Teaching Collaboratively with Autodesk Fusion 360

THOM TREMBLAY: Welcome to Teaching Collaboratively with Autodesk Fusion 360. My name is Thom Tremblay. I'll be your host for this virtual AU session. My copresenter, Dan Banach, will be presenting live with me at Autodesk University 2022, but for tonight, you'll just have to be with me.

What we're going to be focusing on in this course is how Fusion 360 can help you in the process of teaching Fusion 360, and, of course, engineering graphics, intro to engineering, or any of the other topics that Fusion 360 is used to do. We're going to offer the safe harbor statement. Because there is an Autodesk employee that is involved with the course, we want to make sure that, should I misspeak during this virtual AU session, that does not reflect on Autodesk.

So our learning objectives for this course are going to be how to assign and manage student access to individual or group data and maintain privacy. We'll also be looking at how to evaluate student progress in projects and offer feedback at any time from virtually any type of device.

Then we'll learn about documenting the design process in real time. So that feedback process is built right into the model. And we'll also learn to recognize file reservation status when working as a group. Then, finally, we'll learn how to reset the whole process and take the information that you want to use from last term and use it to begin the next term's course.

So let's start out with connecting a class. So the first thing we need to do is focus on setting up a folder-level project. And a folder-level project is really the key to so much of working collaboratively in Autodesk Fusion 360. So all of the students need to make sure that they create an Autodesk Education account as well as any teachers, administrators, and we also recommend advisors.

Then, in Fusion 360, you, as the instructor, will need to create a folder-level project. Now this is available to you through your Autodesk Education Entitlement, and we'll talk about what that process is. And, of course, we'll also be talking about how to create folders in Fusion 360. If you're in existing Fusion 360, not using folder-level projects, you'll see many of these things are very much the same. Then we'll use Fusion 360 to upload any pre-existing data that you want to use for your course. Then we'll walk through inviting your team members or your students or your TAs into the Fusion Team, setting up their roles for both the Fusion Team and for their folder-level permissions.

Then the things that we recommend are one, create one project per class. We'll see more about this in a moment. But keep in mind that one project per class will make it very easy to keep your data organized and keep your students organized and connected. Then you'll need to manage and control the students access through those roles, the folder roles. And you can also use read-only folders to distribute assignments, to offer starter templates and files, and you can also use them to distribute any other type of data.

Now as a note, folder-level permissions and folder-level projects are the default new type for Fusion 360 in the education workspace. Presently, folder-level projects are not available for commercial Fusion 360 users. You can still also create legacy file-- excuse me, you can also create legacy project types if you're used to doing things that way in Fusion 360 or for your own personal use.

Now how to look at Fusion Teams-- a great analogy that my copresenter Dan Banach has come up with is looking at Fusion Team as a file cabinet. So you have your file cabinets, then you have your drawers, which are your projects, and you have your folders that organize your data. And as I mentioned before, being able to manage those folders and really control access to those folders is something that's only available with folder-level projects. So let's dig a little deeper on that subject.

So Fusion Team being the file cabinet, this is where you access your Fusion 360 and project data. All the data is stored in the cloud. The data can be virtually any file type. And this is where you control the permissions, the files, the versions, markups-- everything about what's in that file cabinet from a macro level. This is also where you invite people to join your Fusion Team and how you control their access.

And one other note-- users can be invited into multiple Fusion Teams, and you can even administer more than Fusion Team. So you can be invited to someone else's team and given the proper permissions to help manage their classes as well.

Now the next level down is the projects or our drawer. And this is where we start to segment things out. This is where we can manage and control access. This is also where we would set up a specific project for a specific class. This is where we also would invite members to the project and be able to control, through the various roles, how they access the types.

Now there are different security types for projects. The folder-level project is the one we'll be focused on. The legacy styles of open, closed, and secret are still available, but again, this course is going to focus on those folder-level permissions.

Finally, there are the folders. So if you think about a file folder in a drawer in a file cabinet, this is where we're going to manage our data at the micro level, at the individual level. The folder project level we can set up a rule for each member for each individual folder.

