Local Projects

[Anonymous]

One major source of frustration with Fusion 360 has been the requirement to use cloud storage only. I propose a solution: Local Projects.

When creating a Local Project, instead of saving the files to the cloud, the user will select a local directory to use for the project. All of the part files will then be saved, in an industry standard format, directly to local storage.

This solves a number of problems that exist with the current cloud-only system:

1. Inability to work offline while maintaining organization
2. Complete loss of productivity when Autodesk 360 is having issues (which is a frequent occurrence)
3. Sync issues occurring after offline work
4. Risk of not having files when choosing to work offline on an old project that no longer resides on local storage
5. Performance issues related to cloud saves/loads
6. Maintaining local backups of files (assuming the user understands backup)
7. Confidentiality issues where certain requirements prevent saving designs to any remote cloud service

This solution fits in well with Fusion 360's workflow, which revolves around Projects. Local Projects would behave exactly like Cloud Projects, except they would not have access to sharing features. Local Projects could be converted to Cloud Projects, which could be converted back to Local Projects. When converting a Cloud Project to a Local Project, any existing sharing would be disabled (after warning the user of course). Also, when creating a Local Project, the user could be warned that they are responsible for maintaining backups. (The warning could of course be suppressed in the future, but they would see it at least once).

[roambotics_scott]

Agreed and no matter how many times AD says they'll never support local stuff, I'll keep saying it's a good idea.

[kb9ydn]

This will never happen with Fusion, but I do really like the idea of local vs. cloud projects.

C|

[roambotics_scott]

Never say never

[O.Tan]

With design branching and etc coming up, this is unlikely to happen. And AD did wrote a long respond before about why they are not doing it.

[3rdzeropoint]

Work and save on lacal machine, once design is complete and you want to ceate Stl or other then it goes to the cloud.

i am finding it takes ages to open and start working, also data cost are horrendous

[charegb]

Archiving - This topic has been discussed multiple times. Here is a link to Kevin's post explaining why we are building Fusion the way we are:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/design-validate-document/saving-a-project-locally/m-p/6323217#M55518

Thansk,

Bankim

[der.baron]

I came across Fusion360 this week and good very excited about using it as it would streamline my work flow from concept straight through to my 3D printer or 2D router - brilliant.

I installed a trial today and created an account.

And within minutes fell down this hole of no local saving!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No big business can guarantee to preserve your data from total loss, So I only trust what I have stored locally and backed up with my own tools and distributed to other locations physically.

Having been in the computing game since 1957!!!!!!!!!! until I retired, I am paranoid about data loss.

I am just about to uninstall F360 and delete my account!

Good luck with getting Autodesk to listen, but there will only be tears When they suffer their first big data loss.

der.baron

[kb9ydn]

Of all the things to worry about with cloud computing, data loss is one of the most unlikely to ever occur.  Autodesk uses Amazon Web Services, which is one of the best cloud services in the world.  But if you still think that is not enough, you CAN also export your projects to an archive file and store them locally (or anywhere else) if you like.

Temporary inaccessibility is a much greater problem than outright loss.

C|

[roambotics_scott]

Generally agreed @kb9ydn although @der.baron outlined a case where he actually did get data loss

As long as I can work offline, I don't care that much, but @charegb I have been and remain completely unconvinced by @schneik-adsk's argument in that link.

There's just no logical reason why the cloud has to be involved in what most users are doing most of the time.

It makes sense for syncing, and collaborating, compute intensive tasks, and maybe even version control*, but for someone just doodling around, it's obvious that most of the heavy lifting is done locally anyway.

It's AD's ball and you can do what you like with it, but there's an overwhelming stench of adult male Bos taurus excrement when you claim that there is any reason for insisting that the cloud must always be in the loop, beyond «that's just what we want to do».

* though Git shows distributed version control is totally doable

[der.baron]

The more I think about this matter the more concerned I am.

Why would any business dedicated to the customer take away the ability to
work in a particular (and time-honoured) preferred way.

If the customer has the choice of working seamlessly either fully local or
fully "in the cloud" then they might go one way or the other.

But no choice is a poor option however good the product. For me it is a
complete deal killer.

John C

[der.baron]

Cloud data loss is more common than is supposed.

A quick search brings up a few including the major Amazon one

http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-lost-data-2011-4?IR=T

When they lose your data it is really gone.

If I were to lose my local data I restore from an off-line hard drive and if that is gone I drive to a friends house and get the hard drive stored there

John C

[kb9ydn]

Certainly no computer system is absolutely 100% infallible.  So everyone has to do their own risk assessment based on their own situation and comfort level.  All I really wanted to point out was that of all the issues with cloud computing, data redundancy is one of the least concerning.

I actually rather like the Google drive/Onedrive/Dropbox way of doing things where you work from your local drive and it's mirrored to the cloud in the background.  For the most part you don't have think about it; it just works.  And it's far more convenient than having to make backup copies on HD/tape/CD and take them offsite.

C|

[roambotics_scott]

Agreed.

There are many legitimate reasons that you might not want something to be cloud based, but (as long as it can get into «the cloud» / S3) data integrity really isn't one of them. AWS will be by itself much better than local storage even with an on-site backup, and having things mirrored between your machine and Amazon provides an additional layer of reliability on top of that.

[Anonymous]

completely agree. My current project takes about 5 min to shut because it has to upload first

[roambotics_scott]

I still hope the new CEO will get past the cloud-only religion, but even if not, why not sync deltas in the background all the time ?

Also maybe look at what you’re doing with AWS because I typically get 50mbps up and minutes to upload on shutdown is not an exaggeration

[3rdzeropoint]

not evryone in the world has unlimited cheap data,
my country has the most expesive data costsin the world lol,
cloud based design will remain elitist