Latest Fusion Update September 2023

[Drewpan]

Hi All,

I am writing this to the developers.

Great job with the new update, there are many new things that us people in userland have been asking for.

I know that keeping Fusion updated and working is hard work sometimes and that it is not always possible to

get every user request on the wish list implemented. That being said, there are a few things that I have seen in

the Forums that are persistant problems and a few people want and quite rightly point out it has been a wish

for quite some time.

My pet peeve at the moment is that I have an AutoCAD file I have imported, expecting all those nice Polylines

to come over nicely and for the vector graphics to come over smoothly and be useable. They are NOT. I have

a number of curves, particularly splines that have been broken up into many small line segments and are useless

to try and use.

I am sure that there are many other people like me who have a pet peeve like this one and I am patient and don't

expect you to fix things overnight. Could I politely suggest to you wonderful developers that new is good,

responsive to user requests is great but if you are going to say that your flagship product AutoCAD, that has

been around for decades and is mature and very well known, is compatible - can we make it more compatible

than it actually is? I would have to say from my limited exposure and from trawling the forums of other users

posts that Importing or Exporting a dwf or dwg file to or from Fusion is definitely broken. It seems that it doesn't

work AutoCAD to Fusion or Fusion to AutoCAD. I would also say that svg files also fail to work properly and I

don't really understand why. Both of these file formats are vector graphics files and should translate perfectly

to Fusion.

So I suppose what I am saying is that the new and exciting stuff you developers are doing is great, but can we

put a few more resources into the basic functionality? I want to use the new toys but the old ones also need to

be fixed.

Sorry about the rant.

I shall now put on my steel underpants for the potential flame war I may have just started.

Cheers

Andrew

[jhackney1972]

Please attach the problematic AutoCAD file.

[Drewpan]

Hi,

This isn't the first one - just the latest one.

It is huge with a lot of detail that I had to split into smaller chunks just to load into Fusion.

None of the smaller chunks worked even when I made certain they were Polylines before

I saved and imported the files.

I opened the main file in AutoCAD 2023 and selected smaller parts I needed. Manually did

a PJoin and turned them into Ploylines. Saved them and then imported them into Fusion.

Every one was turned into line segments and overlapping lines. Curves became polygons, not

polylines. The only thing I did was Select only what I wanted, copy with base point to clipboard,

paste to the Origin in a new AutoCAD file. Cleaned up some of the many overlapping lines so that

there was only one and then did a PJoin to turn them into a single Polyline. I then saved and

imported to Fusion, then dragged the file onto the Fusion workspace. I have used AutoCAD for about

five years so I know I didn't muck up the PJoin command. The files were each a single polyline when

saved in AutoCAD. Every line was turned into the same layer in AutoCAD before PJoining and saving.

@davebYYPCUhas also had the same issues. He has helped me on these files.

Andrew

[TrippyLighting]

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@Drewpan wrote:

...I would also say that svg files also fail to work properly and I

don't really understand why...

---

SVG or scalable vector graphics files are usually created by 2d graphics design software. They often don't adhere to the stringent standards required by Fusion 360 and other CAD software, because these standards are not needed in the native application e.g.   Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape.

Common problems across all these threads are :

• Sketch profiles are not closed so geometry cannot be extruded etc. from sketches.
• If 3D geometry can be extruded, near tangency problems interfere with fillets and other modeling operations.
• Splines from the originating software are broken down into many polylines to approximate the curve with straight line segments. So extruding with a draft angle fails, and models can become slow to compute.
• Overlapping and duplicate coincident and overlapping line/curve segments interfere with sketch profile detection (more prevalent in imported .dxf files) .

[HughesTooling]

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@Drewpan wrote:

 Cleaned up some of the many overlapping lines so that

there was only one and then did a PJoin to turn them into a single Polyline. I then saved and

imported to Fusion, then dragged the file onto the Fusion workspace. I have used AutoCAD for about

five years so I know I didn't muck up the PJoin command. The files were each a single polyline when

saved in AutoCAD. Every line was turned into the same layer in AutoCAD before PJoining and saving.

Andrew

---

What is wrong with the polyline when imported into Fusion? Does it have breaks in it so it doesn't create closed profiles? Or is it just that it's no longer seen as a single polyline? If the problem is it reverts to individual lines, a polyline\polycurve is just a grouping in AutoCAD, it's still just a set of lines and Fusion doesn't have or need polylines in it's sketch environment.

One more thing to consider is Fusion's sketch environment is not a drafting environment like AutoCad and I doubt it'll ever get or need the same sort of tools.

