Nothing but problems

[kschepens]

Hey guys,

Well, I'd like to start with a positive note: This new electronics integration would be great.

Having said that: Would be, because since the new version I barely have been able to do any work. It actually feels like I'm alpha testing the software. I'm not, and I actually need work done! 

So I'll list a few of the problems I'm having now:

1. Constant crashing. 

Whether it's switching from board to schematic, or simply editing a package, at random times Fusion 360 will just crash. I get the opportunity to enter what went wrong and send a report. If anyone is reading any of my reports: sorry for my language: I was very frustrated 😉

2. Error messages/warnings

This happens often and it happens at seemingly random times (I know there's no such thing). They all have in common that they provide very little information about what went wrong. Just now I got this: 

"Warning: The PCB document isn't working in an electronics design."

If I understand this correctly, this means that the board (is that a PCB document?) I'm working on is no longer a part of (in?) an electronics design. Well, it was just before. I even opened it via the electronics design and I see no reason for it to not be "in" it anymore (I hope just closing the Electronics design did not cause this). Is this really a problem? No solution provided here. Also, clicking more info just gives me the exact same error message in a different view.

I feel I get loads of warnings and error messages, even when I didn't change anything. I didn't write them all down but I'm now trying to keep a list.

3. Constant warnings of board inconsistencies

This already happened in Eagle but it seems it now is not only more frequent but also harder to solve.

4. Versions, versions, versions

Every change I do increases the version number. Not only that, but if I change something in, say, my library, I have to save the change (for instance a package, V++), save the library (V++) and then also all documents that depend on this library (V++). That means that all document a one-up on their version number and I have to type in the change comment for every one of them. This seems a bit unnecessary.

5. Changes in library are not always visible (more often not)

This is for me a hard one to describe. I have no clue what's going on here. It seems that I first need to upload my existing Eagle library to the cloud and then replace all components to use the new library.

When that's done, I want to add a 3D package to the library. I can't really figure out what's going on there. A change in the library forces me to save my electronic document (board, schematic), yet the library version number of the components lags behind (My library is now at V9, yet in my board and schematics, some are still at V4 with no option to update that). Now, when I want to see the new 3D packages in the 3D board, I click "View 3D PCB" (with or without canvas, result is the same). I would expect my 3D packages to show up but for some reason they sometimes do and sometimes don't (they more often don't). I still haven't figured out what I'm doing wrong but in my opinion this is a flaw in the workflow (this should be easy). 

6. Sluggishness

Although the last update has helped a bit, the software stays sluggish. Especially the electronics part. I never had any performance issues in Eagle or Fusion 360 when they were separated but now I often have to wait minutes before something loads (and then often it crashes).

So, all in all, I'm not a happy customer. This whole endeavour has been very unsatisfactory and I'm mostly frustrated that I have already have a whole week of unproductiveness. 

I hope that in newer updates these issues will be addressed or that maybe someone here could give me some pointers as to how to fix or avoid them. 

Sorry if I come off a bit negative but I hope this can help the Fusion 360 team to get some user insights too. 

[matt.berggren]

Thanks for your post. Did you see my post from last night regarding this? Would have been around 1:15am PST US. I had been pretty open about our planning and our efforts thus far. If you read that and still have questions, definitely let’s discuss! Not to be evasive, just making sure you had a read of that!

Best regards,

Matt Berggren
Autodesk

[engineeringNCMXB]

I did indeed read that, thank you. My takeaway was that you presented nebulous and dreamy thoughts - not any real information that I can plan my business on. While I appreciate hopes and dreams - the business world functions on hard data.

When I am designing a new product - we all look for sole source failures when we choose components. The manufacturers deliver EOL and support dates that we can actually plan on. Linear Technologies (now AD), makes a lot of specialty devices and we need to know that they will be in normal production for x years.

So - what I am looking for is something that is truly unambiguous. If it takes more than 2-3 sentences - you are being ambiguous.
I have already seen that changes in Fusion have a dramatic negative impact on an Eagle project. Perhaps you have seen much of my writing about how the established workflow of designing PCB outlines in Fusion is broken. There is a convoluted workaround that took be a very long time over a weekend to sort out because I have a new project starting next week. You destroyed my weekend and shattered my confidence all at once.

