Keqing Song
Elevate your design and manufacturing processes with Autodesk Fusion
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This month officially marks 10 years of Autodesk Fusion, and there’s nothing we’d rather do than celebrate our anniversary with you—our amazing community of users.
A decade ago, we recognized the challenges you had to overcome when choosing software to get your work done. You were working with disconnected, overly complicated tools that were hard to use and too expensive to maintain. That’s why we set out on a mission to give you tools for product development that are easier to use, accessible to all, and most importantly, built on a single platform where your data can move seamlessly throughout the full product development lifecycle.
Fast forward 10 years, and as it stands today, Autodesk Fusion is not just PDM or PLM. It’s not just CAD or CAM. It’s all of them at once. Plus, it’s simulation, documentation, rendering, and electronics. We brought all of these tools together under one platform, powered by the cloud. Fusion is a democratization of technology that solves complex design and manufacturing problems yet is easy to use, easy to integrate, and keeps everyone in the loop as changes and iterations occur.
This mission has been the core of what we do for the past 10 years and continues to drive us to push the Autodesk Fusion platform forward. As we celebrate 10 years of Fusion, it’s really you, our customers, who we ought to be celebrating. Without you, none of this would have happened. This post is an ode to you—our amazing community of users.
Your work inspires us
I am fortunate enough to have been a part of Fusion’s journey for the entirety of its 10 years. As I look back at all the wonderful work Fusion has enabled you to accomplish, I find myself in absolute jaw-dropping awe at the sheer diversity of people, industries, and products represented through our community.
You’ve used Fusion to 3D-print artery models so doctors can learn how to perform surgery on blood vessels without practicing on animals. You’ve designed custom prosthetic limbs that make children feel like superheroes.
You’ve enlisted generative design to create lighter-weight parts for more precise CNC machine tools that use less energy. And you’ve even figured out how to bring rocks from Mars back to Earth.
When there was a shortage of ventilators for those struck with COVID-19, you put your minds together and collaborated around the world to develop low-cost, 3D printable ventilators for those in need.
You’ve used it to build a bespoke, mid-engine, methanol-breathing, 1,400 horsepower, all-wheel drive hill climber. With advanced machining features and integration with our partners like Haas Automation, you used it to make NASCAR racecar parts, outgrowing your home garage and moving into your first commercial space.
You’ve even used our free access for educators to prepare the next generation of engineers, designers, and machinists for rapidly evolving industries.
These are just a few examples among the countless stories that you’ve shared with us over the years, and you continue to inspire us with your work every day. For that, we thank you.
Thank you, content creators
We also want to recognize a special group of storytellers: our content creator community. When Fusion was still in its infancy, there was next to no learning content available outside of our own. 10 years later, we see so many of you sharing your Fusion projects, stories, and tutorials with the world. Your passion for what you do has naturally resonated with your viewers and has helped the Fusion community grow into what it is today.
Whether you’re just starting out on your YouTube journey, or you’re running an Instagram page with thousands of followers, know that your voice has more reach than ever before and that we appreciate your efforts in making Fusion that much more accessible to everyone. You’ve played a huge role in educating and inspiring existing and future users.
To celebrate, we’ve invited a number of you to join us on a special 10-year anniversary compilation video talking about your own experiences with Fusion:
The future is bright for Fusion
Today, you’re a community of 1.3 million users. If you’ve been with us for a while, then you probably already know that we continuously update Fusion 360 at a rapid pace and that it’s now miles ahead of the tool we first rolled out. As we always like to say: If you haven’t seen Fusion lately, you haven’t seen it at all.
The future is bright for Fusion, and we’re pushing it further, evolving it into its best form yet. As I mentioned in our recent roadmap update blog post, we are working towards our vision of the Autodesk Fusion Industry Cloud; the open and extensible platform for design and manufacturing. It connects data and people across the entire product development lifecycle, from top floor to shop floor, throughout your organization and ecosystem. It will deliver a true end-to-end workflow, from idea to 3D modeling to manufacturing.
To help us get there, we’ve been delivering projects in three major areas this year: Unify Workflows, Connect Cloud Data, and Increase Quality and Automation. We rolled out experiences like configurations and drastically improved modeling performance for large assemblies. The team doubled down on quality and usability in the Electronics workspace and introduced Geodesic and Advanced Swarf capabilities to the Manufacture workspace. We also shipped native Apple Silicon support, improving how Fusion runs and performs on M1/M2 Apple machines.
These are only a few examples of what is currently available to you, and we’re only scratching the surface of what’s to come. Thank you for being with us for the past 10 years. You’re not done designing and making a better future, and neither are we. So, let’s keep doing this together—now and always.