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]

@etfrench

The only true way I know of to make a circle tangent to a spline is to offset that spline 1/2 the circle's radius and make the circle centerpoint coincident to that offset.

[HughesTooling]

@chrisplyler Is the key to making this fake work to make sure the construction arc curvature is smaller than the smallest curvature of the spline?

In this screencast with 15mm circles the tangent line overlaps and forms a profile but with 3mm circles it doesn't seem to. Can't really check, as pointed out you can't zoom in enough to be sure. Doesn't seem to work with the new control point splines, for some reason you can't even drag a single circle\point along one.

Mark

[mavigogun]

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@cekuhnen wrote:

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

Can you demonstrate that? Let me rephrase: prove it- I dare you.   From my experience, reading a great number of years-old-posts, and recently expressed frustration of long-time and Expert Elite users,  Autodesk has been functionally dismissive of explicit, passionate, and well reasoned requests to prioritize address of foundational instability, broken tools, and gaps in functionality hobbling existing tools over new development.

If you haven't, read the posts at the link supplied by @PhilProcarioJr, who has expressed the essence of most all of my concerns more completely than I have here.   His appreciation for the efforts made on our behalf by those tasked with confronting the issues we bring mirrors my own.   That said, I have been given NO cause to believe our user-existential concerns have resonated with those calling the shots at Autodesk; if you have, @cekuhnen, I would very much appreciate you sharing that basis here.

 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.

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That's cold-to-no-comfort-at-all, as evidence to the contrary suggests the condition of achievement you proffer will remain an ever distant event horizon.    You've posited that bugs are being eradicated across the board faster than they are being introduced- and that the rate of progress will inevitably confront long standing issues; it seems to me those possibilities require a different set of priorities than we are actually saddled with today.


Existentially, Fusion development would benefit from practices used in the aviation industry: pilots/users integral to design, changes thoroughly flight tested by professional pilots/users before products are released, and under no circumstance are changes made in-flight.

Any independent observer would think Autodesk would be hair-on-fire freaked out by a dedicated user base regarding their product this way.   AT THE VERY LEAST, issuing a mea culpa acknowledging the damage done by stewardship would be a first step to restoring trust- meaningful only if followed by a clear plan of action and policy going forward to follow a path away from known and anticipatible pitfalls.    Instead, we are offered a helping hand out of the hole-of-the-moment (too often coupled with insipid questions that amount to "tell my how falling into this hole impacts your workflow") while continuing to circle the minefield.

I really don't know if helping new users with work-arounds- or even basic instruction -is a good thing for me to do at this point, as either just enables the choices that brought us to this juncture.   It is in all of our natures to lend help and appreciate help when given, support community- but it must be acknowledged most all of the help offered up in this venue is only necessary due to the policies of a host (subject) that is separate from the users base, community (object).

[mavigogun]

Circle Tangency has been well addressed elsewhere; it stands as an example of a gap in tool functionality.   I reckon exploration here- while independently of real value -is digressing to the point of noise, topically speaking.   I'm all for tangential discovery- but this has become a threadjacking.

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@PhilProcarioJr wrote:

This latest release even broke a lot of the T-Spline functionality and yet no one caught on to it.

Mindful of the irony considering my caution above, a few words about how T-Splines functionality has been impaired would be appreciated.

[JDMather]

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@cekuhnen wrote:

 It is still a pretty fast developed product... 

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I have not seen any evidence of this.

[cekuhnen]

@JDMather the dev is spread across many construction sides which makes things look slow for specific areas.

[cekuhnen]

@mavigogun

I see where you are coming from and I also agree. I just came to the conclusion that AD follows with Fusion 360 a particular long term goal and focuses on specific users.

So the question is do you fit to Fusion or not.

Could development be faster? Oh yes! But it takes the time it takes with all the areas they are working on. Thats just the way how it is. 

It took them some years to bring common modeling tools into Fusion but during the same time they worked on other areas I personally do not use. 

So while dev looked stale to me it looked exiting to others.

It is also an evolving app.

Fusion started as a Direct Modeling tool, then it got parametric, it was advertised for designers and now mainly to mechanical engineers.

