Why is F360 so difficult?

[MadManScott]

I've taught myself Photoshop, Gimp, 3d studio max, maya, blender... I've made my own 3d videogames in Unity and Unreal... modeled my own objects for it, textured them, compiled them for android and ios...

but for some reason i cant do anything in fusion 360 but draw boxes and import svg... Is there technical reasons why this software is so impossible?

For example, in any other software if i want to move something, i select the thing i want to move, click the move button/tool/whatever, and i move it.

Not in fusion360.

The move tool doesnt move anything. I've spent hours trying to figure out simply how to move a rectangle and its just not possible. 

I have managed to "twist" things with the move tool. i dont remotely understand how the software thinks i want to do this. Im not using a "twist" tool...

Not to mention this box isnt even centered. I cant figure out how to center it. It would be helpful if i could specify the center in x/y coordinates but i cant find that option.

I have been able to import SVG files, which is the only time i can really move/resize anything. But once i click Okay on that import window, its permanently fixed in that location for all time. I've begun designing my things in inkscape and just importing it to fusion360 so that i can generate basic toolpaths for simple text lettering and things. The CAM side of it is fairly easy... but that doesnt matter much if i cant make anything other than basic lines.

Why are things so difficult in f360? is it some kind of upsell to training classes? I honestly dont understand why i cant just click the move tool, and move something. And its not just moving things. There are a million seemingly simple tasks that i just cant do. No matter how many youtube videos i watch none of it ever works.

Tried the "support and learning" section but i cant access any of that. It tells me to click next. i click next. and its just right back at the main "what would you like to do?" page... I click Start Learning again.... It tells me to  click next... i click next.... back to "what would you like to do?"  hmkay. 

Hell, even trying to manage the saved files is a nightmare. Its impossible to delete anything. What are all these subfolders "master" etc etc for? i dont know.  I have a ****ton of things saved that i would loooove to delete.

Oh, and "G28 Safe Retracts" is a hilarious troll. I zero out x/y/z, retract z a little... hit go.... and ZOOM it rapids the spindle straight down into the piece and tries to rapid the spindle through the work to the beginning point, before retracting and then beginning the proper plunge. WOW!

And im not even talking about rapid'ing the endmill through the material. no, it tries to plunge so deep that my actual spindle would have to penetrate the work. LOL!

The best part of this is its completely hidden toolpath in the previews. It does NOT display this path at all in simulation. Even when i import the resulting gcode into whatever sender software im using, it does NOT show this disaster until im witnessing my machine do it. Thankfully no damage to my spindle or machine, just a broken bit and a destroyed workpiece. But holy! Thats some serious next-level trolling.

Disabled "safe retracts" and now it safely retracts and functions properly. lol. I think whats happening here is when i zero out my Z coordinate, the G28 command is trying to move it to "machine" z0. But, since i just reset my zero axis, this "machine z0" could be DEEEEP into the work piece, further than my machine is even capable of moving.

Avoid G28 retracts at all cost.

WHY?!!??! Has nobody else had this problem? am i missing something wildly obvious for the past 2 months? I dont get it. This software has done nothing but cause waves and waves of frustration and anxiety. I dont think i can deal with this anymore.

[Anonymous]

@MadManScott

For self-teaching, the "learning" page is a good start, it helped me a lot.

http://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=GUID-1C665B4D-7BF7-4FDF-98B0-AA7EE12B5AC2

[HughesTooling]

As well as the links to the help on Fusion above you should look up what G28 does as you're just showing how little you know. If your machine has limit switches and is homed G28 will take the machine to its home position, G28 is the safest way to retract the Z if you have a machine setup correctly and not just playing with a toy. Spend some time reading and learning rather than ranting most of what you wrote above just shows your ignorance.

Mark

[docara]

Hi

I also moaned and b**ched here when I first started using Fusion. HOWEVER Manfred.Steinbach is correct by you are only showing your ignorance, as I did and often still do!!! You MUST give yourself time to learn the Fusion way of doing things.

There has been quite a number of times I ranted here only to find it was not fusion at fault but me - usually resulting in a slap down by trippylighting Lol

Don't get me wrong I do think Fusion can be improved in MANY MANY ways - all of which are to do with the user interface, but you clearly haven't searched YouTube or the help files here.

There is fantastic help here which includes product developers of Fusion if you have a problem just ask a question 

Matt

[Anonymous]

@docara

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@docara wrote:

Hi

HOWEVER Manfred.Steinbach is correct by you are only showing your ignorance,

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Noooooooo! I did not say that!!

