Why is Fusion 360 such junk?

[alienjuggernaut]

Fusion 360 is one of the worst software applications I have used in 40 years. It is RIDICULOUS. I started with AutoCAD 35 years ago. Why is the program not the same thing? Why is EVERY convention DIFFERENT? Why are none of the keyboard shortcuts existing anymore?
Why do things get locked I have not selected to be locked?
Why do I have to start with a sketch? Isn't this on a computer? Aren't computers smart? Why can I not draw a solid and the computer figure out the sketch?
Is automation lost on you people?
I made an ENTIRE part in Rhino3d in 90 minutes. I have not even gotten past 1 plane sketch in Fusion in 2 hours because nothing moves after I place it. STUPID CRAP. Just STUPID.

My favorite thing to underscore how stupid this program is... nobody can answer a question without a screencast. Never have I seen a program put together so badly that regular users cannot picture what is going on with another person's install, without a video. THAT is how bad this software is. You cannot even IMAGINE where someone is in the app... because nothing is common and occurs naturally and with an obvious timeline.

This post has been edited due to Community Rules & Etiquette violation.

[mcramblet]

I find that it's a lot about perspective. When I went from being primarily a Fusion 360 user to SolidWorks, I thought SW was the most antiquated and clunky program in the world. The things that drove me crazy were things like extrude (add) and a separate extrude cut. With Fusion it's the same command and you decide in the command how it's applied. To me, that makes much more sense. I also prefer the more streamlined interface of Fusion 360. Now that I've been using SW for several years 40-50 hours per week, I certainly see where SW outperforms Fusion 360. Sketching in SW is so far beyond what's available in Fusion 360. Where I work, SW is used for part design, Fusion 360 is used for CAM. We looked at the possibility of moving the design to Fusion 360, but it's just not as mature of a product as SW. With Autodesk already having a more mature CAD platform, I think the intent is to make Fusion 360 the "Swiss army knife" or "multi-tool" of the CAD world, which it does do fairly well.

[seth.madore]

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@neilU4PVG wrote:
 Simple stuff that I can achieve in minutes with SW took me hours with Fusion. 

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I'd be curious what your testing entailed; what were your tasks and struggles?

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@neilU4PVG wrote:
 Simple stuff that I can achieve in minutes with SW took me hours with Fusion. 

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@neilU4PVG 

CSWP since 2007.

Taught SOLIDWORKS for 20 years.

You have not provided any actionable information.

Can you File>Export your *.f3d file to your local drive and then Attach it here to a Reply?

[sneller]

you cant even move a face from another face , copy a hole 

spaceclaim blows this out of the water

@sneller - this post has been edited due to Community Rules & Etiquette violation.

[sneller]

it sucks so much cant move measuring from something else , cant copy a hole , so on and so on

Spaceclaim is like a Ferrari next to this turtle 

[Birk.Marold]

I fully agree xD

Fusion 360 is utterly ridiculous as are the moderators of this forum and the developers.

no help without a video xD they are just totally helpless and cant even fix the most basic things that have been buggy for years.

[g-andresen]

Hi,

Describe a specific example!!

günther

[sneller]

There are many things that I run into every time I try to use it. It is like driving in a city with all one way streets.
But off the top of my head

Can't copy a hole
The move and modify tools ( see SpaceClaim tools makes your tools seem like it is old and archaic system their system you can place where you want to move from click direction and click on another face whole or edge to set direction of move and click on any face center or edge and it gives the distance then you just enter what you want for distance)

Overall, it is just a not very user-friendly , drop-down boxes for everything even simple stuff .
With Fusion it is always how and what are the steps to do this . with spaceclaim you really do not have to learn how because it is simple and straight forward how you would do something.
It is fine if you have you design completely designed before creating a sketch and solid but . if you are doing conceptual design and need to modify your design as you work on it it is not very good.
The cam is pretty good that said

[melaniemyxa]

I hate it too. No, I don't want to sign in with my email. No I don't want to join or create a team, whatever it is. No, I didn't need ANY of those pop-up windows. I simply needed to open a 3df file and it took half an hour to do so.

