Retirement of ForceEffect family of apps

[ChrisHall]

On August 31, 2016 we will be retiring the ForceEffect family of apps, this includes the following:

• ForceEffect
• ForceEffect Motion
• ForceEffect Flow

FAQ's:

• What is happening to ForceEffect™ , ForceEffectMotion™  and ForceEffectFlow™?

As of August 31, 2016 Autodesk is retiring Autodesk® ForceEffect™ , ForceEffectMotion™  and ForceEffectFlow™ applications. Users will no longer be able to download and install the iOS or Android apps and the Google Chrome plug-in will also be retired.

• Why is Autodesk retiring ForceEffect™ , ForceEffectMotion™  and ForceEffectFlow™?

Autodesk seeks to address more critical customer needs in the core engineering industry. Moving forward, we will focus development efforts on the Forge platform.

• Will the mobile apps still work after August 31, 2016?

Yes, the apps will still work; however, you will no longer be able to download them from the app store. 

• Can I still download ForceEffect applications after August 31, 2016?

No, you will not be able to.

• What will happen to my diagrams that are stored in the A360 drive?

You will be able to access them until August 31, 2016 . We strongly suggest you download them to your mobile device prior to August 31.

• Will there be any additional releases of Autodesk ForceEffect™ , ForceEffectMotion™  and ForceEffectFlow™?

No, the current versions available are the final versions of the product.

[jdmech]

Noooooooooooooo!
I'm so bummed. I absolutely love these apps and have used them effectively
and found great use of Force Effect Motion in my mechanical design work. I
was really hoping that they would grow into a part of Fusion 360 which is
also fantastic.

Big fan and kindest regards -
Jon Dawe -
Lead Mechanical designer @ Animax Designs Inc.
--

Regards,

Jon Dawe (JD)
jdmech@gmail.com

Cell: 818.601.5637

[Anonymous]

After 8/31/2016 I assume that the forceeffect application will still be usable in Inventor 2016 R2.  Also, if when using Inventor 2017, I assume you can still go to the Autodesk URL: http://forceeffect.autodesk.com/frontend/fe.html to load and use the program.

Are these correct?

Thank you.

Jack Cordes P.E.

Cordes Engineering Inc.

jcordes@columbus.rr.com

[Anonymous]

I use Autodesk ForceEffect when teaching the Mechanism class, I'm in the middle of the semester and the students can't use the app! Why are you retiring it? Can't you just let the apps without new versions?

[Anonymous]

The way this was done does not deserve a prize. Could you have notified users maybe? I use this tool in class for students. A bit of notification would have been the least thing you could have done. Now it is even hard to find that the tool has been stopped at all.

[Anonymous]

I respect Autodesks decision to retire from developing this further.

But please re-enable the use of force effect at its last versions.

Several of you customers here are using this to teach students basic functions and are mid-semester.

Myself was trying to access force effect to simply show one of our non-technical customers the effects of a proposed design change. 

This is a excellent simple little tool. Perhaps the way into the autodesk software world for a lot of your future customers.

Could you atleast confirm that this is part of Inventor 2016 and onwards? I am currently on 2015.

[ChrisHall]

ForceEffect is only available in Inventor 2016 R2 and R3, and was discontinued as part of Inventor when 2017 was released.  The website you reference below has been taken offline with the retirement of the ForceEffect family of products

[ChrisHall]

Why is Autodesk retiring ForceEffect™ , ForceEffectMotion™  and ForceEffectFlow™?

Autodesk seeks to address more critical customer needs in the core engineering industry. Moving forward, we will focus development efforts on the Forge platform

[ChrisHall]

ForceEffect is only available in Inventor 2016 R2 and R3, and was discontinued as part of Inventor when 2017 was released. 

[Anonymous]

Play Algodoo game now and don't rely and trust on them because they use you to develop software and discontinue when they think it is popular enough. This is bad news when kids where playing and now they don't have their toy. I found many issues with this product it was not reliable.  

Thanks god this is discontinued otherwise many people got lost on this free product.  

