Library 'Mis'-Management

[mphatak68]

I must admit, I find library management a real mess in Fusion 360!

Here are some reasons why :-

1. If I open the Library Manager (LM) from the Schematic view, I see a dialog box with 3 columns: 'In Design', 'In Use' and 'Available' (see attached images). Yet, when I open the LM from the Content Manager, I see the same dialog box but now with only 2 columns: 'In Use' and 'Available'. Why this difference?

2. The LM versioning information is very confusing. In the attached images, the ASB110 library is a 'Team' library marked v36 but linked to something with v3. Is the v3 referring to the managed folder or the team library, or something else?

3. When I search for Schurter connectors for example ('con-schurter' library), I see one version which is stored on Library.io, marked v1, and a Team library of the same name, marked v3, linked to v5 of something else (???). Am I the only one who finds this confusing? Can anyone explain the reason for this?

4. The 'con-schurter' Team library is a branch from the read-only "Library.io" one, but they are both sitting in my managed folder with the same name. I can remove the Library.io one but what is the correct procedure for merging the Team library back into the Library.io library? Do I link them? And if everyone does this, how will conflicts be handled on differences to the same device?

5. A small additional request: the 'Push' button should really be greyed out when there are no local changes to sync back to the Managed Folder, would you agree?

6. And finally, a pet niggle: from the Schematic view, when I open the LM, I see it 'fetches updates' to the libraries in use, but selecting one does not highlight the button to Update it. When I now manually update this library, I see 3 versions of the same library (see attached "F360-LibraryUpdate.png"), with no way to know which is the latest version. I see a v1 and a v6 but not the v15 which is the latest one. What a mess !

I have read the Fusion 360 documentation about Library Management, but I see no explanation of these issues, or maybe they are so by design?

Can anyone please clarify?

Thanks & regards

[mphatak68]

Just as a casual observation, it seems that library version numbers are not synced in real-time between the F360 servers and Library.io but perhaps in a batch process maybe a few times per hour?

Is that accurate?

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @mphatak68 ,

I'm going to try to address your concerns in order as best I can.

1. A library is not a design hence the In Design tab wouldn't make sense. In a schematic/PCB that tab just lets you know what libraries the components in your design come from.  So this one is by design. IOW, the in Design tab show you what libraries have been used to make your schematic and PCB. 

2. Remember that Fusion Team and Library.io are completely independent systems. So when you link a Teams library to a managed library they each maintain there independent version histories. So unless they were created at exactly the same time, their version numbers will not line up. In the picture it seems you are linked to a V5 library on library.io.

3. Remember how I mentioned the two systems are independent. It seems that at some point you created a con-schurter library on library.io using EAGLE and then you created a separate con-schurter library on Fusion Team. I highly discourage creating mulitple libraries with the same name with the introduction of library.io and Fusion Team this became possible but it's still a bad idea because visually it's still confusing for users. At this point you should check out both libraries consolidate any differences and get rid of one of them. It sounds like you didn't intentionally link to a managed library, you can break the link by opening the library in Fusion Team and then going to Manage menu to break the link.

4. If you link to a default library or library that you don't own you can always pull from it but you will never be able to push to it. So if mulitple people link to the con-schurter library they can pull in updates but they can't push changes to it. In that scenario you could pull in the library and then unlink it and continue to develop it from there. Hope that makes sense.

5. Agreed, this whole experience is being worked on to simplify it.

6. Is this the in Design tab view? Remember it will only show what's is on your design already. I recommend you select the update from library option under the library menu. When you update all libraries in design you don't get enough feedback at to what has changed, that's also part of what is being worked on.

I hope this helps clear up some of the confusion. We know this is something that needs to be improved and is one of our key goals for this year.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

[mphatak68]

Hi Jorge

Thanks for your reply.

1. Sorry but I must disagree. You say that "the in Design tab shows you what libraries have been used to make your schematic", so it follows that even if you are currently in a schematic and you open the Library Manager, you would want to see which libraries are in the current design, would you not?

2. You say that "Remember that Fusion Team and Library.io are completely independent systems". Here is the problem. They are both operated by Autodesk, are they not? If I push a Team lib to a managed folder on Library.io, they are now the same library, are they not? They are now linked, so they should have one and the same version number. If you were to unlink them, then yes of course you would be right to state they should then take on separate version numbers.

3. The con-schurter library on Library.io was created by Eagle and was read-only to me, so I had no choice but to 'Save As' a new library with a similar name, which I then promoted to a Team library. In general, if a library has been created by someone else, it appears as read-only, so how am I to make changes in it without first forking a new branch? Please let me know if there is a better way.

4. When you say that "you could pull in the library and then unlink it and continue to develop it from there", this would result in a forked branch of the original library, which is the same library but with a few changes. So, same question as above: how is the global Fusion 360 community supposed to handle minor changes to established libraries from component manufacturers which can be reused by all of us, thus avoiding reinventing the wheel?

