Feedback for you

[Jools-Taylor]

Hi Fusion.

I wanted to give feedback and here seems like the only way to do it. This will be part rant and part praise and is promoted by a lot of frustrations over the years and changes that both improve and frustrate in equal measures.

Firstly let me congratulate you on a pretty wonderful product. This is fairly easy to learn and has allowed me to start my own business with CNC without having to spend a ridiculous amount on software. For that you should be proud of yourselves.

However: I run a Mac and it crashes too often to not be noticeable, normally after a tense few hours trying to CAM a difficult part. Sod's law then says autosave hasn't saved it and I lose those hours of work,.

I've been using Fusion for years on both free and now the startup license and I must admit I still have little idea of how to set things up properly. This is not for want of trying or for being Au Fait with computers, I am very good at both. It's more that your features are just hidden in the most difficult places to find. Let's take tool table data. So I can go into the tool table and set diameter, feeds, speeds and set different groups of these for different materials (awesome). But why can I not set tool engagement here too. Literally I just found out that I can set templates but for the love of christ why isn't this in the tool table. Surely it makes sense to be able to default all your cutting data in one area. On a similar note why when setting finishing tool paths isn't the default option for wear and compensation 'in machine', or at least have a button to save that as default (and before you tell me you can but you have to click seventy times to get there please don't). This button should be easy to find, in the dialogue widow for your cam settings. Boom, done, hours saved as you never forget to do it again! (Or in the 'one place for settings' see below)

The above is just one example of what I'm sure are ten upon tens of hidden functions that you have that users aren't aware of. Which leads me on to the solution 'ONE PLACE FOR SETTINGS'. There has to be one place to set defaults for each type of tool path or the tool table. Right clicking on the generated tool path and selecting make default is so unfriendly. Please just do as Apple do and make things user friendly.

On a similar note 'one place for all your account info'! This should be in the program too. Literally this morning my startup subscription ran out. I spent two hours (not a lie) and had to call customer support to actually figure out how to navigate your awful website (will expand on this below). So finally I get to add all the details about me in, which BTW haven't changed from last year, and I send them off to you. Now as I haven't left time between the old one finishing and renewing I'm sat here twiddling my thumbs. I can't even save designs or tool paths. So in instances like this would it not be better for the user to just tick a box which says 'still a start up, all details the same' or something like that. Then the program could renew on good faith, you can check in the background and if you find an issue you can call me and address it. The above however needs to be done preferably in Fusion. You manage to update it every 2 seconds so why can't one of them be to make it user friendly for us. If it can't be in fusion at least let me do it from my Autodesk account on the website. I have an account there that I made to get the program, please just let me tick the box that says renew and boom; done. 

Which leads me to your website. Every time I go to your website you ask me if you can place cookies on my browser. I decline, I go to a different page on your site and you ask again, I decline, rinse and repeat ten times and I accept, then it asks me again. DOH. When I was trying to use it this morning I followed the instructions on how to renew, got to the page where it asks for my details and it wouldn't let me type in the fields. I refreshed the page, it asked me about cookies (DOH) tried again, nothing, tried again and no fields come up (DOH). Tried on Firefox same issue, tried on Chrome with the same experience. Had to call customer support and then had to use an incognito window to finally get it done. (Cookies message still here so I screens shotted it)

Updates, where do we start. The other day you updated CAM. This then didn't allow me to name a program a name, it had to be a number. So for me I then had to change my work flow to save as a number, go into the machine and rename to a name. But I change programs all the time so this essentially screwed my ability to overwrite as I never remember file names. New features are cool and they help us. But stop forcing them down our throat, announce them and let us choose. Or at least do an online walk through of the features and how they work. Again this was another thing that lost me hours of productivity. In the end I went back to the legacy CAM as there was no way to solve this. But even finding that in the 'hotch-potch-settings-everywhere' user space took me a forum post and half an hour of searching.

So here I am waiting for you guys to authorise my account (I know it's technically my fault) and I thought I'd write some feedback for you. And the sad thing is that this could be amazing if you took a step back and just tried to get the basics sorted. Please just take a step back and a deep breath. Stop and realise that a few simple things will elevate this product to the user experience of iPhones and Mac.

Sorry for the rant. Too much time on my hands but hopefully you find it useful. It's meant constructively as I 100% think Fusion is amazing, it just needs a few tweaks to make these amazing feature findable.

Jools

[HughesTooling]

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@Jools-Taylor wrote:

Hi Fusion.

. On a similar note why when setting finishing tool paths isn't the default option for wear and compensation 'in machine', or at least have a button to save that as default (and before you tell me you can but you have to click seventy times to get there please don't). This button should be easy to find, in the dialogue widow for your cam settings. Boom, done, hours saved as you never forget to do it again! (Or in the 'one place for settings' see below)

Jools

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Haven't read all your post yet but thought I'd answer this before I forget. Once you have a op setup how you like it you can right click in the browser and save it's parameters as defaults.