Mark

[Drewpan]

Hi,

In this particular instance the AutoCAD file was being used to create outlines for extrusion and then

modification, or curves for lofting and such. Every file that was modified and saved then loaded into

Fusion failed to bring the continuous line features that had been created and saved. This led to curves

that wern't - zooming in closely showed the curves made of small straight line segments - very

puzzling because a dwg or dxf is supposed to be a vector image file. Some failed to close when they

were checked before hand. I have experience with 3D CAD in AutoCAD and could extrude there but

not with the imported file in Fusion.

What was supposed to be an easy copy and extrude from the AutoCAD file became an exercise in

redrawing almost every feature.

AutoCAD is indeed drafting software and Fusion is Modelling software - I get that, and have argued this

case in this forum. My gripe is that both of these applications are made by the same company and so

there should be no issues with proprietary. It is advertised that dwg and dxf files can be imported and

used in Fusion. If you have this functionality then it should work better than it does.

I raise this issue and svg files because on paper there shouldn't be an issue at all. Fusion is supposed to

be able to handle vector graphics which both AutoCAD and svg files are. It seems that what is being

imported into fusion is the vectors for the tangents of the curves part but little or none of the curve formulas

used in the background of vector files to create smooth curves. I can see how svg files may not always

be created using a correct Standard by some software, but native AutoCAD files should have no excuses

to not follow their own Standards.

This particular project I am doing has taken three times longer to do because I have had to redraw everything

in Fusion. I can only use the imported AutoCAD files as drawing templates and then traced over the templates

with a new Sketch. There are some very complex curves in this design and splines have been required, again

a spline is a standard used in AutoCAD and should be able to be simply imported - it doesn't.

I guess what I am saying is that these are basic functions that are allegedly common to both applications that

are advertised as being compatible. I understand that some of the more arcane functions of AutoCAD will not

crossover to Fusion and probably never will. Drawing shapes on a common co-ordinate system that can then

be shared and manipulated is what most people want. An AutoCAD file is really a type of constrained Sketch

and is imported as a Sketch. Why are the constraints and other information stripped when I import the file?

Why in particular the curve data has the tangents but not the formula imported that makes it a vector graphic

file?

I have learned a great deal since joining this forum as many know from watching my posts. I have learned

especially that AutoCAD is not Fusion and that the thinking is different. I have learned that there are actual

constraints in AutoCAD, even after using it for five years. I see the power of constraints in modelling software

but not really in drafting software. In drafting I typically want things to be exact and don't really need to

put in constraints, I then extrude and model. In modelling, I constrain shapes, extrude them, manipulate

them THEN create the drawings. In drafting I already know much of the critical data, in modelling the software

works it out for me. I like Fusion - it does things I could never do in AutoCAD. What I don't like is that if it

says on the box software is compatible AND it is made by the same company, then it should be more compatible

than what there is at present.

The developers do a great job; Fusion makes my life much easier; better compatibility and basic functions

would avoid the work arounds we all use so we can concentrate on the new toys the developers are giving

us to play with.

I know this is a bit of a rant, It is from frustration of working much harder than I needed to for what should

have been a simple project. One of the things I noticed in the new Fusion update is a couple of things talked

about in this forum recently had been incorporated into the new version. I just used that as an opportunity

to vent and try to gently remind developers that the mundane basics are just as important as the new tricks.

I have seen many posts here about other basics that are broken and have been for some time, this is just one

more. I get a fair bit of work transcribing from AutoCAD to Fusion and this problem gets in the way on many

occasions. It is fine if it is some kind of architectural drawing that is easy to fix, not when there are complex

curves like splines involved.

Cheers

Andrew

[HughesTooling]

Can you share a simple DWG with Splines and polycurves that Fusion linerises? I'm surprised Fusion is doing this because normally it is pretty good at reading spline data.

Mark

[Drewpan]

Hi,

I'll see if I can dig one up from the last project. I had to create so many files for that one I am surprised

I can still find anything in that folder. Otherwise the file at the beginning of this thread is the one

that I was using and I simply selected what I needed, copied it to another file, saved it and imported

it into Fusion. That is where it all started going wrong.

Cheers

Andrew

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@Drewpan wrote:

I opened the main file in AutoCAD 2023 and selected smaller parts I needed. Manually did

a PJoin and turned them into Polylines. Saved them and then imported them into Fusion.

---

@Drewpan 

That is what you should have posted here - not the massive set of profiles of the entire project.

At least turn off the visibility of all layers except one profile for diagnosis.

If this were my project I would break it up into many profiles.

Edit: If you do Attach a simplified dwg - do not alter the original geometry in any way other than deleting extraneous distracting information and moving to logical location relative to the Origin.