Removing local analysis was consumer hostile and is screwing my business.

[leganzish]

First an apology - I know this maybe isn't the right forum.  There maybe isn't a good one.  I apparently only have "self-service" support from Autodesk.  So the forums are my only option.  This is more of a plea to the Fusion team than a request for a solution/workaround.  Maybe part rant/getting it off my chest.  So I apologize if it is out of the scope of this forum.

Now my issue:  

The decision to move ALL studies to cloud compute without leaving static linear studies local is an outrageous misstep. Yesterday and today I have tried to run a static linear study for the first time since the change. Naturally, at the very same time, Fusion has outages and service degradation! My business has a project with an already tight timeline that requires final design acceptance TODAY! These are simple studies that would solve locally in 30 seconds or less. I tried solving on the cloud yesterday, and it ran for 4 hours and was stuck never progressed past 5% (which it hit after about 2 minutes)!  I tried this morning, but Fusion is just fully offline, so it isn't an option!

Autodesk's blind and consumer hostile action to removal local solves is going to cost me this deadline, likely cost my company this opportunity for a multi-million dollar contract, and possibly lose the customer all together.  ALL BECAUSE I CAN'T VALIDATE THE STRENGTH OF MY DESIGN BEFORE SUBMITTING TO THE CLIENT.  We have been Fusion 360 customers for 6 years now.  A lot of the changes the past few years - locking new features behind add-ons have rubbed me the wrong way, but that's the direction Autodesk wants to take this.  That's their prerogative.  Fine.  But not leaving the OPTION to locally solve a linear static study available is one step too far.  They've crossed a line, and cost me and my company DEARLY with their misstep.  I will be looking for a CAD solution I can trust at critical moments.  Fusion is no longer that tool.  

And to rub salt in the wound, their blog post announcing the removal of local solves acts as if it is a consumer friendly move.  Just read the "Productivity" section: https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/heres-why-were-moving-all-simulation-solves-to-the...  Claiming that removing the local option frees my computer up to let me be productive.  Oh so generous, Autodesk.  Thank you, our gracious CAD overlords!  NO!  Let me, your paying customer, decide if my time is better spent running a 30 second local solve or choosing the cloud.  Yes the cloud is a good OPTION.  When you have a long, complex study, cloud solve is a huge benefit.  We get it.  But please don't patronize your intelligent users by pretending this is a move you made to benefit our productivity.  We know what is best for us and our businesses.  Stop making business decisions for us.  

I see now there is a status update as of 17:09 UTC that the issue is resolved and Fusion is running again.  I thought I would try again, but the situation is so broken, I can't even cancel the cloud save from yesterday (still stuck at 5%).  I will try to duplicate the study and hope for the best.  I'm glad its running again.  Thank you. Maybe I can still salvage this train wreck with the last half of my day.  

[ncarlson]

I'm in the same boat today -- I'm at work, I've got a basic design I want to check, something that would run fine locally on my office workstation, but I'm at the mercy of the cloud service now that Autodesk has taken away local simulation runs.  I was already frustrated with losing local simulations, but having to wait half a work day for the outage to be repaired is really over the line.

I liked having the option of cloud simulations for when I'm working on my personal laptop, but part of the reason I originally purchased a Fusion license was the availability of the local Nastran solver. 

[leganzish]

Thank you for commiserating with me!  I hope they rectify this and bring the local option back.  Even if it is only for static linear studies.  They are currently not charging cloud credits for those studies, so it actually costs them more to force me to use the cloud.  Why not allow me to do it local if I choose.  I could understand if they were charging for them and forcing people in that direction to increase revenue.  I would hate the direction, but at least it would be logical.

I hope you were able to get your study done after they got it running again today!  

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@leganzish wrote:

… likely cost my company this opportunity for a multi-million dollar contract,

 I will be looking for a CAD solution I can trust at critical moments. 
We know what is best for us and our businesses.

 Stop making business decisions for us.  

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@leganzish 

You can run local Static Linear Analysis in Autodesk Inventor Professional.

[ncarlson]

Inventor Pro is also about five times as expensive as Fusion.  I don't really want to have to pay an extra $2k/year for a feature I used to get for $500/year.

