Unsolicited design/UX feedback of parameters and UI

[woodman.dana]

I'm not sure the best channel for feedback, so I'm posting it here.

I'm an on/off again users of Fusion for the past 4+ years, including teaching classes on it at our local makerspace as well as designing parts for 3D printing, CNC, laser cutting and more. 

Since I've been using Fusion over these years, here is somewhat sorted list of the UI/UX feedback I have, in hopes it helps the product/UX teams with some user feedback:

• General UI feedback:
  • Remember view/dialog state on restart; View state is reset every restart, which is incredibly frustrating. Should be able to save a given layout (eg Photoshop) and perhaps even switch between them. At a minimum, remember dialog position on restart.
  • `cmd+,` does not open settings, like most apps on the Mac (not sure about Windows/Linux)
  • As far as I can tell, there is no way to increase font sizes of UI elements. The palette and other fonts are quite small, having the option to enlarge would be nice, esp for people with poor vision or people on large monitors (me)
• Parameters: I find parameters to be the "killer feature" of Fusion for me, these improvements would drastically improve the workflow of using parameters:
  • Change the dialog to a standard UI panel that allows keeping it open while working on a design. This would allow much quicker jumping/back and forth between parameters and drawing/design, without the current clunky and inconsistent dialog overlay that prevents anything but changing parameters.
  • Don't hide when clicking to another window/screen; right now if you click off to another app or screen if you have multiple monitors, the dialog disappears. This means you can't cross reference your parameters while working on other apps.
  • Allow reordering and/or sorting by property for user parameters; this is particularly helpful when you have many properties and you want to, say, view them alphabetically or perhaps which one is the largest value. Another option would be drag to reorder, which would be acceptable as well.
  • Allow grouping parameters into folders to more cleanly organize them; for designs with dozens or more parameters, groups/folders would allow you to cleanly structure your parameters in a more legible way.
  • Remember width and other UI settings on re-open; The default UI is very wide and the column widths are often wrong, so remembering the state after they're changed would safe time/energy.
  • Double clicking the column header should set the width of the column to the max length of the content like in Excel/Google Sheets. Single clicking would toggle sort.
  • The plus button to add new params is small and hard to see, consider changing to green and/or a button
  • The remove icon is small and hard to see, esp against the highlighted blue color background
  • Have a right-click action to convert a dimension into a parameter: Allow me to select a dimension in my design, righ-click and select "Convert to parameter" which would open the parameter dialog, create the new param and auto-focus me onto the parameter name so I can give it a user friendly name. 

I'm sure some of these have been shared before, but I'm hopeful to see some of these things in upcoming releases, as I feel they'd improve the UX for a lot of users of Fusion 360. 

Cheers

[woodman.dana]

Just noticed the "submit idea" link, will move this over there 👍

EDIT: never mind, there is no generic Fusion 360 feedback there?

[CGBenner]

@woodman.dana 

Offering your feedback here is good, but the best way to give feedback to the Fusion 360 team is through the Insiders Program.  Check out Keqing's post that tells the whole story.  Good luck!

[TrippyLighting]

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@woodman.dana wrote:

I'm sure some of these have been shared before ...

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You can be sure of that!

The original Idea Station was archived a few years back and contained those requests.

Those suggestions have been posted many, many times before. Long before the Fusion 360 insider program started.

[woodman.dana]

So it sounds like the product team is aware of these issues? It's unfortunate that such basic UX improvements have been ignore for so many years, is there any chance that a team member has a roadmap that would include any of these improvements? At a bare minimum, a better parameters dialog would make a huge difference in daily workflow.

[jeff_strater]

I cannot comment on dates, but, yes, the team is aware of these requests, and is actively working on implementing some of them.  That is all I can say at the moment.

[woodman.dana]

Thanks for the update, it's good to know that they're being worked on!