Who the heck designed this software?

[Anonymous]

I've just come over to Fusion 360 through the work/tutorials of Kirill Chepizhko. I've used Zbrush, Maya, 3DCoat, Blender, Modo, Nuke, 3DSMax, Substance and all the Adobe/Macromedia to date plus the best vector tools ever created in FlexisignPro.

I know you're going to say that they're all "art" software and that Fusion is Parametric CAD software but I'm getting sick of that excuse. "It has to follow rules" which to be fair are more complex but it's the interface with the rules that I have the problem with.

Fusion360 has been so much frustration I can't even communicate it. Even more than old Blender. It is not supporting me in what I am trying to achieve because the UI and tools haven't been designed to do simple things.

- The amount of input format switching is stupid. I just don't feel supported by the shortcuts and I can't reset them.

- It's as unstable as the US president. Constantly going off with no clear reason why other than wanting more of your attention. Eg. I got a dialog warning saying something along the lines of "Cannot form geometry. Click for more information." So you click and it crashes. WTF!

- There's just far too many clicks to do things. You have something selected and click a modifier or something and you have to then select it again, why?

- To the contrary, lofting is super unpredictable. One time you click two loops and it makes them rings, then next time it makes them profiles, it is less clicks for for me if they don't auto select anything and I then choose them.

- It's far too easy to just suddenly loose progress. I had drawn a sketch and whilst trying to navigate around with the stupid two key tumble (that requires pressing shift first so you can't actually map it to a single button on your Wacom) it gets the flick menu and it's somehow applied multiple steps to my design and one undo doesn't undo that damage.

- There's whack feedback sometimes. Like you're filleting sharp corners on a sketch, you click all your corners with the default value at that time (3mm) and then set then value smaller than it was (1mm), and it breaks all the sketch pushing all the linework around so it looks like a Picasso. So undo that crap. Select the first corner, set the value (1mm)then click on the next corner. The red preview shows the old value (3mm), not your new value (1mm). Click that corner and it sets to (1mm). Subsequent corners preview correctly and also apply correctly.

- It needs a way to clarify or fix overlapping lines in a sketch with visual feedback. The way you are forced to use vectors within this system causes a lot of them. So often I just want a way that I can put the X Y position of a line or point from a datum or body origin point because that would save me drawing a bunch of support lines that I just trim and kill anyway.

- The sheer number of times you do something minor that collapses your entire sketch into a Picasso. You trim a line and somehow it takes 5-10 seconds to recalculate and then collapses your work. That's with nothing ahead of the sketch on the timeline and the sketch is just a few overlaid squares and circles.

Software is meant to help you do things, the sheer number of things that I have to do in a sketch to achieve what I want is super frustrating. Why do I have to have 4 extra lines when I draw a center square? Where's the setting to turn that rubbish off. I'm usually only using it for measurements to give me points where I really want my square.

- If you can't mirror across the global axis origins, why doesn't the file start with an empty that your whole object is built around?

- Since you have two different mirrors, why can't the software just link them? You're in a sketch, the mirror can only be on the lines, you're in body mode, then mirror bodies.

- Orgin Tree on the left, why can't you colour the icons or labels the same as the axis lines in the workspace?

- Also the lack of alignment tools similar to most software just wastes time. Then reading the forum that you have to have an object as a component and not a body to do certain things is just nuts.

- The autosave reload dialog box should be redesigned to be similar to other industry software because so many times it's come up and I think I'm actually reloading but it just closes.

- I'm on a mac and is there a good reason you have two file menus with different contents? Get rid of one or the other or make them unified.

- Blender's tumble/orbit with shift snaps to an axis is super awesome. The lack of it in any Autodesk software comes at a huge time cost to me. Like many many minutes per day. Because it adds 1-2 seconds to every camera movement.

- I double click on a sketch and it just orbits and pans off the screen...

- Put a key/hotkey list short cut in help... actually get your lazy Mac team to support it properly for the platform you're on, there's no actual help within the standard MacOS format.

- I know that the buzz in the CAD industry is the data and the machine learning crap but can't people focus on decent UIs that save everyone the real time?

- If my experience is so bad with with the "entry level" and newest Autodesk CAD software why would I ever want to pay for the more bloated, the more clunkly older stuff.

