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.

[TrippyLighting]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Glad it's not just me😥. 

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No, it isn't just you. But the reality is that you folks belong to a very, very small minority.

[etfrench]

What are you basing your intuition on?  Have you ever used a 3d modeling program?

[dieselguy65]

I'm still lost as to how anyone can classify this as hard to use. It's a
very complex power piece of software.
When I decided to start shopping cad, I went thru a half dozen different
software packages.
30 minutes at the screen with fusion I had a simple part with a few
features finished. That same time with the others, I had a square, not
even a3d object.
If you'd like an example of hard to use, try out solidworks.
If you want simple, tinkercad works great

Otherwise, spend the time took learn fusion360. Just like any good
powerful software, it takes dedication to be proficient.

[Anonymous]

It certainly does look like it's a very complex powerful piece of software.  I haven't given up on it yet and I fully appreciate and am very grateful for being allowed to use this for free.

After getting frustrated with the initial tutorial "open, close, save" I was just thinking how unintuitive it is and wondered if anyone else felt like that.

For example, in this tutorial it references a project called "my first project".  This didn't exist in my data panel drop down menu.  When I tried to save, it didn't seem to have an option to save to HDD, just the cloud as far as I could tell.  The tutorial later referenced a side bar in the tutorial screen that needs to be accessed (not within the program itself) in order to download it to HDD (why wasn't this mentioned earlier?) before being able to progress with the rest of the tutorial. If I go to Samples-basic training - 01 Introduction and double click on it ...nothing happens.  Similarly 02_Sketching.  None of thse examples shout out "intuitive, user friendly software" to me.

I am a complete novice with CAD software and I appreciate that TinkerCAD is a much less powerful product, but I was 3d printing an Orchid plant pot with domed base, drainage holes and all, just a couple of hours after downloading it.

I am going to persevere a bit longer with F360 but it is not for the faint-hearted 😣

[Anonymous]

Dear lord yes. Finally someone said it.

Fusion 360 is the most unintuitive, ass-backwards, broken, nonsensical and generally unusable program I have ever dealt with. I can't even remember how many things have glitched out since I started it up for the first time, but here's a few from the hall of fame:

CAMERA CONTROLS?????? Fusion has the ****tiest camera controls in existence. I have to hold shift and ****ing double-tap my scroll wheel to orbit. Sometimes I forget and hold the right mouse button and nothing else, which ALWAYS results in me doing something I didn't intend. Every single time. Why does that circle menu even exist? It literally only makes things more annoying. Not to mention the numerous times they've just. stopped. just ****ing stopped working entirely. can't rotate, can't zoom, can't pan. can't customize them either. 

parameters are a fantastic idea but they're executed so goddamn poorly I regularly have to go to the forums in the middle of typing an expression. I don't understand why the **** it treats a unit as a coefficient that you have to type in. i don't understand why it doesn't understand exponents. i don't understand why you can't do a **** thing with driven dimensions.

Joints are just horrible all-round. Garbage, garbage, garbage. Danny DeVito gourmet. 

The whole program just ****s itself every once in a while and I have to reinstall it.

In the appearances menu, the emissive textures are separated into "other" and "miscellaneous," which mean the same goddamn thing and should never have been separate tabs at all.

You can do draft analyses, curvature map analyses, zebra analyses, and minimum radius analyses, but you can't fold three triangles to meet along the edges. I have to create my own ****ing equations to calculate that by hand.

TO SUMMARIZE: 👎

[MoshiurRashid]

Autodesk Design Academy is a better platform to learn fusion 360 easily. Just learn basic mechanical drawing strategy and leave rest to the design academy. You wont find fusion 360 difficult  

[Anonymous]

Aarrgghhh. For the love of god.  The tutorials are hopelessly outdated.  I managed to crawl my way over broken glass to get to lesson 7 "Import and Export".  It took me about 5 hours as all the changes in the new UI (as I've just discovered) make various steps illogical or missing and require further googling.  This lesson has me stumped.  The Patch Tab is missing from the drop down menu and so I am unable to find the stitch function.  Some googling later  I found out that I can disable the UI preview in preferences that will bring back the patch, stitch and paste functions in the drop down menu.

..... Only I can't. 

Having managed to search for a solution to this issue the solution appears to now be outdated and there IS NO disable UI option in the preferences list.  These tutorials need some serious updating.  They obviously refer to an earlier and very different version  of this program 😒

[HughesTooling]

@Anonymous  Did you find the introduction to the new UI in the help, this page might help with patch.

Mark

[Anonymous]

OK, so eventually found it under the surface option.  Lesson 7 completed after a mere 5 hours ...wait, 21 more lessons?  For just the beginner.  Wow.

[Anonymous]

Thank you that certainly helps.  Unfortunately trying to follow the firtst 11 or so tutorial videos are a waste of time as they all refer to the older UI and are pretty useless and frustrating.  I'm going to skip forward and see if your link helps once I start to actually use it.  Thanks again

[Anonymous]

I think the issue I am having is that all of the tutorials seem to refer to an earlier and significantly different version, such that it makes following them impossible. 

I have managed to create a raised circular object with 6 constrained circles equidistant and equally spaced around the perimeter and extruded, as per the beginners lessons.  However this has taken me 8 hours of figuring out workarounds for the instructions given, on a platform I have never used before.  It certainly looks like an impressive software tool but those tutorial videos and written instructions for beginners need some serious updating.