(maybe I would think that, but never dare to say)

Manfred

[jeff_strater]

Hi @MadManScott,

I understand the frustration.  Parametric CAD design is not an easy topic to get past that initial learning curve.  This domain is different than many areas that you may have dealt with in the past.  A lot of the complexity, IMO, results from the need to very precisely control the results of your design.  Trying to learn this type of design without understanding a few (maybe more than a few) underlying concepts is going to result in a lot of frustration.  So, some time spent with some of the intro materials, youtube videos, etc, to learn these concepts will pay off, I suspect.

I can't address all of your frustrations here.  But, let me focus on one:  Moving a sketch rectangle.  Even without seeing your design, I suspect I know what has happened.  Your rectangle was probably created by placing one of its points at the origin point of the sketch.  This is generally a good thing to do.  But, what you may not realize is that the sketch origin point is a fixed point.  That is, it cannot be moved.  And, because you put one corner of your rectangle on that point, it means that the whole rectangle cannot be moved.  Most likely, you will be able to move two of the lines of that rectangle, but not the whole thing.  Another possible point of confusion is the different pieces of that rectangle.  A rectangle is not a single object.  It is composed of 4 lines, and 4 points, each of which are separate objects.  Then, there is the shaded area created by the boundaries of the rectangle.  We call this the "sketch profile".  It is also a separate object - used to create solid geometry via, say, the Extrude command.  As it applies to this particular question, though is:  you cannot move the profile.  It is a derived object.  You have to move the sketch lines/points.  So, if you select the profile and choose Move, nothing will happen.  This is, I admit, unfortunate and confusing.  It's just one of those concepts that you need to internalize.

The screencast below tries to explain some of the concepts around this one point:  moving a sketch rectangle.  Hope it helps clear up some of these concepts.

Jeff

[Anonymous]

I'm in the same boat, expecting things in Fusion to work the same way they work in the vector drawing apps I've been using for many years. It's a difficult transition for sure.

[Anonymous]

Watch some tutorials. After a few hours I was able to spend an entire day modeling without any frustration. I am amazed at how short the learning curve was to get good results. Im only on day 3 but already feel confident that I cant get the results im after.  I was not expecting it to be like this at all,  it has been a refreshing surprise.

My olny real hang up so far has to do with file hierarchy and organization. Every once in a while i have the wrong component activated when I start a new sketch, it then puts all the dependent items in that components folder. For the life of me I cant rearrange those lists. When I drag the item to the folder I want it looks like its gonna work, i release the mouse and then nothing. I can work around it, but I can see this being an issue, especially with large projects. At my current 25 components its already becoming an issue.

[HughesTooling]

@Anonymous If you finish a sketch and find you've created it in the wrong component you can drag it from one sketch folder to another in the browser. You need to do this before using it to create any 3d bodies, so if you realise you have the wrong component active when you make an extrusion you'll need to delete the extrusion, move the sketch then activate the correct component and continue. Do you have colour cycling enabled, it will make it more obvious if the extrude is a different colour than you're expecting.

Mark

[dean.dekovic_gideon.brothers]

Fusion 360 is a trip outside the classic CAD comfort zone. If you admit to yourself that you need help (watching tutorials and learning in Autodesk University, this forum) and spend some time learning the basics, the experience is much more gentle.

Same here, often I forget the rule n1

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-design-validate/fusion-360-r-u-l-e-1-and-2/td-p/6581749

and some components end up in places I don't need/like, so I have to redo the assembly/subassembly. But with time, I'm sure Fusion will evolve and become a superstar in CAD programs. 

The "share link" for sharing designs in an internet browser and A360 on mobile are fantastic features. It saved me a lot of time, especially when I was in a store to buy hardware and some bolts were missing on the handmade short parts list. I opened the iOS A360 app and the day was saved!

Cheers for the F360 team and people on this forum willing to help!

Dean

[MadManScott]

I want to apologize for my first post, i should have been more calm when posting. 

I agree, i'm trying to jump straight into doing something i want, rather than work through the tutorials and find the things that i need.

And thank you all for your replies and help. I'll try to be less bad

[Anonymous]

I've had to transition my mode of thinking away from creating a collection of movable/modifiable shapes that form an overall picture (as I would in vector drawing programs) to creating a sketch (with dimensions) of something I want to build, thinking of every line with its associated dimension and relation to the other lines in the drawing.