[TrippyLighting]

Can you elaborate on the purpose of your post ?

If you don't like how the software operates why do yo work with it ?

If you feel that the other software packages are better for your work, why don't you keep using them ?

Did you pay for any of the other software packages and did you feel you get your money's worth ?

For people like you Fusion 360 is likely free to use.

There is a distinct difference in the purpose of a CAD software and a Sub-D modeling software and that is also reflected in the UI and the general workflows. Fusion 360 is really not that different in general approach to any of the other main stream multi thousand dollar CAD tools on the market.  I've used number of CAD systems in the last 30 years and amongst those Fusion 360 is one of the more intuitive tools to use.

Having used Sub-D modeling software for about 16 years I can understand some of your UI related frustrations, but the matter of fact is that while both are used to create 3D models, there is very little cross pollination between  these worlds and that also is reflected in different UI's and workflows and modeling concepts..

While that is a sad fact, you can either learn what the differences are and get comfortable with those or you stick with what you know.

The difference between CAD and Sub-D modeling software, BTW, has nothing to do with whether or not you create artwork with it.

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@Anonymous wrote:

... the stupid two key tumble (that requires pressing shift first so you can't actually map it to a single button on your Wacom) 

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Nearly all (or all) of these issues can be resolved through training, I would want to see an individual file for each issue and solve them one-at-a-time.

The "tumble" can be set to one key in Preferences (at least on Win OS, I haven't used a Mac in this century).

[Anonymous]

Wow. seriously? I posted something in support of the OP and my message was deleted? Sheesh.

[TrippyLighting]

I don't think that was done intentionally or even by a human. I receive the topic reply notification with your post, but when I checked back to the thread it just was not there. Sounds like a forum hiccup, but unfortunately a recurring one as I've seen it a time or two before.

BTW, no one here deletes critical posts if they stay within the rather wide boundaries of the Forum rules. 

I'd be more than happy to respond top your post if you re-post it 😉

[jodom4]

Hi friolator,

Like @TrippyLighting said, that sounds like a forum hiccup. Unless a post violates community rules, it is not company policy to delete it, regardless of whether it's critical. Please feel free to post again and provide a link here if you like.

[Anonymous]

Why use the software if you don’t like it? Because a client wanted me to do some work in it in future and I wanted to familiarise my self with it first. I decided to do a study of a PS2 controller, disassembled and measured to scale.

I haven't responded until now because I wanted to finish what I was working and compile the experience in one place. The only thing that I feel that I could have worked out better with time was the handle for the controller that has an organic sculpted back and very geometric front to the shape. My topology through that section is pretty ugly but it was convincing enough.

Controller Study

Fusion360 has continued to be one of the most frustrating software experiences I've come across because the UI is so inconsistent and too many conventions from other software have been ignored. Fusion360 gets in the way all the time rather that enabling you as a user.

Point #1 — Bad UI Design cannot be made up for by training.

Too much software is designed by and for people that take pride in domain knowledge at the cost of it being faster and easier to use for new users. In my experience of designing software, CAD is like the Bloomberg terminal. It’s a badge of honour that people feel they can claim a higher status over others because they know how it works. Whilst CAD is generally more difficult to learn it also restrains the expert because the rigorous steps required to use it limits their creativity and productivity. Bad UIs cost a lot of money because they cost a user’s time.

Point #2 – Fusion360 is inconsistent in it’s heuristics.

Fusion lacks consistency in it’s mental models. I would have thought that being parametric software, the key aspect is having a tree of actions that create a design and that you to some degree can edit parameters within those actions to redefine parts of the design at later stages. Eg. you can change the height of a box after the fact. So working on the level of bodies, it works that way but inside a sketch it doesn’t. Sketches don’t have history but the they don’t have a consistent application of their constraints.

Fusion also feels like someone’s trying to make it mouse centric, that the keyboard is optional or very much downplayed, which just seems weird since you pretty have to have one hand on the keyboard and one on a mouse/wacom/touchpad to make decent progress.

It just feels like it’s had different people designing parts with different paradigms. It doesn’t feel like the people that design and build this software use it daily otherwise they’d be also frustrated with how slow it is. Maybe they also don’t use enough other software to understand how the paradigms are lagging so badly.