Now when you set a role, it will also cascade-- that role will cascade to any subfolders for the folder you establish the role on. And we'll talk more in detail about that, and we'll also explain maybe a little bit of the kind of mental approach to that. And each folder can have members with different roles. So someone could be an editor in a folder and someone else could be connected to that folder but only have viewer-level permissions or reader permissions. So it's not just a folder, a single folder role, it's an individual person's role within each folder.

So let's take a step back and look at the bigger picture roles. So there are two types of roles. There are Fusion Team roles and there are the folder project roles. So the Fusion Team rules are team administrator, team member, and project contributor. The team administrator is the person who manages the team, has complete access to anything that's in the team, any projects, folders, or files. A team member can view, open-- can view any open or closed projects and can also create the legacy type of projects. The project contributor can only view the projects that they are specifically invited to.

So if you take it to the next level, you could almost think of the Fusion Team roles as if we are going to have our team be a file cabinet and our projects a drawer and our folders the files within a drawer, we could look at Fusion Team roles as kind of the keypad to the room where all of the file cabinets are kept. So this is the combination. This is that initial entry into the room where we can possibly be connected or given keys to some of these filing cabinets.

Now taking it down to more of an education approach, translating it over from the Fusion terminology into something that might be more addressable is a team administrator might be the instructor or a program administrator, the person who is going to be running the overall team and who accesses it.

A team member might be other faculty who aren't going to be necessarily creating all of the folder-level projects or managing all of the bigger elements, but they still need to be able to invite students or create access to that or control access or monitor the work that's being done.

And then there's the project contributor. The project contributor is the person who's only got access to the projects they've been invited to. So you might look at them as the students or people that don't need to manage classes.

Now another thing I like to do is remember that any team role applied is applied across the entire team. So it's irrespective of any individual project or folder roles. So someone who's an administrator is an administrator over everything. You can name also name someone a project contributor, and until you give them a folder role or specific access to a project, they won't be able to do anything or really even see anything. So I like to think about this from the top down. So you want to give that maximum level of access to the minimum number of people necessary to manage your Fusion Team.

Now another thing that's important-- as you invite people to the team, that team member, presently, is the default role. So this will give them the ability to see all of the projects that are connected to the team. I highly recommend-- and we'll show this in a demonstration in a little while-- taking students that you invite to your team and give them the role of project contributor. It will take a little bit of time, but once that's set, you can also invite them to other projects and not have to reset this team-level access.

The other type of roles are folder member roles. So a viewer can view, post, and read comments-- can only view the files, post and read comments. A reader can do all of that, plus they can open files in Fusion 360, but they can't save the files-- they can't save the files to a folder that they don't have a higher level of permission to.

An editor can edit, upload, rename, move, delete anything in a folder that they have been given the editor-level permissions to. Manager can take that and go up another level and control access levels for other members. And, of course, an administrator can permanently delete any of the files on a Fusion Team, create the projects within the Fusion Team, and have a very high level of control.

How you might look at that in an education workspace is a viewer might be a mentor, an outside advisor, maybe someone from local industry is advising a robotics team or someone involved from the sponsor for a capstone project. Giving them the viewer access into one of their capstone folders would allow them to go in markup and comment on the design, progression of the design, and just be able to monitor the progress-- really powerful capability, especially since that could be done from virtually any type of mobile device.

A reader could be a student that needs to copy files-- for example, maybe your starter files for your course. You want them to be able to copy them but not modify those files so that it changes the files that all of the other students have. Editor is the student. Editor is the permission level for a student to work on their own data, either individually or as a group.

And manager might be a teaching assistant, where you want to give them access to data across the spectrum of the particular project or a class, if you want to look at it that way, and to be able to move data around should someone accidentally make a mess or put data somehow in the wrong location, or maybe there was a slight mistake in the permissions. They can help manage these class. And then, of course, the administrator of a folder can take care of all of that, including the ability to delete those files.

So when you start looking at these permissions, I suggest looking at them from the bottom up. So you want to give the minimum amount of permission necessary. So if you have a project and you have a folder for all of the students, you want to make sure to not give an individual student editor access to that level. Instead, make sure that it's below that. So you always want to come up from the bottom. What permission level is the maximum that this individual needs to do what they have to get done? And it all becomes fairly self-revealing, but it will take a little practice and experience to get a feel for how you want to manage your courses.