It's still tough to grasp but getting easier.

[Anonymous]

when you select beginner mode they should set editable dimensions on every single thing if they want to make it easier.

 also another advice make evrything locked in place by default too for beginners i could see sme newb drawing for half an hour setting some coarse dimensions and then he move some stuff and everything goes to hell because nothing is locked in place and everthing is linked with dimensions. it's alot easier to delete dimensions that don't let you move something rather than finding missing dimensions to constrain something.

  free cad did way better job on being easy to learn. it was my first experience with parametric design and i expected fusion360 to be a breeze, but from what i see they spend way too much money into getting as many features as they can into it but forget about the ease of use and that's quite the same idea i've had over other Autodesk products.

  i think the hobbyist thing is more like an extended tutorial so ppl really get familiar with it before they consider paying that much.

[TrippyLighting]

Fusion 360 is not so difficult but you need to understand the distinction between a modeling software and a CAD software.

The software packages you named are predominantly modeling software with the aim to create visual representations and for the most part they use direct modeling techniques. There are parametric "pockets" such as Blender's modifier stack. While accuracy and precision can be achieved it is usually not the goal.

The purpose of CAD software is to create models for manufacturing physical goods. Accuracy/Precision are the name of the game. In order to achieve that and keep it editable and manageable across all parts of a model most CAD software nowadays is parametric and uses a feature and design history based approach.

That is also the reason that most CAD models are created with BRep and NURBS surfaces as opposed to Sub-D meshes. A NURBS surface is a mathematical representation of a surface and as such has no finite resolution. A mesh on the other hand has a finite resolution

It is not unusual that this takes a little while to internalize that different approach and the workflows associated with this. When I started with Blender 15 years ago I had a hard time understanding what to use an edge loop for. Eventually I got it though 😉

Just give it some time. Practice makes mastery.

[TrippyLighting]

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@docara wrote:

... usually resulting in a slap down by trippylighting Lol ...

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Oh, come on now 😉

[ToddHarris7556]

LOL .....

'Tough love' is still 'love' 😉

Sometimes people just need a wake-up call. If/when they choose to wake up, then there's almost always help available. 

As with many things in life, the temptation is just shout 'HEY! Where's the $%^&*# EASY BUTTON?' 

The fact that there IS no easy button is what keeps most of us gainfully employed 🙂

[Anonymous]

I totally agree, the UI is so complicated that it's neigh impossible to simply move and resize objects. All those who say that you need to watch hours of videos, miss the point that this is just due to the poor design, resulting in a poor UX. OK, Fusion 360 can probably do all sorts of flashy things, which are not available in SketchUp but the latter is so easy to manipulate objects (and it gives terrific help in aligning and snapping objects) that 9 and 10 year olds in my primary school use it quite happily.  If you are not convinced on the difficulties, then you just have to look at responses to users questions on moving and rotating objects to see that no one can give clear instructions - apart from watch the videos!  

[melvinbrian3d]

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@MadManScott wrote:

I've taught myself Photoshop, Gimp, 3d studio max, maya, blender... I've made my own 3d videogames in Unity and Unreal... modeled my own objects for it, textured them, compiled them for android and ios...

but for some reason i cant do anything in fusion 360 but draw boxes and import svg... Is there technical reasons why this software is so impossible?

For example, in any other software if i want to move something, i select the thing i want to move, click the move button/tool/whatever, and i move it.

Not in fusion360.

Not to mention this box isnt even centered. I cant figure out how to center it. It would be helpful if i could specify the center in x/y coordinates but i cant find that option.

Hell, even trying to manage the saved files is a nightmare. Its impossible to delete anything. What are all these subfolders "master" etc etc for? i dont know.  I have a ****ton of things saved that i would loooove to delete.

WHY?!!??! Has nobody else had this problem? am i missing something wildly obvious for the past 2 months? I dont get it. This software has done nothing but cause waves and waves of frustration and anxiety. I dont think i can deal with this anymore.

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Sounds like a nightmare to you O.o, check out some tutorial in Youtube like Lars Christensen

Fusion 360 Tutorial for Absolute Beginners

Link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5bc9c3S12g&t=128s

from those videos you will understand how fusion work.

[Anonymous]

it's like it was designed by satan as some sort of cruel practical joke.  Intuitive it is not. 

[etfrench]

It becomes intuitive if you read the manual.