Point #3 - Fusion’s UI is far slower than it could be:

Browser Menu/Tree
A1 - The visibility of the visibility icons
  Photoshop, Blender, etc you can tell when something is off so much more easily. They should be very clear without needing to process what is happening within an icon. Really it should be there and not there, a light bulb and no light bulb (with a consistent outline to that of the icons nearby)
A2 - The lack of click and drag to turn visibility on and off
  Photoshop, Blender and other software allows you to click off one item and drag down to others (this can turn 10-15 clicks into one).
A3 - The gaps in the left tree means that you often click through things behind it.

Numerical Text Entry
B1 - The lack of scroll wheel/drag or cursor keys on number fields in the right palette (When you’re inside a numerical text entry, I want to use the cursor key to increment it. Up cursor= value.ceil (if int then +1), Down cursor=value.floor (if int -1), Left cursor= value-1, Right cursor= value+1), being able to click and drag should have similar effects.
B2 - The distance from Tab to the number pad. Page Up and Page Down should also toggle between dimension fields.
B3 - You’re inside the previously mentioned numerical text entry field for a button, if you’ve entered a number then pressed “tab” that yellow lock appears but then “ESC” releases it. ESC in every other context cancels the whole tool you’re in. Conflicting interaction. Also the lock icon, why does it look like it’s from a different icon set than the rest of the app?

Sketch Palette
C1 - The icons in the palette at right are on the right not the left and the text itself isn’t an active area. It makes it further to move the mouse all the time and increases the accuracy of the click so slowing down. If you say, “oh where are we going to fit all the sketch tool options like in circle, then freaking learn how to code your UI library properly, don’t punish users with less workspace.

C1 - Sketch Palette

C2 - The sketch icons within the workspace vs. the palette are inconsistent. How was I supposed to understand they were related when I opened this?
C3 - The active tool function in the bottom right is inconsistent. Sometimes I am still within a tool yet it doesn’t show that.
C4 - Sketch constraints on sketch linework are not all visible, thus making troubleshooting problems very time-consuming. I’m not sure if this is a bug or not. Often I have to click on a point or a line individually to find new constraints on that geometry.
C5 - On the topic of sketch tool options in the sketch palette. The appearance of their settings blends them with the other sketch palette tools and doesn’t feel like they’re part of the top line tools.

Drawing
D1 - Sketch mode drawing tools like rectangle, circle, etc when you’ve put down a first point and you get a numerical text entry field, you type a number but bump the mouse/touchpad, it resets the number. This is easy to do because you often have to make an arm movement (not just finger/wrist) that puts weight on your opposite arm as you reach across the keyboard between top row numbers or numpad and tab. If using a Wacom you have to move your hand off the pad completely before typing the number.
D2 - Fillet, you have an active fillet where you're still able to numerically edit all the active points but it doesn't change them all together as expected. It is applied after constraints and breaks everything. But if you had the right number at the start then it would apply it correctly.
D3 - If dimension is one of the most powerful tools in Fusion360 why is it buried? Shouldn't it be in the sketch palette with the constraints?

Move tool
E1 - You start with something selected, it might be just an edge or a profile but it’s part of a body or component. But the stupid move tool doesn’t then select the whole body or component. It makes do it again. Or in the case of a component, you have to go up to the panel, drop it to component and then select it again. It takes data that’s already in the system which could result in 0 mouse moves and clicks and turns it into 3 clicks and 3 movements.
E2 - Why on earth does clicking and dragging something allow you to move it freely with no way to constrain it? After all the limitations around other things, this seems ridiculously loose. It means that you bump things out of position whilst selecting rather than being of any use. It’s not like Blender where when you start dragging you can press an axis key to lock to and then the number value and bam it’s moved that far. It just doesn’t make sense for a precision focused use case like CAD to have a free two axis drag when merely clicking on something.

Design History Timeline
F1- It really needs some kind of reference point. When you have a hundred or two hundred items in it, it’s really difficult to tell where you are as you are scrolling through. The items need numbers or something. The grey lines underneath don’t really inform and would be better as numbers.
F2- Also why does the scroll bar go over the top of the play buttons? That’s not really part of the scrollable region? It’s weird.
F3- But I’m super super thankful for the consistency in the hatched line that appears above history steps and on the browser tree items to tell me what is related to the active selection. That was incredibly useful and stopped me from rage quitting numerous times.