While editing an op you also have the option of saving defaults, but this only works for values not check boxes etc.

Mark

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@Jools-Taylor wrote:

....autosave hasn't saved it and I lose those hours of work,.

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I don't really use Fusion (other than for experimentation ) as it has not progressed enough for my needs, but I have used several CAD/CAM softwares in the last 30 years.  I do not understand why anyone loses "hours of work"?

How does that happen?  Are you not saving every 5-10 minutes, every time I do something right - I save my work.  If I am about to generate a computationally expensive operation, I save before the operation.  Assuming the operation solves successfully, I save after the operation.  This has worked for me for 3 decades.  I have never relied on any "autosave" in any software.

[HughesTooling]

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@Jools-Taylor wrote:

Hi Fusion.

However: I run a Mac and it crashes too often to not be noticeable, normally after a tense few hours trying to CAM a difficult part. Sod's law then says autosave hasn't saved it and I lose those hours of work,.

Jools

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First, can't argue with any of the second half of your post about navigating your account and the website.

As for crashing, what are you doing can you show any examples? I design and make injection mould tools and can keep Fusion running for weeks using hibernate. Not sure the last time it crashed.

I have found it best to use 2 documents, one where I do all the design then derive all the parts to another design for machining. In the CAM design I try not do any design work, I've found Fusion can get slow and bogged down if there's too much info in a single file.

Mark

[Jools-Taylor]

Hi
But this is what I say in the post. These things are hidden in plain sight. There should be one area for settings so you can go and look there and find things. Reading my post will probably help too.

[Jools-Taylor]

What happens if your program crashed just before you pressed save. Could you envision losing work then?

[Jools-Taylor]

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@HughesTooling wrote:

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@Jools-Taylor wrote:

Hi Fusion.

However: I run a Mac and it crashes too often to not be noticeable, normally after a tense few hours trying to CAM a difficult part. Sod's law then says autosave hasn't saved it and I lose those hours of work,.

Jools

---

First, can't argue with any of the second half of your post about navigating your account and the website.

As for crashing, what are you doing can you show any examples? I design and make injection mould tools and can keep Fusion running for weeks using hibernate. Not sure the last time it crashed.

I have found it best to use 2 documents, one where I do all the design then derive all the parts to another design for machining. In the CAM design I try not do any design work, I've found Fusion can get slow and bogged down if there's too much info in a single file.

Mark

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I can't offer any suggestions as to why it does it. I sent the crash reports to Autodesk but nothing happens so now I just don't bother.
But I guarantee you it happens and happens a lot. Just randomly.

[Jools-Taylor]

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@HughesTooling wrote:

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@Jools-Taylor wrote:

Hi Fusion.

. On a similar note why when setting finishing tool paths isn't the default option for wear and compensation 'in machine', or at least have a button to save that as default (and before you tell me you can but you have to click seventy times to get there please don't). This button should be easy to find, in the dialogue widow for your cam settings. Boom, done, hours saved as you never forget to do it again! (Or in the 'one place for settings' see below)

Jools

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Haven't read all your post yet but thought I'd answer this before I forget. Once you have a op setup how you like it you can right click in the browser and save it's parameters as defaults.

While editing an op you also have the option of saving defaults, but this only works for values not check boxes etc.

Mark

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But you have hit the nail on the head here. Why aren't these 'saveable settings' in the tool library or in one place. You've just screen shotted two seperate areas, and if you do read my post, you'll see this is part of the problem. If there was one settings area you could go there and search but things are so spread out you don't look as you have no idea if it's a wild goose chase. 

[HughesTooling]

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@Jools-Taylor wrote:

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I can't offer any suggestions as to why it does it. I sent the crash reports to Autodesk but nothing happens so now I just don't bother.
But I guarantee you it happens and happens a lot. Just randomly.

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Maybe the mac version is not as stable, can't comment on that. But there are some things that can make Fusion unstable, bad practices like overly complex sketches where patterns, mirrors etc. are in sketches rather than using features. Do you have any Move features in your timeline, these seem to be present in problem design on the forum all the time and should not be needed. Do you have capture positions in the timeline, another greatly misused feature. 

Looking at your profile you don't seem to have asked many questions. Doubt things will improve for you if you don't show any examples of your problems.

Mark

[Jools-Taylor]

I couldn’t tell you what I do to make things crash. Plus then describing them in detail on a forum would be a difficult and timely thing to do. 

I send the crash reports so I’d have hoped they help. 

But as I said in the post it’s really about asking them to get some really simple stuff working. Rather than pulling apart my workflow. Ultimately if they have features in the programming that are buggy they should really work on them to iron out bugs. Expecting the user to not use them, or work out that they are buggy, is not user friendly.

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@Jools-Taylor wrote:

What happens if your program crashed just before you pressed save. Could you envision losing work then?

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Yes.

10 minutes worth of work lost.

Is this supposed to be a trick question?