[FrodoLoggins]

6 years of the viewcube just freezing randomly

*Clicks on item in browser (literally just clicking on it) > crash

[ben-tennent]

It is garbage. If you use any other parametric modelling software as Creo, solidworks catia or even inventor you will realise that it extremely limited for the most basic tasks. Take sheetmetal for example.  This is extremely poorly thought through. Missing a lot of features such as the ability to sketch a flange. Relief options and control. The ability to add metadata to the file. I have 3 university graduates using it. If you are making a simple box it’s ok. But if you are making a fabricated assembly forget it. I heavily customised Creo to complete automation tasks. Fusion 360 does have a nice dimension feature in drawings. But it’s constantly being updated and stuff changing. To the point that new bugs are constantly being introduced. Its machining cnc features are not intuitive and l wanted it to create gcode for the Parker drilling machine it was so buggy and crashed often and the coordinate system was nothing like I had seen before in other nc software. I don’t like wasting money and this software is undercooked as from Dec 2025. 

[rdfry]

checkout learn Fusion360 in 30 days. you will then be able to use the program.

[corpjester]

I 110% agree. I’ve never in all my years of computer use, experienced a program with so much unnecessary baggage, and so very little SIMPLE, CLEAR, STEP-BY-STEP help files. It’s as if we have entered a completely alien landscape and can’t even decode the map to navigate it. If all I want to do is Align three objects, I should be able to select them all, click 'Align' somewhere and be given a choice of alignment options, just like in any basic 2D drawing program. Those programs should be the baseline for ALL commands necessary to manipulate objects, even 3D ones. I get that Fusion is powerful. What if I want it to do something really really simple though? This is what happens when data and engineering drives learning, instead of outcomes and established learning models. More data is not necessarily better and NOT EVERYONE WHO USES A CAD PROGRAM IS A LINEAR THINKER…SOME OF US STILL LIKE TO DO THINGS INTUITIVELY. 

[g-andresen]

Hi,

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@corpjester  schrieb:

…SOME OF US STILL LIKE TO DO THINGS INTUITIVELY. 

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What is intuitive for one person may not necessarily be for others.

günther

[TimelesslyTiredYouth]

Right, I'll be bluntly honest, I have a disabilty, called Fusion and Computer... yet even someone as dumb as thyself, has learnt Fusion...

For the first therapy -> Your right not everyone who uses CAD is a linear thinker, I myslef like to do things intuitively, no-matter how many times I'm told it's bad workflow... But you need to have a certain degree of understanding of this. No software is perfect, there are many different CAD softwares, because unfotunately we haven't gotten to the era where we can put that much stuff in one software, compared to Rhino, F360 may be slower in some cases, but has a lot more than Rhino in general. If the perfect software existed, there wouldn't be an absurd number of CAD softwares, It is evolving slowly and you can help by give CONSTRUCTIVE feedback.Are you saying that you could do a better job than the many engineers that poured their heart and soul into this software, because if you think you can create a comparable software do it, because it doesn't mean you can insult other people's work when you RELY on it, everything around you was made USING it, and the future REVOLVES around it, so if you hate it so much, take your sorry little... and tell your boss that you want to go back to pen and paper saying it'll be more productive, because I'd love to see his reaction. Also something I'll teach you, that I learnt from the funniest person on the Forum

Stop using the allign and move tool, these are just ze artistic CAD tools in Fusion

Instead TRY utilising the different joint tools.

Ever so partially annoyed regards

Ricky

[ben-tennent]

If it takes 30 days to learn software there is something fundamentally wrong with it.  It took 5 days to learn ProEngineer in 2002 and 4 days to learn Catia on real jobs. Given that Fusion is hardly feature rich but it causes major system slow downs is another point.

