Why am I so lost in F360 Electronics?

[engineeringNCMXB]

Coming from 7 years of Eagle.
3 years of Fusion360 CAD and CAM.
Individually, I am a high-level user.

Fusion360 Electronics is a bizarre mess of madness each time I try. Where do I even start? The libraries sort of work, many just have a cryptic error message that they cannot be downloaded - there is a research project.

Trying to move a group of objects has had me chasing my tail for a while.

Trying to move a new component into a specific library.

All the usual stuff. The last time I tried F360 Electronics, the bugs were so severe that I bailed out fairly quick. Now it seems the bugs are under control but it feels like I just entered a parallel universe and have to start over from scratch.

If I give this a day or two, will it  pass and start to make sense? At the moment, I feel like switching careers may be a simpler option than migrating from Eagle to Fusion360 electronics.

Perhaps there is a 'transition' video or tutorial that shows a side-by-side functional equivalent?

[witawat57]

why Autodesk not new update eagle, fusion 360 not good for pcb design !

path not have c:/fusion360, but c:/???/??? for config gerber or any config

[ImDaveM]

Yep!

I am have a Horror of a time as well, I to have used eagle for 13 year! and Fusion 360 for nearly 3 years. I am a one-man band  business. (individual)

I can see what fusion is trying to do and where they are headed and that's what i look forward to

, and there will be and are some benefits to what they have implemented, but there are some key pitfalls in implementing.

1) FUSION TEAM

2) LIBRARIES

3) CONTENT MANAGER

4) ELECTRONICS PROJECTS FILE

5) 3D MODEL PLACEMENT - 

6) DATA PANEL - FILE ORGANISATION For Electronics documents

7) BOM & PARTS Management

These all need a RE-THINK, I have a ton of ideas i have thought of in the past Week of hell that i have experienced, I a want to arrange an online meeting with one of the electronics managers to discuss my experiences and feedback.

thanks

Dave M

[engineeringNCMXB]

The heart of any ECAD system is the library. For Eagle and now F360 Electronics - it is by far the weakest element of the whole system. Perhaps it can be patched with some band-aids but honestly I cannot see anything other than to total clean sheet do-over of the entire library concept/implementation.

I don't see that happening, therefore expecting more lip stick to be applied to the pig. There are plenty of suggestions that could make F360 Electronics better, but the current library / part creation system is a complete deal killer for me and my company. Eagle was fiddly and bizarre, but I lerned the workarounds and got stuff done. No so sure F360 has enough workarounds and I am far too frustrated to learn a terrible system.

Does anyone actually use this for real work?

[ImDaveM]

QUOTE "Does anyone actually use this for real work?"

I'm Trying!

The only thing we can do is pressure Autodesk with BUG Reporting, FEATURE REQUESTs and Actual bad experiences.

[RichardHammerl]

Hi @engineeringNCMXB ,

thank you for your participation in the Fusion Electronics forum. I am sorry to hear that you are struggling with Fusion Electronics in some areas. 

Maybe I can give you a helping hand in some of the problems you mentioned? Recently I started a series of short videos that might help you in starting with Fusion Electronics especially coming from EAGLE. 
Please check follow this link my youtube playlist. 

There are some more topics explained here: Fusion Electronics Dive In

I hope this helps for a quick start into Fusion Electronics.

Best regards,

[RichardHammerl]

Hi @engineeringNCMXB 

well, I am not a developer, but be assured that our dev guys, the product management and other Autodesk people (like me as a community guy) listen to you and take your replies, demands and complaints serious.

I fully agree that libraries are the backbone of an ECAD system. As an EAGLE user you know its library management. It's not so bad as soon as you understood it, but it could be far more user-friendly and efficient. No doubt!  It never came to a real restructure and improvement in EAGLE, and this not yet happened in Fusion, but we are working on this.

You know EAGLE and you know Fusion. So you know with Fusion Electronics and EAGLE two totally different worlds clashed. We had to make a trade-off. For me as a 20+ years EAGLE guy, I found it well thought. And believe me, I was super sceptical when the integration started.

Meanwhile I learned a lot more about Fusion and I would love to see more of the capabilities and typical Fusion workflows in Electronics. I know that our dev team is working on this and they are pushing hard... but good solutions need its time.

In the meantime I try to help, for example, with some videos on my youtube channel. If there are topics you would like to see explained, tell me. I will check the list of topics in @ImDaveM s post above. New videos to be made... 😀

Have a great day!

[witawat57]

why eagle now new update long time ?

same function in fusion 360 can't put in eagle ?

if not good in fusion 360, i think need update new version eagle

[benjamin.jordan]

I will echo @RichardHammerl's statements - While there are some helpful videos, and we want to create more and more of them, we also recognize we need to improve the library workflow first and foremost. It's the number one point of confusion for all new Fusion Electronics users. To Richard's point, yes we had to make some compromises to get it all into Fusion and working. But, we are also working to develop much clearer, more intuitive workflows. 

Many of the problems existing EAGLE users have is due to the fact that you already have years of existing library work which needs to be moved into Fusion, but where do you move it? Library.io is one possibility, the other is your Fusion cloud storage, and you could still have some libraries local. Unfortunately the cleanest way is not always practical since you probably want to keep EAGLE running side-by-side with Fusion until you are comfortable to transition, but maintaining your libraries can then be quite a pain, across two CAD systems. 