The roles can be applied individually or to multiple selected users. So once you've invited a number of people to your team, you can select them and change their roles on an individual folder. Or, let's say, you've got a group folder for a project-- you can select multiple users and apply that role to them in a particular folder as a set of people.

Now notice I'm trying to not say the word group because, presently, there are no group workflows in this. So you can't say that I've got a design 101 group and I want to give them all this level of permission on this folder. That is just how it is set up today. So if that's something you really desire, please feel free to hit the forums and ask for that and seek out Autodesk personnel and make that request because I think it would be a very nice enhancement. But that's not what we have today, so we're going to focus on what we can do today.

So just an example of how this might look in the context of a design structure or a project structure-- so at the top, we have our Design and Engineering 101 project. So we could look that at that as our course or class, or whatever terminology you have. Then we have an assignments folder. This is, again, where we're going to put our PDFs of our exercises or our starter files or the templates you want students to use or the procedures and processes that you might have in a class.

And you want everybody, all the students, to be able to access them but not change them. So you'll give all of the students a reader role for that folder. Then you've got your Students folder, and under your Students folder, you have individual folders for your individual students.

And here, we even have group folders. For Bill's folder, Bill would have editor role for that, but Jane, John, and Sue would have no role applied whatsoever. The way it works today, Jane, John, and Sue would be able to see Bill's project, they would be able to open Bill's project, at least from their point of view, but they won't be able to see anything that's in the project.

That's how it's set up today, and maybe someday, Jane, John, and Sue won't even be able to see Bill's folder without being given some level of permission. But today, they can see it, but they can't see anything in it, which means they can't copy any of the work. So it works very straightforward.

Now if you take Bill and Jane and assign them as editors to Group 1, they can see each other's work. In fact, they can collaborate dynamically and directly with each other as a group inside of Fusion 360. And, once again, if they don't have permissions to Group 2, they'll have no access to any of the data that's housed within it.

So let's talk about, walk through that process, and then we'll show you that process. So a really good way to start is just in your data panel. Just make sure that you can see your list of projects. And what you'll want to do is make sure that you're working in the correct team. So there is a team switcher in the upper left that you want to be able to access and select the correct Fusion Team that you're going to be working in. Then you can just begin by creating a new project. Now once again, with Education Entitlement, that default project will be a folder-level permission project. If you should want to create a nonfolder project, you can do that from the web client, from the Fusion Team web client.

Once you've created your project, you can begin creating folders just like you always have in Fusion 360. Or if you're new to Fusion 360, near the top of the data panel, as shown in the graphic on the right, there's a New Folder button, where you can just create a new folder, give it a name. If you open that folder, you can create subfolders. It works very much like an explorer or a finder. And once again, you can also create folders from the Fusion Team web client as well.

So then, once you have some structure built, once you have your class or your project, once you maybe sorted out some of the folders where you want to put data or have your students put their data, then you can start inviting people. So from the Fusion 360 environment, at the top, you can select the People item or the People icon, and that will take you to a link that will take you to the Fusion web client. Or you can go to autodesk360.com and log in to get directly to the web client.

Once you're there, there are a couple of different workflows to create or to invite members, but the one we'll focus on is going up to your project or to your profile in the upper right, where you'll see your name or initials or picture. Selecting that, on your picture or initials, you'll see a few links-- My Account, Settings, and Admin. And you'll be able to select Admin and say that what you want to do is invite members. Then, under that, you'll find your Members and Roles tab, and you'll be able to find your Invite icon. Once you click Invite, you can simply put the email associated with their existing Autodesk ID or, if they don't have an Autodesk ID, the email that they receive will offer them an opportunity to create one.

Then once they receive that invitation, we'll see later that they must accept that in order to join the team. Now I mentioned briefly before that, by default, anyone that you invite will be listed as a team member. Now there are pluses and minuses to this. There are some roles that are below administrator that being a team member can still be beneficial. However, with students, I still highly recommend you focus them on project contributor. So you'll have to find the list of students that you've invited, and once they've accepted the invitation, you'll be able to go in and just quickly switch them, through the dropdown, to a project contributor.