[g-andresen]

Hi,

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@ben-tennent  schrieb:

It took 5 days to learn ProEngineer in 2002 and 4 days to learn Catia on real jobs. 

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That long?

günther

[TimelesslyTiredYouth]

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@ben-tennent wrote:

"If it takes 30 days to learn software there is something fundamentally wrong with it."

-Product Design Online doesn't aim to teach you how to quickly use a CAD software, it aims to teach you how to PROPERLY use CAD software with full conceptual knowledge backing it up, instead of cowboys giving just quick knowledge, more knowledge on this can be found from R.U.L.E 0...

 "It took 5 days to learn ProEngineer in 2002 and 4 days to learn Catia on real jobs. Given that Fusion is hardly feature rich "

-That's most likely an issue on your side, I have tried ProEngineer student edition, and it took 2/3 days to master(maybe not master but use to a good extent where if someone saw me, they wouldn't think I'm a new user), around 10h of straight work...

-Fusion is very feature rich, It's the only software in the world with PCB CAD CAM ect... all integrated in one software, your just not utilising it properly...

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It's pathetic how you try to compare a software like Fusion to such specific CAD programs, maybe Fusion can't work as well as them for you, but It allows more proffesional people to rely on one software, instead of using many, which helps speed up workflow, something an "old person" such as thyself may not understand after just coming out of pen and paper,  the fact that you use the Allign tool (while it is useful in rare occasion) tells me that you aren't fully utilising Fusion to it's maximum potential, If you have anything else to say, I would advice you to just glance over my other post like how you did with the Guide for Fusion...

Sleepy Regards

Ricky

[Bifsie]

I have attempted to use Fusion 360 many times over the years. I gave up very quickly every time due to having to Google how to do EVERYTHING. The software is in fact extremely unintuitive. Those arguing that it is intuitive by saying you just have to learn it are actually agreeing to the fact. Something that is intuitive does not take time to learn, that's what intuitive means. It's VERY obvious to me that this software was designed without the goal of being intuitive. It's not meant to be. It's a huge bucket of single tools all designed to do single things. Anything that would seem to be an obvious part of the workflow is just thrown into its own tool and added to the bucket. You must learn what each tool in this bucket does to accomplish anything resembling a "flow".

A real-life example would be if you wanted to dig a hole. In most software, you can grab a shovel and just start digging. In Fusion 360, you need stakes and string to mark the hole, spray paint to make a line around the hole so you can remove the lines and stakes, so they won't get into the way. Next you need a spade to slice the earth around the edge you marked with spray paint. Then, grab an auger and make holes around the edge. Now you can grab a shovel and dig out the center. Finally, use the shovel to also clean up the edges of the hole. If any of these steps are skipped, or done out of order, it's going to give you an error. It's a pretty simple process once you learn it, but not intuitive if you just wanted to dig a hole without knowing the correct steps and the order of those steps.

My current attempt is underway. I downloaded a design that was done in Fusion 360 and does not include the history. I'm trying to make some "simple" changes. I want to enlarge some geometries. I'm currently on day 4 with many hours of Googling and videos. I have just had my second cry of the morning due to pure frustration.

Features can NOT be moved with the geometry. Those features must be deleted then remade after the move. Why? Because Fusion 360 cannot figure out what I want to do. It cannot "move" features. It has to recreate them in the new location. I just tried to make a construction line 10mm away from an edge to recreate those features. Sounds simple? Nope. Back to Google and YouTube to try to figure it out. 

Fusion 360 is indeed unintuitive. There is no reason to have to take a course to draw a line. Yet, here we are.

[mcramblet]

I hate to say it, but having any model from any program and trying to open
and modify it without an intact design history is not going to be easy. It
doesn't matter what CAD software you're using. You could have the
SolidWorks, Fusion, Rhino, Creo, whatever, and if someone gives you a
generic STEP file and you want to make changes to it, good luck. You'd be
better off trying to replicate it from scratch. That's why they make
reverse engineering software which makes it slightly less painful, but it's
still painful.