Our Path Forward

[edwin.robledo]

Hi,

Thank you all for you continued participation in the Fusion 360 electronics forum. Your comments, ideas, and suggestion are of great value to us.  

Many of you have noticed that most of our development team's energy has been focused on expanding the capabilities of Fusion 360 to include electronics, officially released on February 2020 at DesignCon 2020 exposition. Fusion 360 natively has many of the features you have requested. Our goal is to create a seamless experience that unlocks new product development opportunities for advanced innovation. This strategic move will provide unparalleled user efficiency, empowering you with the cutting-edge technology needed to succeed in today's competitive market.

Today we officially announce our 3-year plan moving forward with Autodesk EAGLE. Please follow this link to a blog for more information and visit our knowledge page to access our Frequently Ask Question document.

Best Regards,

Edwin

[chrismasto]

This is unfortunate for those of us who are hobby users who came in through converting an EAGLE license and could justify the $100/year for Fusion 360 with EAGLE Standard, but for whom the commercial pricing is completely unreasonable.

I knew I would eventually be forced off this platform, and I guess the bright side is that the sooner I move, the fewer additional files I create that will be stuck in this format.

[ImDaveM]

HI Ed, quote "Today we officially announce our 3-year plan "?

Ok, so i followed the links but could not see any 3 year plan?

Can you please advise?

Thanks

Dave M

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @ImDaveM 

The three year plan that Ed is referring to, is the announcement that EAGLE will be EOL in June 7,2026. That's what the links talk about.

I figure you are asking specifically about a plan for Fusion 360 itself?

Best Regards,

[ImDaveM]

YEs, i sounded like to me that it was announcing a 3 YEAR ROADMAP.

Which I would love to see.

There are many feature requests that I and other have asked for and we still have no idea if or when we will get them.

eg..

1) LIVE Bill Of Materials ( for both Electronics and Mcad)

2) Panalization

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @ImDaveM,

I hope you're doing well. Thank your for your feedback, I've reported your request for a public roadmap.

In the meantime, I can tell you that 1 is being actively worked on.

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

Best Regards,

[ImDaveM]

Thanks for the reply, Jorge!

Cannot wait for the Pulic roadmap.

Also, I also am excited by the LIVE BOM being worked on. But how can we provide user feedback suggestions for this feature? how far down the track are you on this feature?

My idea for a LIVE BOM feature is:

1) one simple click on a button in the toolbar ( or anywhere) display a window, of a BOM list of the current selected assembly or subassembly

2) The window is customisable with user definable columns, sorting , filters and user defined additional fields, etc

3) That images of components will be an option for display in this window ( turn on or off )

4) That we can directly edit without any slowness the part number , description, browser name, and any other attribute with spreadsheet like speed.

5) that we can "LINK" or "EXPORT" the bom to external apps, like inventory, accounting etc.

6) that this window can be placed as a tab inside the current workspace, OR better, tear off and place anywhere including external displays.

7) That this live bom, treats electronic components no different to mechanical, but of course the electronics components will have fields for desitanor, values, or any other attribute.

Thanks

[pblase]

I second the motion for a roadmap. 

Given that Autodesk is merging everything into one package, there are a couple of things that I see as necessary for the software to be truly useful:

• Enable designers to create modular blocks that are associated. I might have a box with a chassis and two circuit cards. Fusion 360 enables me to design each of the three, but there's no good way to associate them, especially the schematics for the circuit cards. When I design a system, I might move things back and forth between two PCB's depending on things like available area and volume, and have common elements for both PCB's, like mounting holes where if I change it once it changes everywhere. Most importantly, I might need a BOM for the entire system, I might need a BOM for only one board. 
• The entire mechanism for working with attributes needs work. If I have 10 otherwise identical bypass capacitors on a board, I should need to only change one to change all of them. I should also be able to generate reports based purely on the attributes. I suppose that I can dump a BOM, but really a BOM should contain only the information necessary to order the parts, not every attribute. 
• I'm sorry to say, ULP scripts don't do the job - this is the 21st century and we don't use command-line interfaces any more. If a ULP script is absolutely necessary than the full documentation needs to be on the platform (not on your website) available at a button press. I mean FULL documentation, as in I can write a perfectly functional script with no other knowledge or documentation.