PDF User Manual for Fusion 360 [Ultimate]

[Anonymous]

Is there, or could I suggest, a PDF User Manual for Fusion360. The easiest way to learn is to have a printed document by ones side, so that you can read and type at the same time. The video instructions provided are first class but it can be very distracting if you are flitting between the two continuously and makes for slow progress.

Thank You.

LJ

[Anonymous]

With all due respect, I believe that on careful reading what I provided was a concise kernel of workflow and document quality criteria necessary to provide the manual we all seek. Without following those criteria, a company can churn thousands of pages of manuals which are not a big step up from what Tamara provided. I hope Tamara runs it up the flagpole as far as she can, because doing it right costs a lot of money and time, and can't be offshored to the lowest bidder.
As far as it being a big improvement, I am totally new to the product, and night before last I found that trying to learn anything from the videos was worse than trial and error. Last night I was literally about to just give up and draw things in PowerPoint when I found that printed version which is, for example, better than almost any open source product, and better than many commercial products. : Red hat Linux can afford to charge thousands of dollars for programs whose code you can download and compile yourself for free. Why? Because they have proprietary documentation that is very good.
So yes, the pdf was an improvement over what I started with, yes, the issue isn't solved, it is patched, and I was emphatic and certainly implied there are long term consequences to not following through.
I would guess that Tamara is not in charge of the budget and full roadmap, but rather is here to listen and advocate for users.
Saying we are mad as hell and want documentation now or else we're going to start typing in all caps, without providing a clear picture of the problem, solution, and scope will at best lead to a rush job that is, again, not a big improvement. And *then*, when there has been a "doc effort" and users are still mad as hell, management concludes that documentation doesn't help, and you wind up with ... 90% of the software doc in the market today, which sucks hard.
Tamara is your advocate, and using her as a punching bag for our frustration is unlikely to produce quality results. If we want good doc, we must take some time to gather ammunition for her to take the the battle for budgets, with realistic descriptions of what we need to be productive.
And keep doing it. That what Beta is about.

Have a productive day,

B

[Inspections_JCH]

@Anonymousyou made your point well, but my purpose is to steer the conversation back to the intent of the original post. And in the process, I would like to get us all to use the forum in a reasonable way. I am not the OP but the topic here needs to remain focused on the need for a PDF User Manual for Fusion 360 [Ultimate] and not be marked SOLVED when it is not.

I applaud @Timara for her effort and it is a good start to something. I am just not sure that her interpretation of what a coherent PDF documentation of Fusion 360 or a robust user manual actually is. Without sidetracking this topic further, I will start a new thread focused on the use and misuse of the Forum.

RECAP: DON'T MARK A FORUM THREAD SOLVED WHEN IT IS NOT. Read the original post.

[daniel_lyall]

@Anonymous it is the OP's or ADSK/EE job to mark a post solved not a posters.

[Inspections_JCH]

@TimeraAutodeskWhen you wrote in 2014 that you are "actively working on providing a more in-depth learning experience that walks a user through the various workspaces and get them the training they need to go from beginners to experts", why is the term "Training" being substituted for a user's manual as requested in the original post?

You also write: "This project is still in beta phase (not finished), so feel free to give us feedback on it. We'll continue to refine the experience and make it more streamlined, as well as expanding the level of expertise."

I would be more comfortable if you had not chosen to use the marketing term "experience" in your response.  We just want a user's manual with an index rather than an experience. And is the Forum the best way to provide you the feedback that you requested? Is there a more direct pipeline for our comments to get through to you?

[Anonymous]

@Inspections_JCH @daniel_lyall 

My apologies for not saying so explicitly - I am 100% in agreement that this is not really solved, and no it should not be marked as such other than by broad consensus of the community.

@Inspections_JCH - I agree with your sentiment, but consider that this is where the search engines are taking people who want a real manual.  I think our goal will best be served by keeping this post as they key thread of the discussion because it is the point where new people like me - i.e. who want a dang manual - will land.  

Maybe there's some better way to go about it (i.e. redirecting people), but I think it would make more of a point to politely petition AD to un-close this particular thread, and rather than a re-direct, place an announcement ahead of OP saying this is now the official discussion of what users want to see.  The "don't make me think" principle applies: Autodesk will do a much better job of getting us what we need if we tell them what that is.  And moving the discussion will lose participants.  

Quite frankly, if AD / 360 Team don't want that kind of discussion and don't want to keep it where people can find it and want to just consider the whole documentation issues closed ... then, by all means, close it - but it should be replaced with a discussion of alternative products.  Because we're wasting our time using a product that's not viable in the long term.

 B

[Inspections_JCH]

Has anything changed in 4 years since this Forum thread started? Is there any plan for a PDF document that does not rely on video tutorials? Is there a chance that we could at least get an index to the items included in the videos here and here?

[Anonymous]

Obviously, Autdodesk thinks that video tutorials are the solution to this particular topic. Obviously, they are not. I have moved on. If I hear in the future that Fusion 360 has a printable pdf User Guide that does NOT rely on tutorial videos, I’ll be back and I will gladly use their software. In the meantime, I have better and more productive things to do with my time than wade through tutorial videos that tell me how to make things and do things that I have no interest in making or doing.

[daniel_lyall]

Go back one page see what you can find

[Anonymous]

I did, and I have already commented on them.

[dellavecchia]

went to the website for download of the manual and I was denied access

[rajendra.deshpandehyd]

Am not able to access sample files. Getting a message "Unathorized" - No permission to access the page. Please resolve.

[Anonymous]

Well, here we are four years after the original post and request, which I relate to and was searching for, I would add a further argument to the need for a PDF or single reference guide. I have a good deal of experience using CAD systems and no particular desire to learn as slowly as the videos dictate, I have never liked learning in classes and my learning style is to binge on information much of which I retain.

