program for professionals, with input mainly by professionals with a focus on making it optimized for people who would be or are already paying for it.
Maybe they could have a noob interface that was much simpler for people who didn't want to learn professional level CAD.
Then there are things like Orbit which are miles behind even Freecad which is FOSS software that people work on in their spare time for fun. The fact that F360s navigation has a small fraction of the degree of finite control of the model should be embarrassing but they just ignore it and bank on the fact that 9 out of 10 of their users won't notice.

[yoshimitsuspeed]

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@Anonymous-X wrote:

I'm sure this thread is being read and followed by many Autodesk employees, it's a shame that they all shy away and will not answer any of these valid questions.

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Just like the avoid all the ideas in the idea station that aren't on their design path. But when they happen to complete something that happens to be there they want the whole world to know it so they can "prove" they are listening. 

[yoshimitsuspeed]

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The fact that iterations may be more widely spaced could just as easily be an indication of the scale of the problems being tackled is larger—a sign of increased confidence in Fusion and its future

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AD promises time and again that there are independent teams working on each feature. SO you are saying there are massive scale problems for all teams right now? Why weren't these problems ironed out before they advertised it as production ready software with most of the features everyone could need and any missing features would be implemented before you know it?
Like literally it took years for drawings to become moderately usable. But during those years when people asked they promised things like just stay tuned for the next update. Drawings will be awesome after the next update. So we sit around twiddling our thumbs thinking that a complete drawing solution was right around the corner and the next update they would release some bug fixes and  a section view. Update after update they promised it would be done, awesome, production ready and now it barely kind of is still.
It took them like two years to fix the aligned dimension bug. "Well we had to redo a lot of big things to get this to work right" Well then it's not production ready software.
How come the sketch environment was able to dimension drawings great for years before? Why not just use the same technology? Why not integrate things so that dimensioned drawings could crossover from 2D to 3D? Why not plan this from the beginning? Solid Edge has been able to do model space dimensioned drawings as long as F360 has been around. I had a program in LInux that could do this type of live model dimensioning before I'd even heard of F360.

Solid Edge can even use these dimensions to modify the model in non parametric mode giving you the ability to see and keep track of your dims and changes.


F360 brags about being CAD reinvented but instead of trying to integrate solutions like this from the beginning they go out of their way to avoid it.
Just like platform independence. By the time F360 came out it should have been obvious that the best option would be to cover as many platforms as possible but AD chose Windows. Probably because they have some sort of relationship or agreements with Microsoft.
Then when they finally realized they had made a mistake to not include Mac they could have just as easily come up with a plan that addressed Linux as well. But at that point and to this day AD sees Linux users as broke cave dwellers living in their grandmas basement using 1990s computers and running Linux just so they aren't deathly slow.

[daniel_lyall]

It would be good to see the 20 year plan That's the development cycle.

I think you will find That they wont put anything out to it's working as it should now, They get there Arse handed to them if they do.

There is the cloud to sort, drawings and the sketch engine if they put everything else on hold and got stuck into theses 3 Things that would be most user's very happy.

They got the advanced support sorted (the forum). other than cam part of it that is a bit lacking.

[yoshimitsuspeed]

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@daniel_lyall wrote:

It would be good to see the 20 year plan That's the development cycle.

I think you will find That they wont put anything out to it's working as it should now, They get there Arse handed to them if they do.

There is the cloud to sort, drawings and the sketch engine if they put everything else on hold and got stuck into theses 3 Things that would be most user's very happy.

They got the advanced support sorted (the forum). other than cam part of it that is a bit lacking.

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They have been putting stuff out that isn't working this whole time though lol. And when drawings don't work right, or a new cam update crashes machines, or the new replacement for something that used to work better is incomplete and disfunctional 9 out of 10 people are still like "Well I think they are doing a great job".
While I understand where you are coming from about getting those things straitened out first that should have been taken care of before it exited beta mode. Now we have promises of production ready software. We have promises of sheetmetal and useability that is supposed to compete with the big names. So if I found out they were lowering the priority on those things at this point I would be even more upset. Just because they still don't have done what should have been done before the official release is no excuse for being years behind on everything else they promised after that release.