So bugs workflow issues etc all this is kinda normal when things are more fluid.

I think by focusing more on mechanical engineering / machine design they try to make clear what they will mainly put focus too - not T-Splines or such.

I agree with Phil that Fusion had the potential (still actually has) to be a market disrupter but AD it seems has a different plan for Fusion than I would wish for - but Fusion is not my baby but theirs.

Again as a user to you fit to Fusion is a good question.

For me as a product design Fusion is now pretty good - it lacks some finishes but 90% I have is all I need.

For example Alias has some better surfacing tools but then "0" solid modeling tools!

Some others might think different.

It all just depends on what you need and what app at this price range can do all this!!!

[TrippyLighting]

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@cekuhnen wrote:

@JDMather the dev is spread across many construction sides which makes things look slow for specific areas

The thing with construction sites is if you have too many of them and never complete any of the work on any of the construction sides then you'll end up with a set of tools that don't really work well for anyone.

Given the focus on mechanical design there are rather huge gaps compared to the competition.

Frankly I don't see any more speed in development in mechanical design than I've seen previously in any other areas of Fusion 360. The drawing system still lags behind in functionality behind the competition.

I was able to do better technical drawings with a full feature set in Alibre Design 7 years ago than I can today with Fusion 360. Cost wise Alibre Design is very much on par with Fusion 360. and I would prefer using it for Machine design  over Fusion 360.

In the years I used Alibre design it NEVER crashed once! Not a single time!

The assembly system has not really seen any significant work in years. We are still missing 4 essential joints. Try to create proper Cam follower. 

etc.

I am not sure where you see speedy development either, to be honest!

[cekuhnen]

Well speedy is a tricky term

While some areas behind the doors get work others don’t get attention.

But to be quite honest before we talking about our theories it might be better for AD product managers to step in here.

[mavigogun]

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@cekuhnen wrote:

But to be quite honest before we talking about our theories it might be better for AD product managers to step in here.

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Do you think that likely?   (real question)

[TrippyLighting]

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@mavigogun wrote:

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@cekuhnen wrote:

But to be quite honest before we talking about our theories it might be better for AD product managers to step in here.

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Do you think that likely?   (real question)

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Yes, that's quite possible.

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@cekuhnen wrote:
But to be quite honest before we talking about our theories it might be better for AD product managers to step in here.

Hmmm, I think I am perfectly capable of doing my own independent due diligence.

[cekuhnen]

Guys I am not disagreeing with you.

My point is that it can be helpful for an official person to talk about what is happening behind closed doors.

We can only guess.

With software development you do not always say what you are working on till it is ready for the public for various practical and strategical reasons. That is not just with AD.

[Anonymous]

Sorry to say it but you are wasting your time, if you do a quick internet search with phrases like Fusion 360 problems you will see your same complaint as far back as 2015 maybe, they are not going to change.

The main issue that have caused all of this instability and worthless feature upgrades is that Autodesk have been listening to the wrong people for too many years now.

There are numerous pointers that back me up.

Taking a direct modeller and turning into a hybrid was their first and biggest mistake.

Then there’s the jumping over things like sheet format and broken view while concentrating on things no engineer wants or needs for things artists need.

Unfortunately this kind of thing will always happen when artists and marketing people get together.

So in short, artists are inherently flaky and should be kept away from any development as should the marketing department.

With the flaky mindset of the artistic community and the steam ahead at all costs mentality from the marketing community we are trouble, throw in the Apple thing and we are doomed.

[cekuhnen]

@Anonymous

looks like you are set on the mind set that artists are flaky and because AD management listened to them the developers build a flawed product for engineers.

Do you not even see the flaws in your argument by yourself?

What you say is borderline arrogant and offensive.

[lichtzeichenanlage]

I'm a software architect. Developing software for the last 20+ years. I hope @Anonymous is just trolling around. Otherwise it's hard to believe that one can only argue in those cliches. It's also hard to believe that someone only can pull the negativ sides. 

For a good reason lots of "traditional" disciplines are forced to enhance skill sets and borrow knowledge from other areas. And this is not only true for artists, engineers etc. 

