Requesting Improved Drawing / Detailing Features

[SeanKane88]

Hi,

I don't know if I missed these somewhere in the existing interface, but you should consider implementing these or else making them easier for beginners like me to find 🙂

1. Ability to change the precision of individual dimensions - I would like to be able to select a single dimension and show extra decimal places, rather than update all the dimensions on a drawing at once. The ability to change other features - line weight, arrow size etc. would be great as well.
2. Ability to format text when you insert a text box - i.e. centre justify, right justify etc.
3. Ability to associate a textbox with a model feature, or to a view feature - i.e. align a textbox to the centreline of a view so it's always centred wherever you move the view.
4. Ability to add custom symbols easily. I tried using the \U+xxxx trick which seems to work, but for common symbols (diameter, degrees, squared, Centreline (CL) etc. I don't want to hunt down the uni-code value.
5. Ability to use superscript, subscript and fractional notation in text & dimensions.
6. Ability to show a view with a semi-lifelike appearance - not fully rendered but something like the model environment view.
7. Ability to add more than one base view. Currently I can do this, but only with whatever parts were originally selected for the view - i.e. if I select 2 parts when I create the drawing, each new base view contains these two parts. I want to be able to start a drawing with a single component, go back to the model, select a new component and import it into the drawing to give me 2 x base views each of a single component. Rather than creating a drawing for each component, if components are small this way I can add them to a drawing to avoid wasting paper space.
8. Ability to change the line type, colour & weight of a view, or of a single component in a view. Sometimes you might want to show a part in light grey or something like that to indicate that while it's still in the view it's not really the important thing for the drawing.
9. Ability to edit title block - i don't even know how I can go about giving a drawing a title on the title block. I don't want to have to import it into something else for something this simple. This may be possible - I haven't looked through the tutorials on drawings yet, but for something this simple it should really be a double click or right click on the title block. Nothing shows up intuitively in the menus either.
10. Bill of material / parts list features.

[keqingsong]

Hey Sean - thanks for your submission. You've got a lot of ideas (and some may be duplicates of existing ideas/help topics) in here that I think would be better as single ideas. This will not only give it more exposure for people to vote on, but will also allow us to better track it's priority from a community perspective. Is it cool with you if I took your list and created single idea posts/move item to the drawings-specific thread on your behalf? 

[SeanKane88]

Yes, I'm fine if you want to split them up, move them as appropriate. Just trying to help get a better product for everyone.

[TimeraAutodesk]

@SeanKane88 These are excellent feedback requests. I can say that every item on your list is on our backlog to implement, so please stay tuned as we continue to mature the documentation workspace!

[keqingsong · Accepted solution]

Thanks Timera for the chiming in! Sean, I moved your post to the drawings thread. Based on what Timera said, it sounds a lot of what you mentioned is being addressed in coming updates. The drawings team can also chime in to give you more information. Just as a FYI - one of the sample scripts included in the Fusion 360 scripts allows you to generate a very rudimentary BOM. Check it out - it's under the file menu > scripts. 

[Anonymous]

Just wanted to second that I think all of these features would be very useful. Specifically, I would say implementing features 1, 2, 9, and 10 is essencial for me to be able to use this program. Do you have a rough estimate on when we could expect to see some of these features?

[TimeraAutodesk]

@Anonymous Thanks for chiming in on feature priorities. We can't guarantee a deliverable date, but here's a list of the big-ticket items we are currently working on for the next couple of releases:

- Mac AppStore support

- Parts List

- Balloons

- Editable Title Blocks

- Simple and Complex Section Views

- Shaded Views

We will also be dropping in "smaller" features where they fit in our development cycle as well (i.e. things like text formatting, etc.), but hopefully this gives you an idea of where our attention and efforts are right now concerning Drawings.

Best,
Timera

[Elliot17]

Hi, 

Its good to hear some of those features are coming however I still have one big problem. In the Mac version of fusion 360 ultimate (not sure if Windows has the same problem), I'm finding it impossible to add additional sheets to a drawing and it gets hard to organise all of my drawing sheets into one solid drawing file. I use siemens NX 7.5 at my workplace and you can put multiple sheets into one drawing file which makes it much eaiser. I understand the quality difference between both CAD systems but I would have expected that to be a basic feature? If you coul let me know if there's something being done about it then that'll be great! 

[andrew.de.leon]

Hi Elliot,

Thanks for the feedback. At this stage its not possible to add additional sheets to a drawing on the Mac or Windows versions of Fusion360 Drawings. However, it is another feature on a long list of features we are looking at.

Just so I can understand more about your requirements, whats are you using the additional sheets for? After creating the first sheet, are you wanting to place additional drawing views (maybe section and detail views) of the assembly\component on the first sheet on the additional sheets? Or are you wanting to place drawing views of an assembly complete with a parts list and balloons on the first sheet, and drawing views of the individual components that make up the assembly on the additional sheets (e.g. Assembly on Sheet 1, Component1 on Sheet 2, Component2 on Sheet 3, and so on)? Or are you wanting to place drawing views of completely unrelated assemblies\components on each sheet?

Thanks,

Andrew

15" Retina MacBook Pro (Late 2013), OS X Yosemite (10.10.1), in Sydney Australia

[Elliot17]

Hi Andrew,

Im mostly looking at the ability like you said to create and assembly drawing and have ballons and a component list on the first sheet and then additional sheets for components. Also it would be good if you could have the same component over several sheets if the component is too large or it has many views needed such as section views, break out views etc. Also a lot of engineering companies know are switching drafting standard to ASME standards which is also what my workplace uses and its a much simpler standard to go by because ISO and the other one (I think its ASI or something like that) are very open to different perspectives and it'll be good if you could make the drawing less ambiguous. However this may mean you having to add options for Geometric and Dimensional Tolerancing such as datum feature frames. Also it would be good if you could alter the dimensions like you can on AutoCAD where you can alter the lines, arrows, text etc. but I understand this is a fairly new additon to the software so I wasnt expecting loads of features but the above points are some suggestions in addition to the ones stated by other uses in the discussion.

Thanks,

Elliot