[TheCADWhisperer]

@ncarlson 

My response was to @leganzish multi-million dollar contract and business decisions.

[TheCADWhisperer]

@ncarlson 

My response was to @leganzish multi-million dollar contract, looking at other software and business decisions.

[leganzish]

I get where you're coming from @TheCADWhisperer, but @ncarlson isn't wrong.  I selected Fusion 6 years ago over more expensive options like Solidworks or Inventor because it showed a lot of promise and was perfect for our business.  We aren't CAD heavy, but when we need it, of course it's for a good/important reason.  We don't do 40 hours a week of CAD, probably more like 10.  Maybe less.  We will use FEA to validate a design maybe 2-3 times a year.  With that usage and the inclusion of FEA vs. an expensive add on package in the more expensive CAD suites, Fusion was very attractive to our use case.  It served us very well in that style for the past 6 years.  But it failed us at a critical time, and strictly because of a decision that AD made.  I would have had no problems if they left the local option in.  Wouldn't have lost this opportunity.  When a tool incurs a large opportunity cost for a business, it's time to throw the tool away and get a new one.  

I figured when I mentioned a multi-million dollar opportunity, someone would ask why we're using a low-cost CAD system (sometimes viewed as low-end, but not in my opinion).  I get that line of thinking, but there's 2 things to understand the full picture:

1-This opportunity is out of the norm for us.  We typically design and create our own products.  We manage the timelines and delays aren't the end of the world.  Again, Fusion fits us well here.  This project is designing a product for a huge global brand that wants us to design a line of products for them.  Missed timelines anger those companies.

2- Due to the size of that brand, this opportunity would double or triple our sales instantly.  So yes it is a multi-million dollar opportunity but we don't typically deal in contracts of this size.  Yes a company that always does multi-million dollar contracts would probably pay more for a more advanced CAD software.  But that has not been us and Fusion has fit well.  Frankly, still would have if they hadn't removed local solve.  This is the reason I am looking for a better solution for us now.  If we have to pay $15-20k a year for CAD to ensure we don't lose the next opportunity so be it.  That's the cost of doing business.  Now to convince accounting that our CAD budget needs to increase 30x.

[TheCADWhisperer]

@leganzish 
$15-20k/yr doesn’t sound right?

Where/how are you getting that number?

[leganzish]

@TheCADWhisperer I'm basing it on a quote for Solidworks that is about 7 years old (and a fuzzy memory 😂).  As I wrote that, I questioned how current that cost was, as I assume that Fusion has driven that market down just as Solidworks did 20+ years ago.  I minimally tried to look for a current Solidworks cost, but of course they don't show online, you must get a quote from a reseller.  Maybe they price the "new" cloud version online, but that is exactly what I'm looking to escape, so I didn't bother looking.  

Do you know a more current per seat cost for Solidworks + Simulation ?

[keqingsong]

@leganzish Thank you for posting, and sorry to hear about your experience. I shared your post with our product manager looking after Simulation,  he should be reaching out shortly to figure out how we can help. If you don't hear from him by tomorrow, let me know and I'll get you connected. 

[leganzish]

Hi @keqingsong, thanks for reaching out!  I will let you know if I don't hear from the product manager.

[amasters]

The fact F360 had the whole package; CAD, CAM, analysis AND was done locally was one of the main driving factors that allowed us to change from SolidWorks to F360.  With the money saved, we could buy extra seats and invest more in the PCs so that the local rendering and analysis was fast and efficient.  Recently, with the loss of the local simulation, I'm beginning to wonder if we may have made the wrong decision.  These well equipped PCs are not as worthwhile now.  Waiting sooo long for a quick static analysis and jumping through all the hoops of problems just to get a result that I could have gotten in 1-2 minutes locally is beyond frustrating.   It sort of feels like a bait and switch.  Get all these customers and users to switch from their existing software to F360 because it has all these features, and then once they are bought in, start imposing pay walls to get those same features that were once included.  Is local rendering also going to be removed?  

We are not liking the trend of decisions that AD is making with Fusion 360 lately.

[phillipJSCHJ]

Bump