General UI
G1 - On Mac, when you Ctrl+C copy, it plays an alert sound, why? that’s usually for errors. Is there actually an error occurring? (It doesn’t make an alert sound when you paste?)
G2 - Why is there 3 different palette/menu types (that have inconsistent actions). It seems weird to have tools in a top menu that look one way, then have the transparent backed browser tree and then a solid backed palette at right that takes up more space.
G3 - Can there be some kind of “working” feedback so you know if it’s propagating changes through your design? Right now it’s unclear and you just see the Browser tree flickering here and there. (Eg. you change the length of an extrusion in the history timeline and it needs to update everything, it can take a while)
G4 - The floating guides often snap to other linework when you don’t want them to. You can disable snap to grid but not snap to geometry. (I am not talking about the magenta projection lines, I’m talking about auto snap to geometry.)
G5 - Guides also cannot snap to a combination of grid and linework in the sketch.
G6 - Try deleting those magenta projection references when you don’t want them, there’s little way to do this without destroying your existing linework. X2 work.
G7 - Constrained orbit doesn’t work consistently. There’s 3 different icons when hovering over the circle (I can’t capture the cursors in screenshots). The vertical line has one icon, horizontal line has different one and the circle has another. Vertical line rotates about X axis relative to the screen, the circle about the Y axis, yet horizontal line and the circle have the same function. I would have expected the horizontal line to rotate about the Z axis given. It stops me from rotating around the object as desired and forces me to use the top right nav box that still doesn’t let me get the angle I want.

G7 - Constrained Orbit Inconsistent
G8 - Preferences > Pan, Zoom, Orbit Shortcuts (Fusion, Alias, Inventor, Solidworks) what are the other hotkeys? WTF? Why is there not a tooltip or “?” that tells you the actual keys?
G9 - Ultimately where is the all in one shortcut manager for Fusion.
G10 - The magenta/maroon projection lines, you shouldn’t have to Google “magenta line fusion360” to understand what the software itself calls them. There’s no visual reference to them in the system (Eg. something in the sketch palette or in the browser to give you an idea of what is going on) those related checkboxes in the preferences should be off by default and enabled by users as required. There was no time in the whole PS2 controller study where they were of benefit to me. Rather they got in the way repeatedly and again cost me more time.
G11 - Fusion360 creates a system notification when a file cannot reach the server with the text - “Fusion Team Error Message. Upload Failed. Original File: Gamepad v34. Click to view message”, you click and it shows less information than the notification does. What does that mean? Does that mean my file isn’t saved since Fusion is trying to be cloud software. You need to affirm that the file is still saved locally and give some idea of how to resolve the problem of it not uploading.
G12 - Fusion does not allow contextual shortcuts. Eg. I should be able to set a universal Fillet shortcut whether I am in sketch or body. It is ridiculous to have two different keys for this. You can’t use the 3D fillet inside a sketch and you can’t use the 2D Fillet outside a sketch.
G13 - Physical Material vs. Appearance. Why does one have search and the other doesn’t? This really needs a better UI other than that single feature to tell them apart.
G14 - Why do I want my file/data selection to be a flyout palette? I can’t drag things into existing files, there’s no reason to have it so small on the left when all I’m trying to do is select files or play with “people”. I don’t see the benefit of sharing that with the workspace when actions in each is exclusive of each other and makes file selection slower.


Bugs
H1 - In sketch mode, sometimes the 2 point rectangle loses it’s preview mode, so you don’t get the text fields to type into or the overlay guides.
H2 - Activating “sketch” mode often rotates and pans the sketch off the screen, I then have to navigate to it again. Breaking flow, slowing me down.
H3 - When there’s an error in applying a modify action to a body, the red notification inside the app in the bottom right corner tells you something along the lines of “click here to find out more” and the software crashes.