How long will the managed libraries work?
Will Eagle get any real feature updates or just simple maintenance?
if so - EXACTLY how long will active development last for Desktop Eagle?
Will the existing workflow be preserved (every button, ULP, SCR, CAM post, etc) as Fusion makes its way to usable maturity?
Will I come to my desk in a month only to find some critical feature is broken or abandoned to the point that leaves our team stuck in the mud?

It is painful to be nervous about the path and intentions of the software vendor that is literally the functional heart of your business.

[engineeringNCMXB]

---

@engineeringNCMXB wrote:

@matt.berggren 
A: What is the LTS / EOL plan for Eagle? (Silence is the equivalent of saying we will cancel Eagle ASAP and without notice - suck it professional users)

B: When can you revert back to the previously working 'Create PCB' from sketch that allows me to push/pull PCB's between Fusion/Eagle? Just preserve the previous functionality while your team is experimenting with whatever the long term integration will be. (Again - silence is the equivalent of saying suck it professional users we do what we want!)

---

Silence?

[jorge_garcia · Accepted solution]

Hello Carlos,

I hope you're doing well. The phrase "the business world functions on hard data" is not lost on a company that produces the tools for millions of designers and engineers world wide. Direct answers to your questions:

A) There is currently no plan. Fusion Electronics has not reached parity with EAGLE and won't for some time. We have to gather user feedback and see how things develop from there. If/when something were to change in this regard it would be announced with enough time for users to make plans. We released a new tool, we didn't kill anything. Releasing Fusion Electronics doesn't warrant any type of EOL notice right now.

B) Working on it, this was an unforseen break in functionality and the team is working to get it resolved. The workaround in the mean time is to make the PCB in Fusion360 and then export that PCB as an EAGLE board file.

Hope this helps.

Best Regards,

[engineeringNCMXB]

---

@jorge_garcia wrote:
Hello Carlos,

I hope you're doing well. The phrase "the business world functions on hard data" is not lost on a company that produces the tools for millions of designers and engineers world wide. Direct answers to your questions:

A) There is currently no plan. Fusion Electronics has not reached parity with EAGLE and won't for some time. We have to gather user feedback and see how things develop from there. If/when something were to change in this regard it would be announced with enough time for users to make plans. We released a new tool, we didn't kill anything. Releasing Fusion Electronics doesn't warrant any type of EOL notice right now.

B) Working on it, this was an unforseen break in functionality and the team is working to get it resolved. The workaround in the mean time is to make the PCB in Fusion360 and then export that PCB as an EAGLE board file.

Hope this helps.

Indeed, this does help. Thank you @jorge_garcia 

"Releasing Fusion Electronics doesn't warrant any type of EOL notice right now."
You can do what you want, but I will say that as an end-user that has critical business on the line - it looks like the ship is looking for a new destination. All of a sudden my workflow is broken after a forced, automated update. Consider it a professional courtesy to let us all know what your intentions are. after dropping a massive new concept along with unintended bugs. In the absence of clear and direct communication - we are all left to guess and wonder what is going to happen.

B) So the 'CREATE PCB' functionality in Fusion is coming back along with the established push/pull between Fusion/Eagle?

This is among the most powerful feature introduction for Eagle ever. I rough-in the mechanical systems along with PCB's, connectors, buttons, etc. Then push the PCB's to Eagle, start laying them out. At that point, I ping-pong back and forth as I work through the ideal arrangement of the mechanics vs the electronics. It is a fast and accurate way to work.

Now, you are saying that I can only export Fusion to Eagle, but not bi-directional?

[jorge_garcia · Accepted solution]

Hi @engineeringNCMXB,

B) The Create PCB functionality is Fusion never left it still there. The problem is that the PCB created in Fusion now contains a lot more data and EAGLE doesn't know what to do with it, hence the link to an existing design functionality doesn't work right now. If you start in EAGLE and then push to fusion the back and forth works just fine. The problem occurs when you start in Fusion and then try to pull into EAGLE. That's the workflow that's currently broken and that we want to fix ASAP.