Fusion is not very intuitive, although seemingly quite powerful,  but all this moving between screens and web sites and forums just to try and find what would be expected from a coherent reference text.

Have this generation lost the ability to use old media? I return to my search for a good old fashioned text book that i can lug around and dip in to for a couple of weeks in places the internet has yet to be able to go.

[Anonymous]

Right on - one can only facepalm. This implies several troubling things:

Autodesk has no concept of the value of user's time (or, stranger yet,
Autodesk's time): I ask myself "what does this button do?" A manual would
have an index where I could look up the button by name and get details with
examples within a minute. REALITY: (BEST CASE) if I am lucky, I will get
directed to a video that - somewhere in its 7:53 duration - contains some
reference to the button, meaning I need to search for 2-4 minutes just to
find if the content gives me what I need. (AVERAGE CASE) I get references
to several such videos, so I'm maybe up to a 10-minute search now. THE
CRAZY PART: I will not fault Autodesk on their humans-answering-the-phone
customer service, it has always been outstanding when I used it, but I've
never tried it on a deep technical question. Point is, I've worked on
software for phone support, and one of the factoids I picked up was that
when a CS rep picks up the phone it's an average $10 - $30 cost to the
company, probably closer to $30 for Autodesk given that they don't scrimp
on it.
BOTTOM LINE: let's assume I have three things I would look up in the manual
per week. I am spending 30 minutes per week of extra time looking it up in
a horribly inefficient way. That's 25 hours of my labor per year, which I
should view as a "hidden cost" of owning the product. For sake of round
numbers, let's say you bill out your burdened labor at $100/hour (if you
work for a company mutiply your pay rate by 1.5 - 2.5 to account for
facilities and salaries of non-billable people).
That's $2500 a year.
And that's on top of the risks that go hand-in-hand with being forced to
use "the cloud."
And the ultimate WTF, rendering software written by professionals in 2018
that doesn't take advantage of the GPU. That is actually scary:
understandable in 2005, but in 2018 converting a CPU rendering routine to a
GPU rendering routine is the kind of thing that might be assigned as a
semester project in an advanced undergrad graphics programming class.
So, the bottom line is that F360 is not as cheap as it looks at first
glance.
I guess the bright side is that if you shell out big bucks for Autocad
Design / Mfg Suite, it's the same issues, except that you're no longer
forced to roll the dice on the cloud.

But the good news is that MAKE recently published a book on 360 that gets a
B- to B+ as a manual replacement depending on your style and what you're
after. Unlike autodesk, however, they probably can't afford to give it
away free and update it as new features come out. But for the next 6-12
months it's better than what AD offers and reasonably priced (I have no
affiliation).
it comes down to having an index and table of contents. See my earlier
post about the criticality of a book's index, which I learned from a writer
- editor.
Even the open-source community, notorious for sparse / crappy documentation
has come up with "cheat sheets" that summarize topic highlights in critical
areas, and can be added to piecemeal.
The irony is that companies like RedHat offer software for thousands of
dollars (i.e. Autodesk prices) that can also be downloaded for free. The
difference is that the free open-source version is the same software
without professionally written manuals.

B.

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@Anonymous wrote:
... Unlike autodesk, however, they probably can't afford to give it away free ....

---

@Anonymous

Is Economics still taught in school?

[Anonymous]

@TheCADWhisperer Economics was still taught in school when I received my
CFA charter, or at least graduate and undergraduate texts were still
published.
Although many economic models are flawed, I believe my conclusion that MAKE
cannot afford to give away books for free is based on sound premises.
Were Autodesk to publish an F360 manual at no additional cost to
purchasers of their software, economics argues that both parties benefit:
1) The user benefits from increased productivity (the BotL calculation in
my post came to about $2500/year)
2) Autodesk benefits from (1) fewer users abandoning F360, and (2) reduced
calls to the support center, probably yielding less than a year's payback
for the cost of producing the manual.

I believe these conclusions are economically consistent.
There is a more fundamental question regarding whether Autodesk believes
their users are illiterate.
Considering that complaints regarding the lack of a manual are provided in
written form, I take it as evidence that at least some of us can read.

I suppose it possible that we are among the few literate users of F360, but
I doubt it.

B.

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Were Autodesk to publish an F360 manual at no additional cost to purchasers of their software...

---

Of course there is a cost to Autodesk to generate documentation. (Correct me if I am wrong.)

1. I think what you are saying though, (correct me if I am wrong) that the cost of lost customers (either current or future) is greater than what it would cost them to produce documentation and that such documentation would be effective in rectifying this perceived issue.  1b.  What about non-purchasers?  Should they also receive free this documentation?

2. Now I realize that your response to this would be purely speculative, but where do you think Fusion currently is on the BEP curve on a continuum of development to market profit.  (Considering current (low?) cost of paid license and free student/enthusiast/hobbyist/start-up licenses.)

3. Now I realize that your response to this would be purely speculative, but do you think there is a economically sound opportunity for me to generate this missing documentation for a fee?

[Anonymous]

For sure, I'd check out the competition though.
Would Autodesk pay you? That's hard to say.
Are you a tech writer? I thought I was at one time.

And I would speculate that this is like music: you don't make your money
off the doc, you make your money off of the "live performances" where
management brings you in to read the book aloud to others. And probably
Autodesk makes a movie of it.

[Anonymous]

The link under point 1 is not availible?

[Anonymous]

hello friends, thank you for your pdf, so you have youtube chanel or any vidios tutorial for this ?

[Anonymous]

blah.  I have the trial version of Fusion 360, but don't have permission to download the pdf tutorials, and can't follow the videos because I'm DEAF.   Not fair!