Product development has changed, and so should the tools that support it. There is a growing realization that 3D modeling is just part of the story. You don’t engineer something just by modeling its shape in 3D; you also need to make sure that it will perform as desired and that it can be manufactured. Product Development is a team sport, which requires collaboration across a variety of team members from several disciplines and locations.

Let’s face it: most 3D modeling tools do pretty much the same thing, and are fairly commonplace around any design shop. Mastering 3D modeling – while definitively a good skill to have – is now considered table stakes.

Enter Fusion 360. We built Fusion 360 to be a comprehensive, integrated product development system – not just another pretty CAD tool. On top of best-in-class solid modeling capabilities, we added powerful capabilities for collaboration, simulation, and fabrication. Plus it works on a Mac or PC, or both!

Fusion 360 can help you stand out from the traditional “CAD user” crowd. With Fusion 360 in your tool belt, you will become a better-rounded designer. Master Fusion 360 and you will start hearing compliments from managers and peers such as:

1. “She is a modeling ninja”: Fusion 360 offers powerful modeling capabilities not available in most 3D CAD tools; capabilities such as free-form modeling and sculpting with T-Splines, mesh modeling, powerful direct modeling and parametric modeling, and an API to enable 3^rd party extensibility, which will enable you to design more beautiful and usable products. And while powerful, these capabilities are easy to learn and use.

2. “He is an exceptional team player”: Fusion 360 was designed from the ground up to be a collaborative product development environment, offering powerful capabilities such as distributed design, tracking, commenting and sharing, and version-management . And we will soon be adding more collaboration capabilities such as project management, in-use-by, and design branching and merging. And since it is built in the cloud, it is more easily accessible from anywhere – including mobile devices using the Fusion 360 app (iOS, Android).

3. “She is a well-rounded designer, gets the big picture”: Not only will you be creating (fantastic) 3D models with Fusion 360, but thanks to its simulation and fabrication capabilities you will be designing products that perform as expected and are actually manufacturable. Fusion 360 includes powerful simulation capabilities such as assembly modeling, linear static, motion studies, rendering, and animations. Most recently we added linear static and modal frequency with our September update. And we will soon add deformation, thermal, and fatigue analysis. Fusion 360 is designed to leverage the virtually-infinite compute power of the cloud for these compute-intensive operations – effectively providing access to high performance computing to everyone.

For fabrication, Fusion 360 provides powerful integrated CAM capabilities to allow engineers to define tools paths and simulate fabrication. And Fusion 360 also provides amazing 3D printing capabilities, making it easy for designers to prepare their designs for 3D printing by previewing the mesh structure, making pre-print refinements, and automatically creating optimized support structures. And if you want to contract out the fabrication of your product, Fusion 360 can send your model directly to fabrication services such as BriteHub or ProtoLabs.

4. “He is saving us a lot of dough”: Not only is Fusion 360 affordable ($300/year, $40/month, and free for hobbyists, startups and students), but because you subscribe to it, you don’t have to commit to expensive, perpetual licenses upfront. Pay only for what you need. And of course, because it is cloud-based, you can free up those IT resources to do more interesting things. It is also easy to learn, with lots of free learning resources and a huge support community.
5. “She is, like, from the future”: With Fusion 360, you are “future proofed”. Fusion 360 is important to Autodesk, so rest assured that our latest and greatest technologies will make their way into it. We are cooking up many technlogies in our research labs around things like generative design, augmented reality, and advanced materials that will get rolled into Fusion 360 along the way.

So if you haven’t already, now is the time to try Fusion 360! Your career with thank you for it.