---

@ChrisHall wrote:

ForceEffect is only available in Inventor 2016 R2 and R3, and was discontinued as part of Inventor when 2017 was released. 

---

[scottmoyse]

@ChrisHall these were excellent products for engineers and also marketing Autodesk to competitive accounts. This is a really crap decision and the fact that you haven't emailed current Force Effect users about the news and only putting on this forum is appalling! What on earth are you guys thinking?

The least you could have done is left them there in maintenance mode.

Are you going to release a new set of similar apps under the Forge platform?

[gavbath]

I'm very, very disappointed to hear this.

We loved ForceEffect and ForceEffect motion here at CADPRO, and told everyone we knew about it.

I'm glad I had it installed in Chrome before it was discontinued, as at least I can still use it. I had no idea this was coming, and it wasn't until Scott told me about this thread that I found out what had happened to it. I ran a Fusion 360 meetup on Thursday night, and it was pretty embarrassing when I told the attendees where to go and get the ForceEffect app for one of the steps in our tutorial, and they couldn't get hold of it anymore.

I hope to see this technology re-emerge in Fusion 360 or somewhere else. If you put it into Fusion, please do a better job of integrating it, than was done in Inventor 2016, because that was terrible.

In the meantime, I discovered algodoo (as someone else mentioned and more recently, Geogebra. Neither of these are direct equivalents, but they can perform some of the functions that ForceEffect could.

[matthewweake]

At least give the users and promoters of this tool a chance to make a change before removing it from the stores.

I'm really disappointed in the handling of this, it makes Autodesk look like they don't give a **** about customers, paying or not.

[scottmoyse]

If there was the potential for this to happen to any product, be it mobile, cloud or desktop. Then it should be a Labs project, not a released app or application.

Regards
Scott Moyse
Manufacturing & CAM Technical Specialist
Autodesk Expert Elite

[Anonymous]

Like most of you, I'm also very disappointed Autodesk stopped with force effect. I had saved some models which are useless from now.

If someone of you finds a good alternative for force effect, please share it with the rest of the group such we in the future we can still use a handy tool.

[Anonymous]

Hello

In reply to the previous comment: I started using SolidWorks Simulation (not free) and FrameDesign (a free website/app) for my classes. I created an instruction video for my students to get started. You can find it here if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FE3PM5SD8Y

Regards

[JDMather]

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@ChrisHall wrote:

..... Moving forward, we will focus development efforts on the Forge platform

---

What is this "Forge" platform?

No link? No information?.

My class starts in 6 minutes.

I am running from Autodesk so fast I can outrun Usain Bolt.

Autodesk is completely clueless on how to capture the edu market....

[Curtis_Waguespack]

---

@ChrisHall wrote:

Why is Autodesk retiring ForceEffect™ , ForceEffectMotion™  and ForceEffectFlow™?

Autodesk seeks to address more critical customer needs in the core engineering industry. Moving forward, we will focus development efforts on the Forge platform

---

Hi ChrisHall,

You've posted this 2x now. But as presented, it is more non-answer than answer.

As it stands now, the interpretation is that there are no comparable tools offered to replace the ForceEffect applications. Is that correct?

If that is not correct, can you please help users connect the dots from these abruptly discontinued offerings to Autodesk's alternate offerings, and suggest the comparable Forge tools? ...indicate where to find them, access them, learn more about them?

If you do not know, can you please direct us to someone who does, or do a bit of investigation to learn a bit more about this.

Thank you,

Curtis

[scottmoyse]

The lack of response with decent explanations is plain rude, and the reposting of the same non answer earlier in this thread was just insulting to be honest. All it's doing is making a bad situation worse.

Regards
Scott Moyse
Manufacturing & CAM Technical Specialist
Autodesk Expert Elite

[Curtis_Waguespack]

I suspect @ChrisHall is the messenger here.

But in any case, it seems to me that there was an attempt from someone (messenger or not) to deliver this news without providing any specifics concerning an alternative. Which likely indicates that there is no current alternative. If that is the case, it should be clearly stated as such.

Hopefully @ChrisHall can provide some clarification.