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

Best Regards,

[engineeringNCMXB]

---

@jorge_garcia wrote:
The problem occurs when you start in Fusion and then try to pull into EAGLE. That's the workflow that's currently broken and that we want to fix ASAP.

---

Excellent - thank you for the clarification. I look forward to the fix.

As a side note: While it likely appears that I am an angry curmudgeon, I am actually VERY excited to see Fusion Electronics develop and mature. It took some time for me to come to terms with the new release being something that looks like a trade show prototype. It seems like it should be heavily badged as 'Preview' or 'Beta'. When the create PCB functionality stopped working, I was quite nervous that FE was being fast tracked at us without being able to fall back on the standalone Eagle.

If nothing else - you can see how nervous users of auto-forced-update, subscription based software can be. Just one ooopsy and we have a broken workflow that consumes a weekend, spikes stress, forces a work-around, then a wait for a fix at some undermined time.

[kschepens]

Another update on my side: looks like the constant crashing is solved by buying a Windows computer. I was working on a MacBook (mid 2012, 2,3 GHz Intel Core i7, 8GB RAM, 1 GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M) and Fusion 360 Electronics crashed often.

Now I bought a desktop PC (AMD Ryzen 5 2600x, 16GB, Some fancy AMD graphics card) and up until now I've had no crashes yet.

So either my MacBook was too slow (however I've never had any problems before the Electronics integration) or Fusion 360 Electronics was only properly tested on Windows.

[Solar-emc]

I'm so disappointed, I can't in good faith recommend Fusion's new ECAD to my company as a workflow.

[Antony_l_hart]

Same problem. Since the library used in the schematic is produced from eagle (.lbr), and then once brought into Fusion becomes .flbr. This means that any changes to the devices cannot save to the original .lbr and only save in the new .flbr. I have found that changes to footprints in the layout tool do not back annotate to the schematic because of this library type issue. Therefore, leaving us with 2, maybe more options. Replace every device with the devices from the new .flbr library, (lots of fun, thanks for this Autodesk, it's not like we're paying for this or anything) or... do not create a copy of the library, open eagle and do all component related changes in there. The fix I believe is needed is this... do not duplicate libraries!! Fusion should simply share .lbr access the same as eagle. Absolute rubbish. 

[p.holecek]

So .. i just opened the board, did move some components around and just about 30secs from fresh start, fusion crashed. This is my experience with trying to design PCB in fusion for last month or so. I've already lost about 100h of work because of stability issues.

LONG STORY SHORT: Dont use fusion360 to design a PCB if you wanna remain mentally healthy!

PS: About my language in crash reports? Devs deserve to know, that they messed up!

[32loyal]

stick with the standalone eagle program its somewhat better then the embedded eagle fusion version,i can relate to you i rebuilt a enclosure about 4 times in fusion the project would just be erased automatically without errors. always save locally using the export command or use a different program.

[devin_perryQRU9Z]

I have AKLL the Procore certs and years of experience.

I also am proficient in:

Oracle Primavera

Arym RMS System

BuilderTrend

Foundations

QuickBooks

LibreCAD

Bluebeam and much much more.

I have been on computers for over 2 and a half decades and run over a quarter billion in jobs on whatever software was required.

In conjunction with a terrible product--if you want any real help with cost codes and budget set up it's going to cost you $250 an hour!!!!!

Procore is sooooo much better.

**** do I miss state and federal contracting.

Guess I got my GC license and Army Corp of Engineers certifications for NOTHING!

Been trying to import budget cost codes and EVEN CUT AND PASTE THEIR OWN TEMPLATE AND IMPORTED AND GOT ERROR CODES!!!!

Their BASIS OF DESIGN is not even compatible.

Absolute JOKE.

[alpierce]

I was using an older iMac that could not be updated to macOS 14 (Sonoma). I too was plagued with crashing and freezing. I upgraded to a new Mac Studio M2 Max and the difference is amazing. I still get an occasional crash, but much less frequently than before, on the order of once or twice a week instead of several times per day. There is no substitute for new hardware when it comes to intensive software like CAD.