Alternative to Fusion 360... That doesn't require internet

[me]

We are full-time in our RV and we're getting a boat very soon, so we are often without internet. If I open Fusion 360 while I have a GOOD internet connection, I can use Fusion 360 offline, but if I need to restart Fusion 360 and don't have a connection - it's game over. 

Are there any other Autodesk applications that do what Fusion 360 does, but don't require internet? Maybe Inventor? 

I use Fusion 360 for creating parts of the 3D pinter and our CNC machine - just stuff for the RV (and soon boat).

[pawel.potyrala]

Hello @me,

welcome to Fusion 360 Community Forum! Thanks for posting.

While Autodesk Inventor might be a good alternative to some features of Fusion 360 (you can download the test version here to check if the features you need for are provided), you can actually restart Fusion 360 without an internet connection. To do that, Fusion 360 needs to be manually toggled into the offline mode before closing. Here are the steps:

1. Launch Fusion 360
2. Go to "Job status" in the top right corner of the user interface (clock icon)
3. Switch to "Working offline"

You should be able to see the Job Status presented to the right in the image below:

Working offline

Make sure to read our help article on Working in the offline mode to know its limitations.

Please accept as solution if my post fully solves your issue, or reply with additional details if the problem persists.

Best regards,

[Anonymous]

This problem is not being understood and it has been going on for over a year now.

If you are not connected to the internet Fusion360 can take up to 20 minutes to load.

It does not matter whether you were online 2 minutes earlier and then took the program offline, or if you were working offline and closed the program then tried to load it again while offline.

If you close it, the program will take 15+/- minutes to load offline.

If people are prepared to wait they can still use the program but most give up and force close it after 5 minutes.

[pawel.potyrala]

Hello @Anonymous,

thank you for the feedback!

After toggling back from offline to online mode, Fusion 360, it might take some time to load the files stored in the local cache to the cloud. I tested launching in offline mode (the way I described above in the reply to @me's post) and did not reproduce this behavior - I am wondering what it might be caused by. Would you be able to reproduce it and send the diagnostic log files? I would like to submit them for further investigation to our developers? We'd appreciate it!

@me, I was wondering if you were experiencing the same issue that @Anonymous has?

Thanks in advance!

Best regards,

[Anonymous]

Hi Pawel,

I can recreate it on 3 machines at will, 2 Windows Pro and one Windows Home, if I am offline it will take longer than 6 minutes for the program to start.

The bad updates of December 2016 are what caused this issue, it never happened before those updates and it has happened ever since those updates.

I have attached the log files of the most recent program start up which was a good one at 6 minutes and 35 seconds.

[pawel.potyrala]

Hello @Anonymous,

thanks a lot for the log files! I will forward them to the development.

I understand that this also happens when you toggle to offline mode before restarting Fusion 360 (as suggested above)?

Thanks!

Best regards,

[Anonymous]

No Pawel,

it happens all the time and it has stopped me using Fusion 360.

[pawel.potyrala]

Hello @Anonymous,

thanks! We had a look at your log files. The long loading time would be an expected behavior when Fusion is started in online mode, but there is no internet.

As to my previous question - I wanted to know if this also happens when you manually switch to offline mode before restarting Fusion 360 (see my first reply to the original post). Could you test the following:

1. Open Fusion 360
2. Manually toggle to offline mode - see this article
3. Restart Fusion 360.

Let me know if Fusion 360 takes this long to load in this scenario. Thanks a lot!

Best regards,

[Anonymous]

Hi Pawel,

as I said in my last posting, it happens all the time, I have tried every combination and nothing makes any difference.

I will see load times anywhere between 6 and 20 minutes.

This has been going on for over a year now and Autodesk support is still asking the same questions, I gave them the answer over a year ago.

The program was destroyed by the December 2016 updates and that is what has caused my issue and many other issues.

Before those updates it never happened and since that update it has never stopped happening.

I do have to add that the program does occasionally start up in less than 2 minutes but that’s worthless because it happens now and again.

I’m back on my 10 year old £300 cad system for solid modelling/tech drawing and Blender for all rendering.

[pawel.potyrala]

Hello @Anonymous,

thank you for the reply and for your feedback! I introduced our development team to this behavior and submitted your log files for further investigation. I might reach out to you for additional information that would allow us to reproduce it. Thanks once again for bringing our attention to that!

Best regards,

[Anonymous]

Hi Pawel,

sorry to piggy back another issue on to this thread but I was hoping you would pass on the attached file as well please?

I submitted this bug around 3 months ago and nothing has been done about it, start a sketch on the top angled face of the block and you will see the program forget where the front of the part is supposed to be!

This is a serious bug that kills workflow stone dead.

I will keep on updating the program now and again and will keep my fingers crossed that one update will bring back the old Fusion 360 pre December 2016 disastrous updates.

Thanks for your help.

[HughesTooling]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

I will keep on updating the program now and again and will keep my fingers crossed that one update will bring back the old Fusion 360 pre December 2016 disastrous updates.

Thanks for your help.

---

I know you are frustrated with this but what you're seeing is not normal, the December 2016 update made no difference to how fast Fusion starts on any of my PCs, online or offline.

I did notice a problem with Fusion's auto update and restart when I first used Fusion back in 2014, I found letting Fusion restart itself corrupted the update 25% of the time requiring a clean uninstall to fix. I've seen the same with other programs that restart themselves after an update and think it's down to restarting before the update has completed, maybe a DLL didn't unload or writes to the registry hadn't finished. Once it's all gone south only a complete uninstall fixes the problem, I've even heard of people needing to reinstall windows to fix the registry, not with Fusion but another program.

What I've done for the last few years is when Fusion tells me there's an update I close it myself, wait a couple of minutes then run and not had a problem since. This might not be your problem but thought I'd pass on what I've found.

Mark

[Anonymous]

Hi Mark,

thanks for your input; you not seeing problems on your systems is an indicator of what the December 2016 updates did.

I say this because before those updates I had seen many postings on the forum about this issue, I even responded a number of times with replies such as yours, “I run the program on two Windows machines and I have never seen this issue”.

It is as if the program was fixed for one group of people and those fixes gave people like myself the issue.

As for trying different things, I have tried them all because I loved Fusion 360, I remember you being around during the time of those updates. I am not sure if you can remember them but the biggest issue for most was they broke the move tool and numerous other things. They then rushed out 3 or 4 updates and nothing has ever been the same.

I have now tried to run the program on 3 completely new machines and the behaviour is the same on all 3.

I believe this is not the only issue those updates have caused; the program is unstable and has been ever since those updates. This can be seen by all the good engineers who no longer frequent this forum and by all the issues reported every day.

I am not sure if you have downloaded the file I attached above but for a modelling system that has had tens of millions of dollars spent on it to do that, is ridicules.

If a projects foundation is weak the whole project will either collapse or give you hell until you collapse. I believe that to be the case with Fusion 360, December 2016 updates destroyed the stability of Fusion 360.

To check if you can reproduce my problem you would have to stay offline for a couple of days, I am not sure if you work offline to that extent?

[Anonymous]

[HughesTooling]

@Anonymous How long since you were online with Fusion last? I just tested unplugging my router and starting Fusion and it started fine. Think you need to connect every 15 days.

Mark

[Anonymous]

Ben fusion 360 a giremiyorum zaten girerken hata veriyor girmeden ofline'a almam mümkün mü acaba?