Originally posted by keqingsong on ‎‎05-19-2016 10:23 AM

It seems like you can track the status of anything online these days; cars being built, groceries being delivered, even pizza being made. That’s why we thought it’d be cool to check-in so you’re not left hanging and guessing where we’re at with Fusion’s development on some of the bigger ticket items.

Back in January, schneik, our fearless chief product guru, posted a preview of the key features we’re working on for 2016. We’re almost halfway through the year – here’s the status on some of these projects, where they are now, grouped into their various workspaces and disciplines.

We’re as excited as you are to get this stuff out, but please note that the timeframes mentioned below represent the team’s best estimate. Also, these are not representative of everything we’re working on.

The Roadmap

Deep Update

Previously if you inserted a design with referenced designs within referenced designs into a new design, then made changes in the deepest one, you had to go into each design and get all latest in each one with a referenced design. No, that’s not a riddle.  Deep update allows you to get all latest for the entire stack at once. We’re estimating this to be available around June.

Mesh Workspace

The first batch of mesh clean-up and repair has been ported over from Meshmixer. We’re working on a giving you a first glimpse of the functionality as a preview workspace sometime in July. Phase 2 will include quadrification of mesh bodies. If this is news to you, refer to this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQr20fTQS5M

Current Progress on Sheet Metal

We’re making good progress here, and there is still a lot to do. This clip starts with the sheet metal rules section within the your preferences. These rules can be copied and edited to create your own, and will be saved to your account. Further in, Patrick is showing the flange command, where you can create a flange based on a sketch, and then editing the bend radius on the fly. You can also create a face flange based on a sketch profile, an edge flange based on an edge, and a contour flange based on a path.

2D Drawings

Our 2D drawings teams have been working on updating a lot of the back-end infrastructure for a while. That work is finally wrapped up and they are now focusing on delivering much needed new features as well as enhancements to the existing drawings experience.

A handful of notable hot-ticket items the team is focusing on for release around Summer timeframe include templates, ability to have title blocks auto-populate content, keyboard shortcuts, multi-asset (exploded views + model views), and basic layer management.

Next the team will be looking at features such as custom title block and logo insert, component visibility control, hole & thread notes, symbols in text & dimensions, ordinate dimensioning, and direct printing from the drawings workspace.

Simulation

Both of these features will be available to use with cloud credits. We’re still working out the kinks how this will manifest itself within the Fusion UI, and will keep you posted on exactly what the experience is going to be like once we have the workflow more nailed down.

Cloud Simulation

Estimated for August, this will allow you to send multiple simulation jobs in parallel to the cloud and not use up your local resources to do all the computing. Winning.

Nastran + Explicit Solvers

This will enable new study types such as nonlinear and topology optimization workflows. This will be available only through cloud computation.  We’re estimating this for November timeframe.

Rendering & Visualization 

Our rendering teams continue to expand Fusion’s library of materials as well as improving the rendering experience. With local background rendering now available along-side cloud rendering, you now have a more consistent workflow, and no longer have to worry about accidentally clicking and starting your rendering all over again.
Currently when you have custom or default materials saved to your favorite materials folder, it is machine specific and doesn’t carry over when you move to another machine. Sync of favorite materials will allow it to sync up with your account so that you can access it anywhere. We’re estimating this to be available around June/Summer.

Data Management 

The May 7 update was a major stepping stone to enabling branching and merging workflows within Fusion. We’ve talked about this a lot, and now the team is working hard on getting everything sorted so that we can have the functionality ready for July timeframe.

Cues and Notifications and Connected Desktop

Two important projects we’re focusing on for the second half of the year are Cues and Notifications and Connected Desktop. Similar to how Google lets you see who is reviewing your Google Docs, Cues and Notifications will allow you to see who else is working on the design while you’re also working on it. We’re also working on a desktop folder utility (Connected Desktop) where dragging files into that folder will automatically sync it to your A360 account. Bam.

HSM

The CAM team continue to push forward on four improvements: Libraries, Probing, Turning and Multi-Axis Milling improvements.  If that isn’t enough to keep the chips flying, a collection of “quality of life” improvements have been and will continue to be woven into the updates.

Many of these are relatively trivial like the “shift” hot key to preview field names while others will set us on a path to change the way you work with CAM.

The teams are working on unifying tool dialogs to provide better filtering options, tool creation on the fly, a new Insert Position Bar that allows insert of new operations into a setup, not just at the end, and more functionality in Turning such as machine down faces, holder detection, and Sub-Spindle support (estimated for second half of the year).

4 & 5 Axis

Milling is where it gets fun. We’re working on wrapping 4 axis milling, which will allow you to use Wrap 2D contour and 2D pocket toolpaths around your part. We’re also seeing good progress on 5 axis milling, and towards the second half, we’re looking at introducing  5X Swarf, which (drives the side of the tool along part geometry using full 5 axis motion), 5X Contour, which (drives the tip of the tool across the surface of a part following a curve using full 5 axis motion), and 5X Morph (surface driven 5X toolpaths).
Concurrent to all of these projects, we have ongoing efforts around improving milling adaptive performance as well as expanding our library of stock posts. You can also expect see a tighter integration between the web library and your personal library of post processors.

ECAD / Electro-mechanical

If you partied with us at our Autodesk University get-together this past year, you may have seen a video around our ECAD integration plans (or you were probably taking advantage of the open bar, I know I was). This functionality means you can take your circuit designs from ecad.io and open them right within Fusion. We are also working integrating 123D Circuits technology into Fusion as well.

So yes, this is definitely happening, and we are making progress. Right now, the team is hashing out all the details on how to do it, and we’ll update you as we continue to make progress. We understand how valuable this functionality would be for product designers and engineers alike, and are looking forward to getting something out to you that is truly awesome.

Project Leopard

You also may have heard about our project around a browser-based version of Fusion. This is bigger than just CAD in a browser. Our goal is to make Fusion even more accessible, allowing you to design pretty much anywhere, on anything. You will be able to work on a design on the installed version of Fusion, then pack your bags, fly to the other side of the world, and sign in to your Fusion account via a web browser and pick up right where you left off. There is still a lot of work ahead, but we’re planning to open and expand access to the beta this Fall.

Thoughts? Let us know.

And that’s a wrap! We’ll reveal more details as these features start to trickle in. Let us know if this is useful and if it’s something you’d like us to continue doing on a regular basis. Would you change anything around the format of this check-in? Let us know in the comment section below, and as always, thanks for being rad.

Keqing and the Fusion Team

 A. Roadmaps are plans, not promises. We’re as excited as you to see new functionality make it into the products, but the development, release, and timing of any features or functionality remains at our sole discretion.

B. These roadmaps should not be used to make purchasing decisions.