part number issues

[tylercarroll10]

https://a360.co/4eFEyvp

https://a360.co/4eJ1t9t 

Basic summary is that fusions already barbaric workflow for adding dimensions to parts list has now been doubled or tripled with the addition of the part number feature.  Getting dimensions to appear in the parts list of a drawing requires extensive manual entry and can lead to potentially huge errors for a small over sight such as forgetting to manually update the description of a part which has had it's dimensions changed.  This work flow is just silly to begin with,  but now in addition to opening the properties of every single component for adding dimensions you also have to "remove from shared part number".  I thoroughly do not understand fusions goal here, a task which I would describe as bare minimum, fundamental to any CAD software is the ability to create the model, then the drawings, then a parts list, this should be straightforward, easy, and at this point automatic yet it is the exact opposite.  It requires huge amounts of time consuming, annoying, and repetitive work all of which can be wasted if the drawings get changed or updated after the fact - now new features are coming in which make this  terrible workflow even more cumbersome - someone from fusion please ELIF what the purpose of this is and why it hasn't been fixed yet?

[aleksei_ovsienko]

We have currently solved this for us by simply moving the BOM creation, properties, etc. out of Fusion entirely. In all honesty - this is the Autodesks own approach. All these properties you see in the model are not real properties. Only Part Number and Description are. The rest of them don't have anything to do with local Fusion but only live in the cloud. Where you can't even access them by API without buying their API suite. So I thought what they hell, I'll just do the same. And now my models properties, tailored to our processes, live on our own cloud PLM/ERP. But I can change them in Fusion with the tool I vibe coded. So I can now render the BOM however I like it. Every business will have its own workflows and processes. I've come to realize that this isn't Soviet Union anymore, I don't have to rigidly follow documentation standards barely updated since the 50s. I am free to adjust.

The big problem however is that Fusion Drawing is inadequate and can not be easily made to use anything that's not native to Fusion. You can't even run add-ins from Drawings. If only we had proper API access we would have solved this issue easily. Right now if I want to pass properties into a BOM table on drawing I need to use whatever little there's available in Fusion itself, which is frustrating.

Actually you know what. The way Fusion Drawings work there's probably nothing stopping anyone from developing their own Drawing application totally external to Fusion that would beat Fusion Drawings. Because that's what Fusion Drawings are - it's an external application that just uses the model to create views. That's why it always looses references upon model update. It's not built into the CAD architecture, not follows from the modelling. It's the slightly souped up version of manually exporting  an STP into AutoCad.

So in theory it could be possible for an independent team to just made a better Drawing solution for Fusion. Maybe even as an add-in. I'm not sure I can vibe code it myself. But who knows.

[pkomatlapalli]

Hi @tylercarroll10 ,

Just checking in did aleksei_ovsienko's suggestion answer your question? If it helped resolve the issue, please consider marking it as the Accepted Solution so others with the same question can find it more easily. If you still need help feel free to share more details about your setup and workflow, and the community will be happy to assist.