Now to set folder roles-- once someone has been invited, you'll be able to go in and find the folder and select the Folder Permissions tab. Once you've selected the folder that you want to manage, you Select Folder permissions tab. Then you seek out that individual student. You click the checkbox next to their name.

And then, at the bottom of the screen, you can see where you can choose from one of the five roles-- viewer, reader, editor, manager, or administrator. Once you've set that role, you click the Assign button to the right, and that level of permission is applied to that user in that folder. That's it. That's all it takes in order to set it up.

And at any time should you return to that folder, you can show-- presently, the graphic in the bottom of the screen here, there's a Show All Members. You can use that to filter to members with permissions. So you can filter down to only the members that have permissions, the members of your team that have permissions to that folder. And you can even reselect someone and change their role in that folder just that quickly. You can also remove their role that easily.

So let's take a look at what this process is in Fusion 360 and the web client. So first, in Fusion 360, we'll create a new course project. We'll call it Engineering Graphics 10. After a moment, once the project is created, we can go into it, and we can begin creating new folders. The first folder we'll create is going to be Course Files. This is where we're going to put our data that we're going to share with the class. And then we'll create a Student folder, or Student Files folder.

If you've used Fusion 360 before, all of this is-- the workflow is going to be very similar. Here, I'll go into the Course Files folder and upload the files for this class. Now I prefer to do this through Fusion 360 because if there's any files like a STEP file that could benefit from conversion-- in fact, there is one here-- it will go ahead and do that process before putting the files in here. If you upload the files through the web client, it will simply take them as files and post them. It's something that can be worked around, but there is a bit of a benefit for uploading them through Fusion 360.

Then I'll go into the Student Files folder and create some new subfolders. We'll create Group 1 and Group 2. And at this point, you'll see, down at the bottom, we're still uploading files, but let's go ahead and open up the web client by simply selecting the link near the top of the data panel. This will take us to our web browser. This will take us to our Fusion Team, right where we had it. So the Student Files folder-- we can see our subfolders of Group 1 and Group 2.

And here, we can go ahead and start creating some additional folders. We'll create some folders for our students. We'll create a couple of them. And this is where having an assistant engaged can be very helpful. And we'll take a look at these individual folders and what our permissions are. So if we go back up to the top level, we can see how the structure is and we'll go into our folder permissions.

So right now, where we are is we're at the top level of the project itself. And I'm going to go ahead and invite students. The first person I'm going to invite is a person that I intend to have as a teaching assistant. Now if you don't have teaching assistants, you can simply ignore any of the things we do with this person, Blair Stout. But I wanted to make sure we covered it. You can also take a comma separated list and paste that in to invite multiple people in one step. So if you have a roster for your upcoming class, you can simply take those emails and paste them in and do the invitation as a group in one step.

Now at this top level, I want to go into my folder permissions. Now I mentioned that Blair Stout is going to be a teaching assistant, so I'm going to give them a special level of access. I want them to be a manager at the top level of this project. Now this permission, as I mentioned earlier, will cascade down to any subfolders, so they will be able to access and edit anything that's in the Course Files folder or any of the Student Files folders.

Then I'll access Mark's folder, go to folder permissions again, select Mark's name, set Mark as an editor for his own folder and assign it. And we'll repeat this. Now once again, this process will take a little bit of time, but being able to do this ahead of even having the students enrolled in your class makes it very quick and very easy to have all this structure in place and everything working before your class begins.

Now here's a special situation where we have our Group 1, where I want both Ethan and Mark have access as editors to this folder. So they'll be able to create data and collaborate together, and we'll assign that role.

Now as a final step for assigning roles, we'll go up to the Course Files, and through our folder permissions, we see that yes, of course, Blair's still already set to a manager, but we'll set Mark and Ethan to be readers. So they can look at the files, they can even open the files, but they cannot save the files back to that folder. And once that role is assigned, we're good to go with our assignments.

