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.

[dieselguy65]

30 clicks? One touch and I move objects

[etfrench]

My intuition tells me you haven't spent much time or effort to learn the basics.   Why don't you spend some time writing a more thorough description with perhaps a screencast of the actual problem you're having instead of ranting in your first ever post?

[brandonBG4FX]

This is the 3rd time I am trying to give Fusion 360 a try.  It has to be the least intuitive program on the market.  I here everyone that says it takes time.  Read the how to's.  Watch some videos.  I will, again, and hopefully this time I will get somewhere before I give up and go back to Rhino.  

That's just my two cents.  

[dieselguy65]

Honestly it was the easiest out of any I've used.
30 minutes and I was making completed parts.

[programify]

Think yourself lucky that you even managed to install F360.

[brandonBG4FX]

Sorry to here about your installation issues.  I imagine support can help you get past that.

Regarding my third experience trying to learn 360, I can say that after a few weeks of watching videos and using the software, I am making progress.  The capabilities are fantastic and it is far easier to modify existing models than any other software that I have ever used.

I still say however that it is the least intuitive application out there.  Things just aren't where they should be.  Mouse clicks and movements don't make sense.  I have had to change half of the defaults just to make it usable.    

That combined with a major UI overhaul makes many of the videos out there useless.  

[Anonymous]

Jesus Christ almighty, here's another one. All I want to do is draw 4
hexagons apart from each other all oriented at the same angle (point up),
as in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKQjvitMLjQ . Low and
behold I can't even ****ing do that. The shapes don't snap to any angle,
all slightly off, and so the honeycomb process depicted in the video won't
work. It's incredible how fusion 360 can take something we can do as small
children and make it only possible by consulting others who themselves have
grappled with the issue for hours until they consulted someone else who
took hours to reply. The amount of time wasted is staggering considering
the elementary nature of the problem.

I look forward to the replies detailing far more complicated methods of
creating a honeycomb rather than solving the simple problem I'm having.

[g-andresen]

Hi,

I look forward to the replies detailing far more complicated methods of
creating a honeycomb rather than solving the simple problem I'm having.

this forum is full of them.
Check out the latest ones.

günther

[TheCADWhisperer]

---

@Anonymous wrote:
I look forward to the replies detailing far more complicated methods of
creating a honeycomb rather than solving the simple problem I'm having.
....consulted someone else who took hours to reply

---

Here you go (see Attached file and work your way through the timeline).

Hollar back if you need for me to create a video...

Sorry it took me so long to reply  (But hours would be a bit of an exaggeration).

[chrisplyler]

---

@Anonymous wrote:
It's incredible how fusion 360 can take something we can do as small
children and make it only possible by consulting others who themselves have
grappled with the issue for hours until they consulted someone else who
took hours to reply.

---

RIGHT?!?!?!?

Or...you know...ten minutes spent in the beginner tutorials / manual literature...that would have taught you about sketch constraints so you your brain might have immediately understood to add a hori/vert constraint to the side leg of a hexagon. I mean, that's the path I personally chose back when I started learning Fusion. But you keep on whining Playuh.

[chrisplyler]

Or...for example...making them all parallel to something.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/community/screencast/c3cbbd1d-8a62-446d-852b-f2afdf9642d0

[Anonymous]

"..that would have taught you about sketch constraints so you your brain..."

My mine brain didn't think of going through the entirety of the fusion tutorials, I didn't have the weeks to spare yesterday. Did you reeeeally learn that in 10 minutes? Open manual 10-minutes-done? I'm sure others would like to join in and say so, but I think they'd all be lying to themselves. Given that there are thousands of these issues I doubt anyone could manage without help from the community (thanks) which is odd, considering, after all, as chrisplyler pointed out "THERE'S A MANUAL - DUUURR"

Thanks to everyone for the help, I'll be back interminably for my group session, I mean whine - playyaaaaaahhhh (do people still say that!?!)...weird..

[Anonymous]

Pah-hahaha, I just clicked "horizontal/vertical" in sketch, in the constraints box, then clicked on the side I wanted to be horizontal and it's done. I don't doubt that's in the manual...somewhere... A snap-to feature or small triangle to tell you it's horizontal would be better though.

Thanks chrisplylr for the help, and the sarcasm was very welcome - it's nice to be reminded that there are people more dickish than me in the world.

