Teaching FE at 25+ PCs at the same time: doable in practice?

[hanakp_BUT]

Hello, I've noticed some users here mentioned they teach Fusion. I've been teaching desktop Eagle for the last 12 years and now I'm at crossroads. I'm already preparing to switch to Kicad, but it's overally much more hostile CAD than Eagle, particularly for newbies (i.e. students who have no idea what "SO8 package" means). So I'm looking into possibility of teaching Fusion Electronics instead. I asked around at our faculty of mechanical engineering but they dissuaded me from trying, even when they do only small-scale Fusion mechanical workshops. The issues fall into several categories, most of them caused by the fact FE is a cloud-based software now:

1. I teach in a classroom with 25+students. How will Autodesk servers handle such load? Won't FE slow down to a crawl? It's much faster than last year, but I've never tested in with so many PCs at once.

2. Officially, FE uses the one-user-one-license scheme. How often you have problems with student logins (lost, forgotten, etc.). In other words, how much time you lose every class with such problems? Do every student really have to get their Autodesk account and FE license? Or is there a way to pre-activate all 25+ PCs at the start of the semester? If so, how hard is it to obtain such multi-license from Autodesk?

3A. The PCs in our classroom have locked user profiles, it's called "mandatory profile" in Windows 10. In essence, students can't write to drive C:\ and all changes get deleted upon next reboot. (This scheme is absolutely essential to keep the PCs in working order throughout the entire semester.) Have you tried that? Will FE even run properly under such cirmcustances?

3B: What will happen when FE wants to do an update mid-semester, when the PCs are locked? Can we defer the update somehow? Or I'd have to ask our IT department to unlock all PCs, install the update and re-lock them? (Yeah, I can already see they would be overflowing with joy they have to do that...)

4. FE has a bloated GUI which takes up lots of space. That's a big problem on overhead video/data projectors, because they have limited resolution. Have you found some workaround for this? (Simply replacing the projector is not as easy as you might think. There are 60+ of them in "my" building alone, and you can't have a hodge-podge of many different types, because it brings maintenance headaches. Plus, you have to buy expensive types that can take the everyday load, not some cheap toy for your living room.)

Thanks!

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @hanakp_BUT,

I hope you're doing well. I'm getting in touch with the educational team so that they can give you the official answer, from what I know there are educators that teach Fusion at university. I'll defer to them.

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

Best Regards,

[jorge_garcia · Accepted solution]

Hi @hanakp_BUT,

I hope you're doing well. Here are some answers from the AEX team.

2: Fusion 360 requires a named user subscription to access it. It can’t be pre-activated like most of our other products. I suggest generating an Educator subscription to obtain 250 Fusion subscription seats. This will allow you to assign Fusion seats to your students instead of having to complete the education verification process themselves.

3B: Our Fusion Lab Install option allows IT Admin to manage when updates are implemented. After selecting the Educator subscription and submitting your profile information, the Lab installation link and instructions will be provided on the next page.