So now if we go back to managing members, I want to make sure that we have the appropriate roles. So I'll let this refresh. And I see that, so far, Ethan hasn't accepted my invitation and it's OK that Blair is set as a team member, but we can also limit their ability to create projects. And we'll set Mark to a project contributor. So we see that the option of being able to create folder-level projects is, right now, not available to Blair, and doesn't even have the option for Mark to do as a project contributor. So if we wanted Blair to be able to create a new class for us, we could enable Blair's status as a folder-level project creator-- we could enable that through the checkbox. But for now, we'll leave it as is.

The next thing we want to talk about is accessing the class data. So how are people working within our environment? So, of course, the very first thing a student must do or anyone that you want to join your team must do is they must select Join Team in the email. Now it won't be uncommon for students to come and say, oh, I never got an email. Have them check their junk mail. That really doesn't happen very often in my experience, but have them be on the lookout for an email from you.

Now one thing I will also say is once you've invited someone, you can return back to check the status of an invitation. If there's a pending invitation, you can resend that invitation very quickly and very easily. Now they do not have to accept the team invitation before you can apply the folder roles. So that, as I mentioned, will help you get ahead of things. And, of course, project contributors won't be able to see the projects that they don't have permission to-- or projects they don't have permission to, but they will be able to see folders, at least at the time for the time being.

Now a very important step that we covered but you have to reinforce with your students is to use that team selector. Again, go up to the upper left and make sure they have selected your team as the active team. If this student has been using Fusion 360 for a while-- maybe they started using Fusion 360 a few years ago-- they might have what's called an individual capability, individual file store, or they might have set up their own team for their own personal work, which is great.

But they need to be active in your team in order to see the projects that you are creating. So they need to go up into the data panel and go to the upper left and select the correct team. They can also do this from the web client as well.

Now one thing you can't do is switch teams with files open that have been saved. If someone just opened a file, made no changes to it, they could switch teams, and it would simply switch teams, and they could save a file to the new team. But the best practice is to have them go ahead and close things out and switch teams.

Now if they have the appropriate level of access or as an administrator, when you switch teams, you can also go directly to the management console or the web client from that pulldown menu.

To change a team from the web client, you can log in and you can go up, once again, to your ID or to your profile. And by selecting on your picture or initials, it will give you a list of the teams that you are connected to, and you can change teams from there. And to activate any project, you can just simply double-click on it, and it will take you into the project.

So let's see what the process is for a student. So here, they selected Join Team. This will take them to their Autodesk account, where they'll have to log in. And this will take them to the web client of the Fusion 360 Team, of the Fusion Team.

This will bring them right in right away. They can see all the projects that are available-- your default one, your assets-- and they can also see the Engineering Graphics course that they've automatically been invited to because you have brought them onto the team and given them permission inside of that folder. Here, they'll select a file from the web client, and it started to open up Fusion, so they can log in. Or pardon me, they just launched Fusion.

And here, they'll switch to the correct team. This is your class. And now they're able to see the folder level that they were brought in at. There's the project-- in other words, your class-- there's their course files, here's all the files that you created for them. And, in fact, as I mentioned, they have full access to them, everything but save. You'll notice at the top of the dialog, it even says read-only, insufficient permissions. But that won't necessarily stop them from making changes.

Now, again, it's read-only, so they're going to go ahead and do their work. But what's nice is if they're not really paying attention to the feedback, not paying attention to their role, they can go through the process-- a very interesting process inside of Fusion 360, which allows them to create this-- pull from one sketch on in one component and create features in a component through it without affecting the middle component.

Now when they go to save, they can't save because, again, it's read-only. But since they've already done work, we don't want them to lose that work. So they can always use Save As. And you'll see, in red, it says they don't have permissions for that location. However, they can navigate the dialog, go into Student Files, and go to their personal folder, and now they're able to save. So they can go ahead and save their work. So they haven't lost any of that work and they're not being prevented from being able to get a grade. It's protected you from having a file that's partially done for all of your other students.

And just for the sake of completing the work, we'll have them go ahead and finish this out, adding a nice clearance hole. Once again, only adding it to the one component. This time, they'll use a visibility option to preserve it. And we've got our file complete. And we can go ahead and save it, adding the comment.

