promm
June 30, 2016
9 min read
The baby in this meme is Gabriel, actual son of Mike Prom, Fusion 360 Product Manager
We say this a lot but it’s true: Fusion 360 would not be where it is today if it weren’t for you, the Fusion user. You are the pioneers of the new CAD/product development frontier. From day 1, we set out to build a tool that has it’s community of users as a core pillar of how it should evolve. A huge source of what drives us to develop this piece of software is seeing the jaw-dropping projects you create with it. There is a constant buzz in the office about your projects we stumble upon in the forums, email exchanges, customer visits or phone calls. Fusion’s development is all about transparency, and its evolution can be attributed to all the feedback you’ve been giving us.
Many of you who have been participating in the IdeaStation for years (and a nod to Claas for winning an award at AU last year) have seen how effective and powerful the platform can be. It gives you a place to articulate your idea for a feature enhancement or new feature, share it with the broader community, get their feedback, and hopefully, their support by votes! The more community interest it has, the higher it ranks, and the more likely it is to be considered by the product team as something we should implement. It’s important to note that while these ideas have a strong influence on the product roadmap (as evident in the What’s New for each update), it’s not the only source of input, and not all ideas are created equal in terms of investment required, resourcing, technical feasibility, or alignment with our strategic direction. Also, don’t be surprised if your older ideas or ones with lower votes are cherry picked from time to time, we love to use these as a source of inspiration for projects that come up.
Okay, let’s be clear: the IdeaStation is not a black hole, and we have the data to prove it. Over the last year, submissions to the IdeaStation have more than doubled, and voting activity is at an all time high. We get why some of you felt that way though, because despite our best effort to review every idea that hit 10 votes, we simply couldn’t keep up, and weren’t giving the highest rated ideas the attention they deserve, nor being open with you about which ones we were reviewing (that meme is how we felt, not that it’s a bad thing).
So yeah, we’ve heard your frustrations, and we are officially rolling out a new process, explained in detail here. In short, the product team is meeting twice a week to review the highest voted ideas in Gathering Support, following-up on ideas that were previously Accepted, and ensuring all ideas have been officially captured in our backlog and appropriately ranked.
Once a month we’ll also publish the ideas we reviewed and provide notes on the reasoning for the status change (for more details and discussion click through to the idea itself). With each product update we release, we’ll also capture ideas that have been implemented in the What’s New and give credit where credit is due!
Now on to the good stuff… below is the report from our first month after following the new process. On behalf of the entire Fusion 360 team, our sincere appreciation for all of the enthusiasm, creativity and passion you share!
Tip: click on the lightbulbs to see the original idea page.
Conflicting Constraints Sketch Pallette Render Plywood Drawing Template Edit Referenced Models Selection Highlighting Edit Sketch Zoom CAM Default Settings
Make Sketch Visible Measure Preselected Orbit around center of volume Tool Tip Dialog
Sync Cache This is something that we’d like to support, but it isn’t among our top priorities. Moving this to future consideration for now.
XYZ TriadThere are two solutions that we are considering
Project Copy and PasteWe get this pain-point, and the current is a result of our software architecture. This is definitely something we are planning to solve in future releases and what we need to do internally to make it happen.
3D Sketch EnhancementsWe have plans to add 3D constraints and dimensioning to 3D sketch capabilities. Our team is working on getting fully constrained out of preview and a few core sketch requirements before we can start on this.
CV’sWe have a team on our solver side that is working on CV’s. Once they are done our sketch team will start work on implementing CV’s.
Arc TangentThe work has been prioritized in our sketch backlog, but is a ways out.
Emboss Feature I have a question for the people on this idea. There are two solutions we can explore: 1. Emboss, where your wrap an image around a face 2. Wrap to face, this is different in that you could wrap a sketch around and object, such as a cylinder multiple times.
TABWe definitely agree with the need a faster method to toggle between selection inputs, but the Tab key is currently used to toggle between input values in the canvas, and may not be the best answer. We’ll discuss solutions and follow up with a solution
GridThis one IS on our radar, but we have different opinions on a solution internally that we are working through.
Metric ThreadWe have several thread on hole suggestions at the top of our most voted list. This idea is being changed to future consideration, so that it can be evaluated during our plan to improve the hole and thread features later this year.
Advanced NestingNesting as mentioned in the comments, is technology we own “Trunest”. We are exploring how we can leverage the technology we have to complete the Fusion design to manufacturing workflow.
PCB as MaterialRoberto’s suggestion makes the most sense here. We are creating connections to ECAD so that actual 3D PCB boards will be brought in to Fusion.
Timeline Pause / Stop ButtonThis is a great idea, and is captured in our backlog. That said, considering other priorities, we can’t presently commit to starting on this task. Marking this as Future Consideration for now.
4K Monitor We have architectural upgrades that we are in the process of doing that this is dependent on. Our icons are images and changing screen resolution requires images for each options.
Max FilletLater this year we’re exploring enhancements to Fillets and Chamfers; this will be included in those enhancement. In the meantime, Mike Aubry created a Max Fillet script that will help you find the maximum fillet value for an edge.
Sketch ChamferAlthough it is a great idea, the amount of time it will be before we get to it is the reason why the idea is being changed to Future Consideration.
Uninstall ToolQuick update, we are investigating a couple of options and potentially improving the actual uninstall process so that it gives you an option to do a clean un-install right off the bat.
CAM Errors and WarningsWhen given the choice to make things “just work” or document why they don’t. we focus on making them work. If they can’t work and we know why, we would limit the selection so that a user does not end up in the situation.
DWG InsertThis is not as simple as it may sound, the translator to do this locally is large. We are exploring our options to make the workflow seamless.
Joint Position ParametersWhile this is a good idea it will be awhile before we get to this. Because of this the idea is being changed to future consideration.
Browser Folder SortingWe have browser folders in our backlog and since it has more votes we will be building browser folders first and this is why the idea is being changed to future consideration.
Belts, Pulley’s and ChainsDue to resources and other architectural dependencies it will be a while before we can work on this.
Keep Sketch OpenWe can’t make any commitments to time frame when this will get implemented or that it will be implemented exactly as you’ve proposed, but we will look for a solution that handles these types of scenarios more gracefully than we currently do.
Local translate vs Cloud translateWeldmentsThis is a very large project for the team and with our current roadmap it will be years before we explore our options. At this time, we will revisit your idea.
Simultaneous symmetric sketchThis would be a really nice feature, however, we feel that improving the symmetry and patterning, as @roambotics_scott suggests, are more impactful areas to concentrate on at this time for our sketching environment.
Versioning system We understand what you are asking for in terms of Revisions but fundamentally Versions and Revisions are different.
Wire and cable harnessThis is a very large project for the team and with our current roadmap it will be years before we explore our options. At this time, we will revisit your idea.
KnurlingWe archived this because machining a knurling is machined using a specific tool and modeling the knurl can manually be created
Share Design We are working on the ability to have permissions on projects, folders and files. Limiting access to users when people share files. The legal requests that you have in the idea are up to the customer to control and it would be very difficult to automatically regulate.
Frame generatorThis is a very large project for the team and with our current roadmap it will be years before we explore our options. At this time, we will revisit your idea.
Degrees of FreedomThis is something that we find that many users traditionally drag what can be moved to see how it will move along with fully constrained feedback. Once fully constrained is out, we will evaluate if more feedback to users is needed.
That’s it for this month! What are your thoughts? Do you like to see more of these posts? Are they helpful? Let us know in the comment section below, and we’ll keep you posted on the next one!
Mike Prom and the Fusion 360 Team
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