Open letter to Dev: Stop integrating new features and fix what ya got

[mavigogun]

I've got a laundry list of features and changes I'd love to make to Fusion- but none of them matter if the application doesn't perform reliably/predictably.

So, please: put a freeze on new features until the basic functionality of existing tools ensures they are utilities and not liabilities.    Imagine picking up a hammer without any reasonable certainty of functionality; now, imagine committing to a design process only to discover many-hours-in that several tools in your box relied on to execute that design aren't there.   How many times do you reckon a designer/builder/whoeveryouimagineyourmarketis will keep reaching into that tool box before looking elsewhere?

It would be tragic if Fusion's potential was sabotaged by ambition outpacing capacity.

Appreciation tempered by frustration of eternal beta-testing,

Christopher LeFay

[chrisplyler]

What tools are you missing?

Are you paying for Fusion 360?

[TrippyLighting]

I find this quite a valid request whether a user is paying or not but that is likely because I have "insider: knowledge of the bugs in Fusion 360.

I've come across such a number of bugs just when trying to help users here on the forum with relatively simple projects. I come repeatedly across bugs that I know have been reported years ago.

In my client work I've had other debilitating problems. Things that another application took seconds to fillet would not get filleted in Fusion 360 and because we still cannot get proper Escape functionality often I simply have to sigkill Fusion 360. In another client project I had a simple shape that I could not get shelled. I had to export it as a STEP file and reimport it to clean the surface, then it shelled immediately. 

[chrisplyler]

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@TrippyLighting wrote:

I find this quite a valid request whether a user is paying or not but that is likely because I have "insider: knowledge of the bugs in Fusion 360.

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Oh sure. It's completely valid regardless. But, right or wrong, knowing it does allow me the opportunity to be judgemental about how far to tolerate the complaining.

And more importantly I would like him to be specific about which tools or lack of tools he has problems with, as we might be able to help with some work-arounds or something.

[TrippyLighting]

True, there are a good number of users that complain about lack of features when applying different workflows would be a better choice or when using a particular workflow highlights a bug when sing a more evolved workflow would completely circumvent the issue and be a better practice anyway.

Perhaps I should not always put oil on the fire 😉

[mavigogun]

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@chrisplyler wrote:

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Oh sure. It's completely valid regardless. But, right or wrong, knowing it does allow me the opportunity to be judgemental about how far to tolerate the complaining.

And more importantly I would like him to be specific about which tools or lack of tools he has problems with, as we might be able to help with some work-arounds or something.

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Any long-time user of the Fusion will have developed intimate familiarity with it's jagged edges; this thread does not seek to enumerate or discover how best to grasp those parts, rather recognize their propagation is the product of a priority hierarchy.   As stated above, I appreciate Fusion and want to see it thrive- I reckon the present mode threatens that.    When the mold has a flaw, fixing the mold makes way more sense than repairing every malformed part produced.

Thanks much for the offer of help- I'll gladly take you up on that elsewhere.

[chrisplyler]

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@mavigogun wrote:

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Any long-time user of the Fusion will have developed intimate familiarity with it's jagged edges; this thread does not seek to enumerate or discover how best to grasp those parts, rather recognize their propagation is the product of a priority hierarchy.

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Oh. Well...yeah. Any long-time user is going to say, "Duh."

Fusion isn't the only Autodesk product I use. I've been a constant Revit user for like a billion years, and have been involved in the Revit forum for almost as long.

It doesn't take to long to get the impression that Autodesk employs a single person and his title is The Development Team and his primary responsibility is to write down bug reports and user requests on yellow post-it notes, wad them up, and hide them around Autodesk headquarters before taking the rest of the morning off to play golf.

This explains the one in a hundred chance that anyone who answers the telephone in their product support department will know what the heck you are talking about... the one in a hundred chance that the person on the other end of your phone call will have coincidentally found the wadded up post-it note that relates to your issue.

We all have that perception already.

[lichtzeichenanlage]

Just a side note: It's most likely not up to the developer to decide what to implement next 😉

[mavigogun]

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@lichtzeichenanlage wrote:

Just a side note: It's most likely not up to the developer to decide what to implement next 😉

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Ha! 

"Today we're adding cheeze to our bowling ball line-up."
"Cheese, sir?   On the ball?"
"No! the ball itself will be made of cheese!   Think of it!"
"What about the paper-water-baloon bowling project-"
"Cheese balls are your priority now- you got that?   Cheese."

[steveHDPJT]

This thread needs to be pinned to the front page. Here's a list of basic stuff that should have been sorted out long before ambitious and cool-sounding but largely impractical stuff like generative design and many other "advanced" functions were implemented:
1. Drawings are ridiculously poor. They NEED to be usable. How the hell are is anyone supposed to actually make parts when you can't even properly document what you're trying to make? Why don't ordinate dimensions align properly? Why is there no decent thread callout? Why do dimensions re-jog themselves whenever you update the model, and commonly disassociate themselves from features that were never modified? Why can you not specify tolerances on a surface in the 3D model and have it pulled into the drawing? Why can't you implement a decent table or BOM or editable title block? Why can't you pull data from file names or tables or whatever other data in the 3d model into the drawing? Why, for gods sake, can you NOT SKETCH IN A DRAWING?