[Anonymous]

Sorry I'm late responding to this. I don't remember exactly what I posted, but the gist was this:

It drives me nuts when someone criticizes an application in a forum and the immediate responses are dismissive "you need better training" -- good application design should require minimal training. When people say "oh it's so difficult to use because it's so powerful," I cringe, because that's complete BS. I've been working with professional video and audio post production tools for about 30 years and have worked for software companies that made these tools, as a QA engineer, as an end user, beta tester, and I've done some programming myself. I was a UI designer for a while, and I have been involved in every stage of getting software to market, from concept to launch. Putting the burden of learning an obtuse system on the end user is lazy programming, end of story. There's no need for it. 

I'll give you an example from my world:  Sonic Scenarist DVD authoring software: We've been doing DVD Authoring on a competing platform (Spruce Maestro) since the early 2000s. The two applications approach the same tasks in totally different ways. With Maestro, there's an "abstraction layer" that separates the user from the underlying code that goes on the DVD. It limits you in a few minor, inconsequential ways, but it speeds up common tasks. It does this using standard Windows user interface conventions. Things like audio stream numbers are consistent throughout the UI (in your code, audio stream 1 is audio stream 1 in your timeline).

Scenarist, on the other hand, throws all that out and basically gives you a tree-view (not unlike what you have in Fusion 360) into the structure of the disc. It's essentially a glorified XML editing tool, exposing the underlying structure of the data that winds up on the disc, almost none of which you need to know about. It's riddled with inconsistencies, such as streams being referenced by a numbering system that starts with 0 in some places, but starting with 1 in others. You need to mentally keep track of this stuff, which makes coding and debugging a major headache.

In Scenarist, nothing is abstracted, you need to manually edit a ton of stuff.  For example: in Maestro if you want a menu to display full frame on both 4:3 and 16:9 screens, you make a 16:9 menu with the buttons clustered in the center (inside a 4:3 window in the middle), and tick a radio button in the properties for that menu. Done. In Scenarist, you make two different menus (2x design time), you program those two different menus (2x programming time, plus 2x the chances of introducing a bug in the programming logic), you program separate code that selects the menus. I once worked with an authoring house that used Scenarist, and on a tight deadline, I helped them author a large set of discs. In the time I finished 2 of them, their experienced Scenarist author finished one. Sonic would tell you at trade shows "well, it's hard to use because it's so powerful." In 17 years of working with DVD I've never found a situation we couldn't author in Maestro, faster, and with less QC time and fewer bugs... 

Oh, and Scenarist doesn't have Save As.. Imagine if you need to experiment with something or use a previous disc as a template: the process is to quit the application, zip up your project folder, and then edit your original project to do what you want. If you need to revert, you have to zip that one up, unzip the old one, and work on that. Their programmers deemed this (most basic feature of most applications) unnecessary and jumped through hoops to explain why. What they weren't saying was that the underlying design of the software was terrible, so they couldn't do it without tearing things apart and starting over. 

My point here is that Fusion 360 feels like the Scenarist of 3D modeling software with the bizzaro-world UI and the many little inconsistencies that Subs laid out above. And I'm not even getting into the nightmare that is cloud-served applications and all the extra levels of complexity that imposes on the end user...

[TrippyLighting]

@Anonymous I agree with many of your points. What I don't agree with is the importance of them. I've used a good number of CAD and 3D modeling software over the last 30 year professionally ( and still do every day!) and once you are familiar with a software something that is much more limiting than UI consistencies is the incompleteness of some tools and bugs.

That is much more limiting than a few UI niggles.

Don't get me wrong, I'd like to have these fixed as well, but there is so much focus paid here on the forum by Fusion 360 and CAD beginners on the UI that it seems areas that are more of a concern for experienced professional users are falling behind. As such I'd like to see much less focus on some of the the UI topics and first make the tools complete.

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@Anonymous wrote:

 Because a client wanted me to ... 

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Can you persuade the client to upgrade to a mature MCAD solution?

[BaronTC]

I would like to see comments from Autodesk on all of these points.

Each one is clear and detailed and absolutely worthy of a reply.

[ivanovFHHAV]

Thank you. i couldn't have written it better myself. I see i am not alone in my frustration with the F360 workflow/"features", but after 2 years of trying i've finally collected the money for a SW license (with which i have a separate pile of issues with, but way smaller) . the workflow is mildly put annoying - it wastes energy.
I really tried to train myself.

[eugen_RTR]

well pointed Trippy!!!

[sandroAYEUH]

Hmm