[g-andresen]

Hi,

@Anonymous wrote:

I have managed to create a raised circular object with 6 constrained circles equidistant and equally spaced around the perimeter and extruded, as per the beginners lessons.  However this has taken me 8 hours of figuring out workarounds for the instructions given, on a platform I have never used before.

If you had set it here with explanatory screencasts or screenshots, the problem would be solved and you could use 7 hours for other purposes.

günther

[kb9ydn]

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@g-andresen wrote:

Hi,

@Anonymous wrote:

I have managed to create a raised circular object with 6 constrained circles equidistant and equally spaced around the perimeter and extruded, as per the beginners lessons.  However this has taken me 8 hours of figuring out workarounds for the instructions given, on a platform I have never used before.

If you had set it here with explanatory screencasts or screenshots, the problem would be solved and you could use 7 hours for other purposes.

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That sort of defeats the purpose of the tutorial does it not?

It's understandable that the tutorials may need some updating, since the new UI is still a fairly recent change.  But they do really need to get on it.

C|

[chrisplyler]

It's odd to me that you think it's impossible to follow the tutorials just because of the UI change.

I mean, 99% of stuff is still where it was before, and 99% of stuff still has the same name. If you see, for example, that the tutorial shows a Patch>Extrude, I don't think it's "impossible" to quickly figure out that it now Surface>Extrude. Do you? You click around and explore the menus a bit, and your going to realize what's where, right?

[Anonymous]

A fairly recent change? The UI has been the exact same for the past year or
so, which is the entire time I've been using it.

[TrippyLighting]

@Anonymous The new UI has been in preview for a year, but to get it that had to be enabled in the references.

With the last major update the new UI is now the default and for many people that had not used the preview this is indeed new.

I personally also do not understand all the commotion about this. It might take 5-10 minutes of finding where the commands are now and get used to the new (but not so different) icons.

[kb9ydn]

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@chrisplyler wrote:

It's odd to me that you think it's impossible to follow the tutorials just because of the UI change.

I mean, 99% of stuff is still where it was before, and 99% of stuff still has the same name. If you see, for example, that the tutorial shows a Patch>Extrude, I don't think it's "impossible" to quickly figure out that it now Surface>Extrude. Do you? You click around and explore the menus a bit, and your going to realize what's where, right?

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I could see it being confusing for a total newbie. If you have no prior experience with CAD it may not be obvious that a patch is actually a surface.  There is a LOT of nomenclature to learn.

To Autodesk's credit, they did put in orange boxes pointing out the new toolbar UI in the overview for each section, so you would see it if you actually looked at the overview.  But if you go straight to the tutorials you might never see it.

C|

[cekuhnen]

Maybe use tinkercad - sorry could not resist the joke

Fusion seriously is the easiest app to learn and the UI changes are minimal.

It takes time to understand 3D - I would not blame that into Fusion.


For me it is the best teaching tool.

[ssawyerLVXNY]

Note that it didn't take long on this forum for me to get "brushed back" when I posed a question, simply asking for a pointer into the documentation. I wasn't even asking "How", but "where can I do my studying to learn this" and got a "well, if you'd spend a few minutes experimenting..." response.

Many of us are familiar with that kind of response through the years, in many different forums, and really try hard to figure things out on our own, so it's kinda ironic to also get dinged for not asking for help here, ya know?

I'm a rank beginner, and have spent about 30 hours now going through tutorials and trying to work through things on my own. Even now, I really don't want to be "bothering" people with "stupid" questions, and being called stupid, or lazy, or being accused of wanting to be spoon-fed, but this is an incredibly complex piece of software, and when I attempt to do a design of something I actually want to build, I very quickly bang hard up against something that I want to do, and have no clue how to do it. In many cases, it's a matter of understanding the proper work-flow (e.g. I kept trying to place "holes" based on the position of construction lines in my sketch, rather than orienting them to edges/faces in the model). This always takes me a lot longer than posting a question here and getting an answer, but I think I learn more by taking the longer route, and coming on here only when I'm well and truly stumped, and then steel myself for the "you really are to slow to be doing this" snarky comments.

I should also point out that I have been doing 3D modeling with a tool that I'm sure y'all will scoff at, but it served my needs perfectly well for about 10 years, and I've taught several classes in that other product. I'm coming to F360 now because I've come up against that other tool's limitations, and find F360 to be a well-designed product. I do share impatience with complaints that it isn't "intuitive". Nothing this complex is going to be "intuitive". But to castigate forum visitors for not posting questions, while allowing some to also castigate us for coming on here with questions that some think we should figure out on our own is a bit much.

[TrippyLighting]

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@ssawyerLVXNY wrote:

Note that it didn't take long on this forum for me to get "brushed back" when I posed a question, simply asking for a pointer into the documentation. I wasn't even asking "How", but "where can I do my studying to learn this" and got a "well, if you'd spend a few minutes experimenting..." response.

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You seem to be determined to figure things out on your own but at the same time you appear to be frustrated with your progress. As a result you take some off-the-cuff remarks way too seriously.

I made that comment in a particular thread responding to a particular situation and for that particular situation it was appropriate.