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Originally posted by schneik on ‎‎01-08-2016 08:36 PM

First off, happy holidays and a warm welcome to all the new Fusion 360 community participants.  There are more joining each week than ever before.  With all the new faces, and as we enter the New Year, it’s a great time to check in and review Fusion 360’s direction.

We continue to focus on solving three strategic problems…

Explore and iterate on product ideas quickly from concept to production

• Explore designs faster
• Integrated form, function and fabrication experience with no loss of digital data from concept to production
• Democratize design and manufacturing

Enable project teams and stakeholders to collaborate effectively in the product development process

• Assemble and manage virtual project teams without overhead
• Easily manage, access and share data from anywhere, anytime

Reduce the barrier to entry for a new generation of designers and engineers

• Reduce cognitive overload and learning curve
• Support for any device

We hope you agree that we’ve made improvements on all of the above and more.  Just in the last weeks and months, significant improvements arrived in our ongoing updates.

• There is the new, easier to use A360 Web UI for managing data. This makes it easier than ever to stay connected.
• In September, we added the first of the strength testing and validation tools to simulate the performance of your designs. This completely integrated experience makes Simulation another workspace in your toolbox. (Integrated)
• In November…
• We continue to work on stability, performance and usability

Many of you are eager for an a look at what will be coming, so now is a great time to update our look ahead on projects we’re working on.  Some of these will be delivered in the coming weeks and months, some will take a little longer, but are well under way. This is not a comprehensive list, just highlights we know many are keen to see and hear more about.

Design and Modeling

• Clean up and repair triangle mesh data with a new Mesh Modeling Workspace
• Design straight break Sheetmetal and document the flat pattern
• Productivity and Performance
• Avoid unwanted changes in your form’s shape by Freezing T-Splines faces so they do not change
• Measure improvements to display of results and snapping
• Mirror components to easily create left and right hand parts.
• Deep update to make it easier to update distributed designs

Drawings

A continual focus on drawings to round out the tool necessary to create fabrication drawings this includes but is not limited to :

• Text Formatting
• Annotation types like surface texture and weld symbols
• Finer level of control on annotation formatting
• Additional view types and display of threads
• Spline leaders and title block visibility controls for Patent Drawings
• Multiple Sheets

Simulation

• Cloud SIM preview allowing you to use grid computing to solve multiple studies in parallel without tying up your local client.
• New validation types to ensure your product’s function correctly under thermal conditions. This includes thermal studies and mixed thermal+stress

Visualization

• Local Background rendering
• Improved access to cloud rendering tools
• Sync of favorite materials across machines

Data Management / Collaboration

• Branching and Merge allowing teams to significantly expand their ability to design and iterate and easily manage the design data.
• Improved Upload experience
• Enhanced comment workflows across web/mobile/desktop client making it easier to capture issued and document design decisions
• Share Enhancements that provide the ability to Pin Version and expire a share link.  This makes it easier to share with confidence the right data with external collaborators.
• User Permissions improvements on items and folders

New ECAD Integration

• IDF Import enables you to integrate ECAD data into your projects and reference into your designs.
• Electrical parts substitution on IDF import allows simplified IDF data to be represented in much higher detail using 3D parts

CAM

• Probing improves
• Tool library enhancements

Learning

• More lessons on how to master Fusion 360
• In context learning within the product
• Better error handling and solution options
• Streamlined help and support experience from in-product as well as on the web

Please remember this only a sampling of interesting projects. There is a lot more going on so don’t assume the worst if you see something missing. As always we will post a What’s New to the Design Differently blog with each update that includes more detail.

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