I recommend meanwhile you maintain your library in Library.io as EAGLE and Fusion will be able to use it - as best you can, keep a single source of truth and then when you commit to using Fusion (it's getting better every release, so I have no doubt that in the long run you will want to use it more than EAGLE), then at that time, migrate all your libraries and just use Fusion.

We recognise, there's a lot to do, and we are pushing hard to build the platform changes we need to make this the best experience possible, whether you're a long time EAGLE user or someone brand new.

Thanks for the candid feedback, this is exceptionally helpful to me as the ECAD product manager for Autodesk.

Please, keep it coming. 

And @engineeringNCMXB and @ImDaveM please feel free to reach out to me directly if you wanted to take the time to walk me through your frustrations in a zoom call - I would absolutely appreciate that. My email is benjamin.jordan@ the company I work for dot com.

[engineeringNCMXB]

@benjamin.jordan 

@RichardHammerl 

Thank you for taking a moment to engage this conversation.

At the moment - my biggest concern is that in the process of taking another lap around F360 Electronics - this time one of my most prized and used libraries has emptied itself out and I have not idea how to get it back to a previous version. I don't know what I did, but I can tell you what I was trying to do....

I downloaded a new part from SnapEDA and imported it into F360. That went well. When I tried to move it into an existing folder, that is where I am guessing things went bad. However, some number of hours went by brofore I even noticed something was wrong when I found the problem in Eagle.

In another thread @HelenChen-ElectronicsQA asked for some clarification on a different topic. I opened Eagle to get frame grabs and it flagged my library as needing an update. I watched everything (except for the part that I recently imported) dissapear.

My initial response was to find the equivielent of 'undo' or 'revert to previous version'. I have not found that. Until I get that library back in it previous form.....I am busted. In the days of local libraries, I would have everything backed up 6 different ways, but I cannot do that with managed libraries, library.io, or Fusion360 libraries.


After I get my cloud data back - I can address other things. For now my sole concern is getting back to where I was.
I can no longer experiement with F360 Electronics unless I have an isloated account with sample data that has no possibility of damaging something I rely on to make a living.

Any suggestions on how to revert to a previous version of a library?

[jorge_garcia]

@engineeringNCMXB,

I hope this message finds you well. I'm going to send you a DM with my e-mail. Reach out to me and I can setup a Zoom and we can work this out. I feel confident that we can get that library back and that you haven't lost any data.

Best Regards,

[engineeringNCMXB]

Thank you @jorge_garcia , I figured there would at least be an internal option to recover the library.

I will contact you now.

[ImDaveM]

Hi Richard,

I have already Subscribed to your Youtube Channel just a few days ago (when i was looking for answers to my recent nightmares!) , You videos are EXCELLENT - probably the best explanations of some of the new Fusion Electronics features so far!

Please make millions of more videos!

Thanks

Dave M

[engineeringNCMXB]

@ImDaveM 
Thank you....once I get some footing in F360 Electronics I can make more videos. Once I saw that Eagle's days were limited, I stopped making the videos.


I had a very productive conversation with @jorge_garcia this morning that was largely focused on recovering data that I have effectively deleted in the process of trying to understand the current library system.

Once the data was recovered, we were able to cover some territory on some of the challenges many of us are facing. That will help me get some video content together which will hopefully help others as well.

[ImDaveM]

Hi Carlos,

I think you got me confused , this thanks was for Richard Hammer's Video Channel "Proton-Electron".

But, Your channel and Videos are Excellent too, I subscribed ages ago, but you stopped making videos!

I am glad you will soon make some more videos, I look forward to them!

[engineeringNCMXB]

@ImDaveMLol!
Copy that. Rapid fire posting and I didn't' catch that. 😂

[engineeringNCMXB]

After some additional 'rehearsals' I think I have figured out one of the biggest sources of pain in Fusion - the library.

I should make a video of this before I forget everything I just learned. I drove a test project through a number of scenarios to make sure that I was setup for success. The short story version of Fusion libraries is this:

1. The library system is not intuitive, especially in the context of migrating from Eagle.
2. Making a mistake in the library system creates problems that you will not discover for a while.
3. Fixing mistakes in the library system is tricky and time consuming.
4. Most of the time, there is a way to do something but you need to be an eleite hacker to figure it out.

Does anyone want to see a video on this? A video from the practical perspective of a professional end-user that has personally stepped in most of the traps?

[ImDaveM]

Yes Do it!

Dave M

[AutomaticRock]

Yes, please make this video!

I agree the library is very complicated. I come from another software then Eagle and I find it really complex. Even simple things like move a part to your own library seems to involve >10 steps instead of just 1 like most other software.

Best regards,

Benno

[Anonymous]

This is fairly easy to understand. Basicaly Autodesk 360 Electronics is in alpha stage and we are all alpha testers.

I'm also working on eagle for 4 years and Fusion 360 3 years and Autodesk 360 Electronics is one of the most enigmatic and buggy pieces of software I've ever tried.

I hope that nobody is trying to use  Autodesk 360 Electronics in any real project and that Autodesk level their game