BRANCH & MERGE - Getting Started

[keqingsong]

Branch & Merge Preview ending on July 15, 2017

• Based on feedback, how you’re using it, how you expect it to work, and how we want to help you overcome challenges, we’re ending the Branch & Merge Preview. We took a close look at what we’ve set out to solve, and instead of releasing the current experience it to the wild that doesn’t really do the job quite right, we’re going back to engineer a simpler and efficient solution. In the mean time, we’re focusing on making sure that Fusion 360 has a robust set of core data management tools. Don’t worry, it’s not ending right away – you have till July 15 to merge all your branches back to the master branch. If you’re having trouble with it or are running into issue, feel free to reach out to us and we’ll help you get it sorted out. Thank you for participating – together, we’ll get to a better experience. 

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The goal of the Branch & Merge preview is to allow our community to provide valuable initial feedback, allowing us time to make the necessary changes, while the team continues to work on the rest of the features that will be in our first release.  In this forum we will discuss your workflows, capture feedback and provide instructions.

Excerpt from Jan 19, 2017 Update - What's New:

The concept of branch and merge is common in the software development world, but is pretty new when it comes to product design. Why do all this? Because of two awesome reasons:

1. You can explore design variations without consequence.

We’ve all been there. You’re working on a project and you’re on version 85 and you think to yourself: “man...I really shoulda sketched that circle instead of using the cylinder tool…”, and you’re too lazy to go back and find the right version to promote so you stick through it and suffer the consequences. Hours later your eyes are bloodshot and you need a drink.

Branch and merge gets rid of all that because you can create multiple branches and explore different workflows, without the side-effects! If you screw up on one branch, go back to a milestone that you had set, or ditch the branch and move on to another. The master will remain untouched until you decide to merge to it. This introduces levels of stability to your designs, where you can multiple branches as multiple levels of stability (master, pre-production, prototype, sandbox).

2. You can manage changes like a pro.

It’s true. The only thing that is constant in this world is change, especially in the world of design. Whether you’re on your own or working a global design team, the last thing you want is seeing changes being made to designs where you have no idea what they are, what they replaced, and who is doing it.

Branch and merge let’s you not only create branches, but you can also create milestones for significant events that have taken place, worthy of capturing. Give them code names. Include details that are meaningful for you and your team. Every milestone made captures a snapshot of the entire project and everything related to it (subassemblies, related drawings, etc). Showing a visual tree of all your design decisions to your customers can take your project and relationship to with your customers to the next level.

Bryce and Aaron does a great overview of how to do this in their latest What's New Video.

Got Feedback? Start a new thread and be sure to include Branch and Merge at the beginning of your title thread.  This thread has been locked and will be updated with more info as it comes along.