This is something else I always recommend, and this is something that's part of defining the design and tracking the design-- every time a student saves the file, it creates a new version. So they can always go back to that version and bring it up for a new design or a parallel design.

One other thing you can do is they can share a public link. So they can share a link to you or to other people. Another option is if you want them to be able to give you the data, if you want them to be able to share the data in such a way that takes you directly to it, they can go to the web client and copy the URL.

And what this is great for is if you have a classroom management software that you've been having them download files and upload files, if they put this URL in, it will take you directly to their live data. So if they make modifications, you're able to comment on those modifications and have full history on them.

Now once they've set up their data, they can go in, go back to your Course Files folder, just select the files they don't have yet, right-click, and say Copy, and once again navigate to the folder that they own and paste all those files into their personal folder. So now they'll be able to continue working with the data you've provided to them without changing any of the data other members of the class need.

So now that we've seen how the data can be preserved from being accidentally changed by students when we don't want them to change it or to be able to set up their data to work with it for when they need to do their work, now let's talk about working as a team, some of the collaborative elements. One of the important things that I talked about briefly there was the fact that it does track every version of the software.

Something I like to recommend to people is that you mandate those comments when they create their versions. That helps build that history. That also helps to build, I guess, the habit of documenting their work as they go along. That's so important in industry and so important, really, at every level to make sure that they're keeping track of what they changed and why they changed it and making it easy for others to understand why they change those things.

So let's talk about working as a team. So at any time, with that link that the student shared to you, or as an administrator, you can go to the client and you can review their work. You can check the mass properties, you can measure on the model, you can break up the assembly, turn components of the assembly off, look at the structure of the assembly, all through a web browser or a mobile application. If you have an iOS device or an Android device, there is a Fusion 360 app that you can access to do that. And, of course, you can also use just the web browser on any type of computer or mobile device as well.

So anyone that has access to a folder-- so basically viewer access or above-- can leave comments. I mentioned briefly the idea of a capstone advisor or maybe a robotics team advisor being able to go in and say, hey, maybe you don't want to put that there or that might be hard to get a wrench on. So sharing that knowledge without even having to open the files up in Fusion 360 or even having the ability to because maybe they're just a viewer or a reader-- so really powerful capabilities.

One other thing I like is that these comments that they might make always appear right in the design file. Now the students have to go looking for them, but this is, again, kind of a muscle memory thing, a practice for your class that you can establish or say that's required.

And what's great is if they reply to that comment, if you're the person who commented on their work-- for example, in the image in the middle, somewhat to the left, say lower hole needs threads-- if they make that change and comment back, then you get an email notification saying that they've commented on the design as well. So a fantastic built-in communication system around the design itself, and it's all just built in. There's nothing that you have to install. It's not an option. It's just there.

Now taking the group concept to a higher level, especially for those of you who are working in group situations or working with teams, Fusion 360 has the ability for multiple users to collaborate simultaneously on a design file and work with external files and be able to see what other users are doing and be notified when others make changes to the design so that they can update the design that they're working in to see if it affects the work that they're doing. So it's a really great way of working.

You can also, if you want to be able to try out some ideas on a design, you can reserve it as read-only for yourself. That still allows others to change it while you're experimenting with an idea that you might or might not want to implement. So there's just so much flexibility and teamwork that's just built in. But if you're actively editing a component, anyone else can open it, but they're not going to be able to save a change until you've saved a change. So even the better PDM systems out there for the older CAD systems don't really give you this capability like Fusion does right off the download.

And some really nice visual indicators for working with that multiple environment is in the browser, when you're using distributed design. What distributed design in Fusion 360 means is working in more of a traditional way, like in Inventor or SolidWorks, where you have data linked into what might be a master assembly. You can see who has those files open. You can even see with a little dot who is actively editing or making changes, who has reserved those files for editing. So you can understand that, well, I can drop this file into my assembly, but right now, Bill is working on it and making changes. So I need to keep that in mind. So I'm going to go ahead and capture that design in the assembly, put it in place, and be able to catch up with whatever changes they make later.