[mavigogun]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Unfortunately this kind of thing will always happen when artists and marketing people get together.

A clear example of prejudice propagating from bigotry.   "I don't know what I think I know but I prefer to believe I do because it fits my sneer."

[Anonymous]

No such thing, engineers work on logic and that logic proves I am right.

Look at the state of western engineering, it is in the sewer, we have the most advanced battle ship breaking down twice on the way to sea trials despite costing something like $13 billion.

We have Trident missiles heading off in completely the wrong direction when fired, we have got potholes everywhere, trains breaking down, bridges collapsing and have become as half as productive as we were 30 years ago.

Funny how it all coincides with the marketing, academic and artistic revolutions that have turned our western societies into sewers of incompetence and political correctness.

Well the truth is that the Indians and Chinese are walking all over the USA, Britain and western Europe while our so called engineers play with their latest gadgets and update their social media accounts.

Marketing and hr were supposed to support a company: but somehow they have managed to take over every decent western company that we built from the ground up and destroy them in the name of a quick profit.

I can’t speak for all but when I was running one of the largest marketing development centres on the planet I found a very large box of official and top secret documents.

They said things like, you can pay yourself £120 000, you can pay yourself £75 000, you can pay yourself £30 000.

What these clowns had done is gone to the bank, borrowed over £100 000 000, bought up excellent engineering companies, asset stripped them, closed them, got the Chinese to make a product stripped of all quality and then paid themselves millions.

The head clown pays himself over $5 000 000 a year, I dealt with him on a number of occasions and he is not worth £5 000 a year, any fool can close up companies.

When I first started my engineering journey we had to do aptitude tests to see which line of thinking we had and mine lasted 7 hours.

The reason we had these tests was to see if we had the discipline and mindset to be engineers, now any person with a CAD program thinks they are an engineer.

Artists do not have the discipline and the type of intelligence required to be engineers, they do not have it no matter what they like to think.

I ran 6 laboratories for 3.5 years at a major UK engineering university and can state that 70% of all students I dealt with would not have been allowed entry if they were tested for engineering ability.

Now those jokers are running around with pieces of paper saying that they are engineers!!!

Let’s take this forum for instance, I started 2d in 1981 with slide rules and drawing boards, I then started using AutoCAD in the early 90’s, in the late 90’s I started using a low end CAD/CAM program, in the early 2000’s I started using Blender, in 2007 I started using a small but very capable product from PunchCAD and during the last 4 years I have worked and tested most modelling programs with Solid Edge and KeyCreator being the ones not tested.

During this time most of my solid modelling was history based and then Design Spark Mechanical was released which gave me my first insight into direct modelling.

After that I found Fusion 360 and used it in direct mode only but when I started a thread asking about direct modelling and history based modelling, what did I get?

A load of self important people who knew absolutely nothing about direct modelling arguing against direct modelling, people who had never run the program in direct mode were arguing against direct mode!!!!

I have been solid modelling since 1980 and if anybody thinks that history based modelling is worth keeping alive they are either marketing engineers or artists.

The ironic thing is that direct modelling has most of the power of organic modelling.

Yet the weak Fusion 360 management buckled and turned what would have been a great direct modelling system, into a bug and feature laden hybrid program and then spent money on buying t-splines.

Then there’s the broken view issue which is still at the bottom of the road map because artists do not need it.

The truth is that if a CAD system does not have a broken view function then they are masquerading as a CAD system, it really is that important.

As I said at the beginning, engineers use logic and the logic says that when the western world was run by engineers and industrialists it had a chance.

Now that it is being run by finance people, marketing people, hr people and artists, we are doomed as the current state of our societies and our leaders prove.

[mavigogun]

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@Anonymous wrote:

No such thing, engineers work on logic and that logic proves I am right.

When including demeaning sneers, the impression is of a perspective reported from the bottom of a self-imposed well- a tautological dead-end, the confines of limited logic dictating the same source is supreme.   At the very best, you've offered a tangentially-relevant self indulgent rant. 

My concern is the injection of trolling by way of prejudiced insults that are likely do derail the original topic into Camp A vs Camp B infighting.   Not helpful- I've reported the post.