Thanks for your additional feedback and for the hopeful words that 'things will improve'. That still leaves me in a quandary on my current project though as I grapple with a confusing and painful library management experience in Fusion 360. If anyone else disagrees with me, just let me know and I will 'put up and shut up'.

Thanks & regards

[mphatak68]

One further question and please forgive me if you have to repeat yourself:-

What is the real difference between a library that is 'In Use' and one that is 'In Design'?

I know the theory as I have read the (rather scant) definitions on the product documentation, but I still don't get it.

When you say 'In Use', what do you mean? 'In use' where? 'In use' in a design created by someone / anyone, or 'in use' in a design created by me or my team?

To me it would make more sense to have only 2 columns: 'Available' and 'In Design'. I think we do not need the 'In Use' distinction, unless I am missing something important here... (most probably the case).

Please correct my understanding if I am wrong.

[mphatak68]

One more thing (and you are probably going to hate me for this), but I need to say it:-

In the Library Manager, I get the message

"Your managed library has local changes. To upload these changes, select Push Changes on the MANAGE toolbar".

I thought I already did, but I push my changes again, just to be sure, expecting the warning to disappear. It does not. Is this a bug or a feature?

I do not mean to be facetious - I just need to understand the rationale behind Library Management in Fusion 360.

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @mphatak68 ,

I hope you're doing well. I'm going to try to unpack this a little more since I recognize it isn't really intuitive. 

1. The distinction between In Use and In Design is important. In Use defines what libraries are active and available from the ADD command. Some users find having 100's of libraries in the ADD command overwhelming and inconvenient especially if they only ever use their own libraries, so putting a library In use makes it active and available to the ADD command. 

If you obtain a design from someone else then it's likely that In Design will show libraries that you don't personally have or can obtain access to. Once a part is placed into a design it becomes independent of the library it originated from, so it's entirely possible to have libraries in the in Design tab and not have them In Use or even available to put into use.

2. Both systems are owned by Autodesk but they are built on completely infrastructure. When you link a Teams library to library.io they are NOT THE SAME LIBARY. You have a library in Teams and a library in library.io that can push and pull between them to keep them in sync.

Fusion 360 doesn't have any mechanism to share libraries with the Public, this is something that will need to be addressed and it seems like Library.io will have a role to play there. So for now, forking is going to be a very common thing with user libraries.

For the last issue you have referenced, could you take a screen shot of your Fusion Team library? I've run into something similar myself. We'll look into this.

Best Regards,

[mphatak68]

Thanks for the detailed explanation, Jorge. That really helps.

As a F360 and ex-Eagle user of some years, here are my 2 cents on your comments:-

1. In my opinion, all libraries should be active and available at all times. When we pull up the ADD command, I think we should be able to filter the search more extensively across all libraries. Right now, the ADD command search filters are quite limited. I am comparing to DigiKey.com which has the best filtered search on the market, IMHO. If that were to be the case in F360 also, it would not matter how many libraries are in the list. (Imagine Digikey applying the F360 approach to their vast database of parts). I believe that Autodesk should copy the Digikey model, not be tied to an outdated 'iPod-like' search interface. Drop-down list boxes should be a thing of the past for large distributed databases !

2. I am very sad to hear that "forking is going to be a very common thing with user libraries", at least for the time being. I think F360 needs to move to strategy based on version control systems such as Git, which would be more suitable for large distributed teams, as this describes exactly the F360 community. I believe the real power of F360 is the distributed library and Autodesk will not beat competitors like Altium until this topic is 'solution-architected' from top to bottom, rather than being built up in a stepwise approach.

3. For the last issue, I attach a PDF showing a series of screenshots which outline the basic problem I am seeing: a mismatch between the library versions across the Library Manager and the ADD parts menu item in the Schematic Editor.

Please accept these comments as constructive criticism.  I am committed to F360 and I WANT to see you succeed, but I honestly believe that Autodesk needs to bring on experienced 'user engineers' who can guide this effort so our community can succeed. Count me in if you think I can be of use in this respect.

Best regards

Manoj

[jorge_garcia · Accepted solution]

Hi @mphatak68 ,

I hope you're doing well. Thank you for your feedback and willingness to help. I've made sure this thread gets as much visibility within the team as possible. 

The library issues you highlighted in the PDF are known and are under active development. I went straight to the libs team to ask.

In regards to 1) having options is good. There are users who like having the option to disable and hide certain libraries, it's a preference and not necessarily a technical limitation. We agree that the experience needs to improve and a large part of the current development effort is focused in that area.

I would like to see 2 happen in some form, but that decision is in the hands of others. 

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

[mphatak68]

Thank you taking the time to reply to all my comments, Jorge. I look forward to seeing great improvements in F360 in the near future. Count me in for any way in which I can be of assistance.

Best Wishes

Manoj