No way to launch Fusion 360 for MacOS

[siriusphil]

Downloaded Fusion 360 MacOS yesterday, it launched and played with it.  Today, I realized that there is no Fusion app in the Applications folder, no launch icon on the desktop, no launch icon in the dock.  How am I supposed to launch Fusion 360?  This is pretty odd for a Mac app!  

[RajkumarIlanchelian · Accepted solution]

@siriusphil @Fusion 360 is not installed in applications. Look in the launchpad and you should see the launch icon. Once it is launched you can keep the icon in the dock or choose to keep a short cut to your choice. 

[lkerby]

If you keep a dock icon or otherwise make a shortcut to the application, it will break updates. New versions of Fusion 360 will be downloaded but they won't be launched because you will have a shortcut to the out-of-date executable.

[RajkumarIlanchelian]

@lkerby 

1. Go to /Users/YOUR USER ID/Applications
2. In here you will see Fusion 360 
3. Create your short cut from here 

Now on any number of updates, the icons will still and work. 

[lkerby]

Thank you, I didn't realize this was fixed.

[lkerby]

Unfortunately this still does not behave as expected. Clicking the dock icon will launch multiple instances of Fusion 360 instead of bringing the application to the foreground.

[RajkumarIlanchelian]

@lkerby Is this your workflow?

1. You created a shortcut using the Application folder I called out aboe
2. Ran Fusion 360 took and update
3. now if you launch Fusion you get multiple instances of Fusion?

[lkerby]

Sorry, I have not been able to recreate this consistently. But yes, this behavior does occur for me on occasion. I have a shortcut in my dock pointed to the executable in said path. Typically clicking it will bring the already-open instance to the foreground. This morning, clicking on it launched a new instance that crashed immediately.

[lkerby]

Seems to be related to the recent update. After closing out one instance and force-quitting the other, the shortcut began launching the Service Utility. After starting the application from the service utility, which took much longer than usual, the behavior is back to normal.

[RajkumarIlanchelian]

@lkerby 

"the behavior is back to normal."

Does this mean you are able to use the short cut you created and it now rightly launches one instance? (Also, you do not have to use the service utility to launch Fusion)

[lkerby]

Yes, the shortcut now works as expected again. It will launch the application or bring the running instance to the foreground. I believe this occasion, and my previous experience of this issue are related to the update procedure. 

[Neil_Relph-Olivewoodturning]

I had the same issue after the latest update. Application crashed (reports generated for Apple and Autodesk), then brought up Service Utility. Once launched from that (after a wait) it works as normal again.