So here's some examples of the collaboration and the teamwork inside of Fusion 360. We're going to start here with Blair, our TA, who is opening up the phone stand that Ethan was just working on. And they can see what components are there, so they can see the structure of the design. They can go to the view, and it will generate a preview. Now, again, this is in a web browser, but it could be through the application, could be just on their phone. And they can go in and see what the statistics are.

So, for example, if you know what the volume of a correct model is, you select the model that you get the right volume or mass, you know the student probably got the work right and you can just move on to the next student. If not, you can go in and start doing some measurement. If you just measure two points, it will give you not only the direct distance but even the deltas. You can also measure radiuses or diameters or distance between centers. And it gives you that information right on the screen. So if there is a problem, you can go ahead and interrogate it a little more.

If you find a problem, you can go ahead and markup. Here, we'll create a little balloon, and then we'll add some text. In fact, the holes, which are beautiful little counterbore holes, are actually supposed to be counter sinkholes. So they didn't really follow the exercise very well. So we'll make that comment here in the web browser, or, again, could be in the app, and we'll save that comment. That comment will appear as a little balloon here in the preview. It will also be added in the overview under the comment section. So immediately, right away, we can start to see how we can keep track of the communication around this design just built in.

Now back here in Fusion 360, here we are as Ethan once again. Ethan opens up his work. He's pretty happy with it. He knows that you've probably graded it, and he sees a comment under the commentary opens it up, sees that, oh, it's supposed to be counter sinkholes. Oh, no. OK, well, let's close the comment.

Let's go make our modification in Fusion 360, taking, once again, advantage of the ability to use clearance holes based on fastener types and standards. We'll go to a number 10 counter sink. We'll make sure that it's only cutting, in this case, the stock component-- looks good. All right, I think we've got it now. Now the student can capture an object, a point-- or entity, excuse me-- or do a screen capture and add a comment to it right in that Comments area as well. And that will upload. That will post the file. It will also bump the version of our file.

And now, the next day or that afternoon, our TA can go in, or you as the administrator-- always have access to all of this-- see that a comment has been left. Is this correct? Pull up the view-- yep, those are counter sinkholes. Looks good. And we can reply in kind or do whatever we want to do. So all of this is just built into Fusion. It's always there for you and ready to use.

Now when looking at-- oh, one other thing. You can always go back through those version histories and see older versions of those designs. Let's bring up the very first version of that design. And you can see the comments that were placed either manually or, in the case of the reply comment, automatically. And it's always keeping track of that history. So we'll come back to the current view.

Now one other thing we can do is we can not just view an individual file. There's also the connections between files that is included in our exploration in the Fusion Team. So now that we're done looking at Ethan's work, we can go back up to the top level, go down through the Student Files to the Group 1, and see that it looks like Mark has been starting to do some work around the team project in Group 1. We see a drive assembly file. We also see that it uses a drive train motor and a motor bracket. If we select on the motor bracket, it will highlight that component, show what files it's used in, and show any other existing data, such as drawings or simulation results-- great connectivity.

Now, kind of going back to student one here, Ethan, Ethan is seeing the fact that Mark has already started doing some work. This is directly in Fusion, of course. He's able to open up the assembly. He's has some communication. He understands that his job is going to be to make some modifications to the bracket. So he can just open that up through the browser or through the data panel and prepare to start doing some work. So, for example, he knows that he needs to modify a couple of sketches. He'll go ahead and turn those on and start getting ready to do his work.

Meanwhile, simultaneously, on another part of campus or some other part of the world-- it doesn't matter with Fusion 360-- Mark is able to go in and start applying things like joints between the drive train motor and the bracket. So he's able to apply a quick rigid joint there, and he's able to grab the sprocket out of the data panel and insert it into that design as well and position it. He'll just apply a quick joint.

And he wants to make sure that everyone's able to see the work that he's done so far on this. So after he's placed the sprocket, he'll want to go ahead and save his work so that others are aware of it. Now if we look over in the data panel, we can see that both he and Ethan have that drive assembly open, but you'll notice the little dot next to his initial, Mark's initial. That shows that he has the design reserved. The same with Ethan. He's in the process-- he exposed those sketches, which gave him a design reservation.