2. Top-down design is utterly crippled by the fact that master sketches become SUPER buggy once they get above a certain size. It's literally forcing me to restart designing a relatively complex assembly because it's so slow and unpredictable, and comes up with conflicts that do not exist.

3. Actual documentation and help files are sorely lacking. Forums and Youtube are not a substitute.

4. Configurations still don't exist. They need to.

5. File control is at best very confusing. The inability to export a component created in-situ for use in other assemblies is extremely frustrating. Creating parts in-situ should create a universal component that is available to any other project, assembly or person with access to it. Not being able to use parts across projects is insane. No other CAD software does that - why would you?

6. The number of bugs, left right and centre, is staggering. Been using Fusion for nearly 2 full years now and while it's improved in that time, not by much.

7. Error messages should actually identify the location of the issue, not just tell you THAT DON'T WORK SOZ LOL

This program has a TON of potential and right now it's being crippled by development ambition more than anything.

[PhilProcarioJr]

I have to agree with @steveHDPJT and @mavigogun...

This has been a problem for a very long time...so much so it reminds me of this thread.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-design-validate/to-any-autodesk-employees-that-care/m-p/64...

For my personal work I gave up on Fusion because of all the core functionality that is missing yet they are adding advanced stuff all the time. Sadly they are building it all on top of a bunch of bugs that have been around forever.

This latest release even broke a lot of the T-Spline functionality and yet no one caught on to it. I mean lets be honest we can't even make a circle tangent to a spline in a sketch how sad is that? Why can't we fix all errors that show up in the timeline and only some? The list just goes on and on.

We bought into Fusion 360 for the Forge I work at and sadly I have to fight with it everyday and come up with work arounds for a lot of stuff that should just be there..... Fusion could be great but not until they stop adding functionality on top of old major bugs and finish the core toolset. 

Just my 2 cents, the people calling the shots haven't listened in the last 3 years and I seriously doubt they will in the next 3 years. I feel bad for the actual dev people working hard to make Fusion better only to be tied down by the politics of management. All the Fusion Dev people I know are very talented and passionate people with their hands tied behind their backs.....

[chrisplyler]

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@PhilProcarioJr wrote:
I mean lets be honest we can't even make a circle tangent to a spline in a sketch how sad is that?

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Well, we can MAKE a circle be tangent to a spline. But yeah, it's pathetic that the Tangent constraint won't do it.

[PhilProcarioJr]

@chrisplyler

You just proved my point, I know ways to do it but they are all work arounds. Fusion is by far the king of work arounds.

Ask a boss if it makes them happy that you spend half your day doing work arounds rather then actually getting work done. Not to mention the fact that work arounds usually add more steps...more things to go wrong.

[chrisplyler]

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@PhilProcarioJr wrote:

@chrisplyler

You just proved my point, I know ways to do it but they are all work arounds. Fusion is by far the king of work arounds.

Ask a boss if it makes them happy that you spend half your day doing work arounds rather then actually getting work done. Not to mention the fact that work arounds usually add more steps...more things to go wrong.

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@PhilProcarioJr  -  I was trying to prove your point. Did you see what I wrote in post #7 above?

[PhilProcarioJr]

@chrisplyler

It's just so frustrating sometimes. Fusion has so much potential but until they fix the core tools and major bugs it takes too much time to use. Since time is money I think companies investing heavily in Fusion are going to get burned like we did over the last couple of years. Lost a lot of money banking on Fusion.... 

Simple things either don't work, are entirely missing or you have to use work arounds, but hey we have generative design!  (Where is my face palm emoji!)

[lichtzeichenanlage]

I understand the message in this thread, but I'm not sure if it's a feature freeze is the right way. What I would like to see is something like

• Provide a public issue tracker to put some pressure to the company / team
• Provide access to the test results (Not just a summary but to the full test report for a release / patches etc. to show progress
• Provide access to patches for e.g. ultimate users (paid).

[etfrench]

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@chrisplyler wrote:

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@PhilProcarioJr wrote:
I mean lets be honest we can't even make a circle tangent to a spline in a sketch how sad is that?

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Well, we can MAKE a circle be tangent to a spline. But yeah, it's pathetic that the Tangent constraint won't do it.

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Can you start a new thread and detail how this works?

[cekuhnen]

 It is still a pretty fast developed product and AD folks are aware of the views of users and try to adjust.

Something to keep in mind as frustrating it is for users who encounter bugs is the fact

that they develop Fusion on multiple fronts at once. This means that certain areas get here and there some help

which can make it look like AD is not doing much at all - but in the end it will.

My suggestion is simply to understand that they work on everything at once and this will take time for

everything to get to a level we all want it to be.

[chrisplyler]

@etfrench  only!

[etfrench]

Your demonstration was successful   It also showed another issue with Fusion 360 where you can't verify the position of geometry when zoomed in. My 2d cad program can zoom in several orders of magnitude more.