Evangelist: Improved Third party support for Tool Library, Post Process & Add-In

[Riptide360]

AutoDesk Fusion 360 is a great product, but many users get lost when trying to figure out how to integrate it with the real world.

Please push your evangelists and product managers to improve the following areas:

Tool Library > Vendors. 

I currently only see vendor options for tool holders. Improving the tool library has been mentioned elsewhere, but I believe AutoDesk should try a small update where you work with a Tool & Die vendor to bring their part library online. I think you'd be amazed at how AutoDesk has the ability to drive sales to specific vendors, and users would save a huge amount of time by choosing a vendor and part # and having all the relevant info autopopulate into the fields (feeds and speeds included). Try a small vendor to setup the standard and then make it part of your large Tool Library update after getting early feedback. Destiny Tools in Santa Clara, Shopbot's handful of OSGURD. You can then move on to Tools Today, Amana, McMaster Car.

Post Process

Your CAM Post Process list is where a lot of new users get lost. It is just a huge list with no additional info. Your webpage at: http://cam.autodesk.com/posts/ has a lot of really useful info, like a version # and what was fixed log. You need to rework the Post Process list so that users can filter out the post processors they don't use. The basic UI should be similar to the Tool Library to encourage familarity in how to setup post process. Add additional info to each PP that includes what CNC machines are supported. Dump.cps should have a new SUPER Version that lets users export everything to a G-CODE editor of their choice. You need to let vendors link their post process with an external app for loading and checking the G-Code.. You need a link in the post process window where users can link directly to a specific Post Process forum group where users using this PP can find and talk with others using the same PP. http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/post-processors/bd-p/218 - this needs to have a concept of vendor's Post Process Sub Folders for messages.

Add-Ins

Celebrate the most important part of AutoDesk Fusion 360! Please work to get more vendors writing Fusion specific Add-Ins. This will tie your universe and theirs into much tighter integration. 3D printers seems like they've made some headway, but having some showcase examples would help immensely. I like the Add-In McMaster-Carr, but it is missing a quick sort field for finding parts with CAD drawings (you have to search the part and then check to see if it has it, would be nice if you could auto filter on this setting). It is also bad that McMaster showcases Solidworks as the default import type with Fusion kicking back an error and prompting the user to choose between SAT or STEP with no indication which one is better. Please work to make the McMaster-Carr integration better and to push them towards releasing an Autodesk standard as the default option. You should also work to get other vendors integrated ASAP.

[HughesTooling]

Really you should have one idea per post, I made the same mistake with one of my requests.

I have a couple of questions about Post Process.

You can move your post to the personal post or cloud post folder to filter out the ones you don't want, or is that not easy enough?

When you say dump.cps should output to a G-CODE editor of choice, you can change the editor posts are sent to or do you always want a different one for dump.cps.

Mark

[Riptide360]

Hi Mark,

I enjoyed answer day and thought if Autodesk's Fusion team was actively checking the forums I'd try to write a post to appeal to their evangelist or product manager.

The goal was to try and unify Autodesk's approach in how 3rd party developers can integrate their CNC hardware into Fusion 360. In my limited experience with using Fusion 360 with 3D printers and the Shopbot I could see that the problem was feature overload. Most production users just need to add the tools they use, choose their post processor and hopefully have some pre-flight add-in/exchange apps to help with the integration.

I'll work on simplfying future posts to just one question or idea at a time.

Thanks for the tip on being able to move the Post Process to the cloud. That makes it a lot easier to keep my Tool Library and Post Processors together. For production shops being able to delete all tools and processors not needed is part of the 5S methodology.

For anyone else reading this thread you can use Mark's useful cloud tip by going to the Upper Right corner, clicking on the username, select preferences and in General > CAM choose "Enable Cloud Libraries" [I wish this was on by default].

As for the dump.cps I just recently discovered it is a great way to compare Fusion 360's G-Code with what the Post Processor actually creates. Being able to do a compare of the G-Code outputs with different text highlight colors has helped me find errors in the specific Post Processor quickly.

[HughesTooling]

Did you see this post for highlighting in brackets?

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/computer-aided-machining-cam/g-code-highlighter-for-brackets/td-p/6248...

Or are you using something like KDiff to compare 2 files.

Also did you see you can set up an external editor if you like, I use NC Corrector it does backploting as well and it's a free download.

Mark

[colin.smith]

Unfortunately this idea did not get the support of the community and as such we will not be pursuing it. Please feel free to rework and resubmit this one down the road. Thanks for taking the time to submit your idea. Due to the low strategic fit, we have decided that we will not be pursuing this one at the given moment.