[chrisplyler]

I didn't say the manual/tutorials would solve every issue. Obviously they will not. But for the type of simple things you're describing - such as polygons not snapping to some orientation - yes they would have. Yes, I learned about sketch constraints in ten minutes. Not every single aspect of every situation...but the basics such that my mind - when faced with your hexagon orientation issue - immediately new how to solve it without thinking about it.

You're complaining about Fusion having issues. And certainly it does. But the nature of the issues that you have complained about seem to be trivial and could have been avoided without "weeks" of manual/tutorial usage. And even if it DID take "weeks," people go to school for years to learn how to fully operate high-end CAD programs. They are complex. It's like you're complaining that Photoshop is harder to learn than MSPaint. Well, of course it is.

[Anonymous]

Don't get me started on MS Paint...

[chrisplyler]

There is a portion of this video that did not capture...it is while I was showing you the online manual...but you may find the rest very slightly valuable...

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/fusion-360/learn-explore/caas/screencast/Main/Details/09f15e4...

[Anonymous]

God **** it, it was SO selfless and helpful of you to upload that that I feel like an absolute c**t. **** you. I've got nothing left to complain about now!! I'll have to check the recycling bin to see if anyone has put glass in with the plastic.

Thanks for your help, I'm making a broccoli seed tray for a friend (an aside from my work projects) and I can complete it, and future projects, thanks to you, and all the forum folk.

I'll never whine again.

Truly,

A. C**t

[tommVS2MB]

write your crude talk someplace other than here.

[Anonymous]

Out of laziness, I have only read the first two pages of this thread.

I followed an online Fusion 360 course that has a score of 4,6 out of five, which used the parametric modelling of a toy helikopter as an example project. It made Fusion 360 look fairly easy. The problem is that it didn't say anything about designing with Fusion 360. What you have to do with design is to change aspects of your model afterwards, which I am discovering is far from straightforward.

I have started practicing on modifying and extending a complicated model and I spend about 10% of my time making actual progress and the rest with trying to figure out how to do something and starting over. As has been indicated, some modelling decisions cannot be corrected except than by starting over.

docara post 4 : “There is fantastic help here which includes product developers of Fusion if you have a problem just ask a question”

I have asked 5 “How to do X” questions (ignoring one asking for something impossible), but have received only one answer. That is the main reason why I resort to starting over so often. How can I move a sketch to a particular location ? I haven't bothered asking and just deleted and recreated the sketch.

jeff.strater to MadManScott post 1 : “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.”

Indeed. That is a typical problem that slows down sketching. For some reason I cannot change or constrain some line. Why not ? It should be possible for Fusion 360 to list what constraints apply to a line or object.

It reminds me of the typical windows error message telling you that you can't do an operation on a file or folder because it is already in use, but refusing to tell by what it is being used.

pichable to MadManScott : “In my opinion there still is a huge gap between Fusion360's on first sight clean and handy seeming user interface and how user friendly it is in reality.”

It seems user-friendly at first sight. It even has some features that mitigate some problems, like find in window, find in browser and grouping timeline items.

stephen 33 to MadManScott : “But I find with F360 I need to have a clear idea of what I want to design before I start, thought out starting point make it easier to step back and make changes and if I find a design is starting to get out of hand I just start again rather then try to fix a model that is just not working.”

For big designs starting over is very time-consuming.

cekuhnen 35 to stephen : “DirectModeling as well as Parametric modeling are both great approaches but it does not relieve a designer from exploring the idea or preventing the possibility to having to rebuild a cad model after you have learned how to build it better or during the exploration realized you used the wrong approach.”

Perhaps that is the way it is with Fusion 360, but not the way it should be.

On top of that Fusion 360 has become slow. So starting over takes even more time.

[micromelt01]

I am writing to agree with your first paragraph. As a novice to F360, coming from Solidworks, my present 'driving me crazy' challenge is making the changes to parts created at the beginning of the design which result in the whole timeline turning yellow. But as you say making changes like this are intrinsic part of the design process which is not linear but reiterative.

This seems to me to be the downside of the 'everything in one file' approach. 'All your eggs in one basket' and ' a house of cards' are phrases that spring to mind.

I hope that my current difficulties are caused by an incorrect workflow. I guess I still prefer to make a component as a new design and then to insert it into an assembly of parts which to me mirrors the real world but I think I read that a design with many linked parts are not desirable.

So any links to tutorials or words of wisdom that deal with these issues would be welcome. Also what about all the yellow 'Positionxx' icons in my time line or red 'Group' icons. Deleting them doesn't help.

regards to all.