Can’t open fd3 file created on older version of fusion

[Iain_williamsDK4PS]

I work in a college teaching engineering. We have fusion installed on the network. We prefer the stability and speed of this compared to the browser version. 

Fusion is updated once every few months because it’s time-consuming to do so and we have over 60 machines running fusion. The problem we have is that if a student uses any other computer other than the ones in college and that machine has a new version of fusion on it, any models they create will not then open on the college machines because it has an old version of fusion. We keep getting messages saying that we need to update to the latest version of fusion. This is particularly difficult for me as I do most of my preparation work at home and my home PC easily updates automatically. This is not the case in college and any CAD files I create at home can’t be used in college. 

I have two questions:

1) Is there anyone out there that runs fusion on a college network and has found quick, easy and reliable ways to deploy updates. I am told that one of our barriers to doing this is that some of the updates are deployed via a server that is banned by our filtering system ( something to do with Amazon) and there’s no way round this because it’s a college wide system and it’s managed by third-party. 

I’ve been looking at this problem for months with the IT technician team and they have used various methods of deploying fusion including the lab version, But none of them seem to avoid using this banned site to Update fusion.

I’m not at all technical, in terms of networking and computer literacy, so I find this really frustrating because I’m not sure if they’re just fobbing me off because it’s not straightforward. I could really do with some advice from someone who works in a college environment and deploy fusion in a manner that keeps up with updates and isn’t onerous. 

2)  Are there any workarounds to this problem whereby I can save a file created on an older version infusion and open it in a new version?

[RajkumarIlanchelian]

@Iain_williamsDK4PS There are couple of options here.

1. For the lab version I do believe there is a scheduler that you can use to update machines as new versions comes out. The backwards compatibility is due to advanced file schema in new versions that is not backwards compatible. IN the lab install you have a Fusion version that does not have to be live updated but in the personal machines you use the "streamer" version that live updates automatically.

Using the scheduler to see if that makes it easy for the labs to update could be one option to explore.

2. All of our education accounts are eligible for our Fusion online version. This could mean that in the labs you can now use the online version that is always kept up-to-date and IT does not even have to get involved since there is nothing to install but the browser. 

Please let us know if you want more information on any of these options.