Restoring version numbers in Data Panel, Drawings, and PDF exports ect..

[grahamS4WHW]

The recent updates have completely stripped away direct version tracking in Fusion. Why! How! Who thought this was a good idea….

No direct version history in the Data Panel, no clear at-a-glance view of which version you are looking at, no easy way to view and access past model iterations.

Inability to match model states to old drawings. When opening an old drawing, I want to be able to open the model at that state when the drawing was made. I don’t want to open the latest updated model. In my environment, team members open the model and make changes effecting my model. In the past, I could see the version that was used and open it. I am now blind. I can’t see subtle changes that might have been made. I need to check everything, and I still might miss changes.

PDF exports no longer carry version numbers. Exporting drawings used top automatically add the version number of the drawing. This was very helpful and was a safeguard against accidentally overwriting existing files or sending outdated PDFs to production.

Drawing browser ignores top-level parent files. The drawing browser tree no longer displays the version of the top-level parent assembly, it only shows the individual sub-component versions.

To the Fusion Product Team: Can we please get an option or toggle setting to restore inline version tags in the title bar, the Data Panel, and automatic versioning on PDF exports?

[jason.henderson34372]

yes, i hate this also. I even went the long way to open the history, figure out the last time something had a number, counted...then saved a new version with that number. but when i want to save again or even save a new version where i can add text, i don't know what number i'm on. so i have to go back to history and count again.

removing automatic versioning was such a surprise and i hate it so much. it was an essential feature for me.

[j.luedtkeM3ALD]

For me the worst part of this is not having short save descriptions anymore. In my team we used these as a very short change message similar to a commit on git. I also wrote a small plugin that could extract these save descriptions with the corresponding version number and the user who made the save for a specified number of versions to generate a very simple and easy to use changelog as .CSV-File for our internal reference and for the communication with manufacturers. It was a very easy way to track changes and make sure, manufacturers immediately see all changes in a new version without much need for detailed 2d-drawings and manual tracking of changes to the models. Now I have to track all that manually or have a parallel document where I can keep track of what was changed when and where and by whom. This is never gonna work. Version tracking needs to be part of the day-to-day workflow inside the software without creating any friction. otherwise it will not be consistently used and thus create confusion instead of clarity.

Yeah we could still use the milestones that are rebranded as "versions" now but they still have the same limitations that made and still make them completely useless for actual productivity. 

1. You have to set them manually which is a source of inconsistensy and errors especially in more complex projects, where you might have to set them manually for 100+ parts.
2. Once you set a version you can't delete it. Especially at the end of a project iteration you keep finding small bugs in some models and then you have to make changes again, constantly creating dead versions and also (see point 1) potentially forgetting to manually set a new version after every bugfix.
3. Links in Assemblies and Drawings reference the set version and don't warn that there are changes if there's no newly set version/milestone. That leads to exporting outdated versions of 3d and 2d drawings. If you're a one-man-operation you might be able to still keep track but once you work with 2 people or more on a project this will inevitably lead to wrong files being sent to the manufacturer.
4. Even if you manage to notice wrong versions, you have to either manually create a new milestone for the latest file-version or manually open the history of a reference and get that version. that's a tedious process especially in 2d-drawings.

I have to say Autodesk has been on a very wrong track for a few years already. Especially lately since they started pushing their completely useless AI-Assistant. But even with that in mind, getting rid of this easy version control for no good reason is just insanely stupid and annyoing. WHY? Who would want that? I don't see any benefit whatsoever. Seriously, you guys at autodesk need to get some industrial designers and engineers on your team who actually work with fusion or similar 3d-software on a daily basis. You seem to have no insight into what we actually need and don't need, what helps and what hinders our productivity.