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It’s been awhile since Mike Prom (and his newborn baby, now a lot bigger!) updated us on how the IdeaStation is going, so I’ve taken the liberty to do it this time around. With the new process in place, we’ve been reading through many of your highly voted ideas, discussing as a team, leaving our comments, and marking them with the appropriate status. 

Balancing Problem Vs. Solution

When we review ideas, we tend to focus more on the problem that you are pointing out, rather than just the proposed solution. Why? Because Jump to Conclusions Mat. But seriously, it prevents us from jumping into a specific design experience that may not be the best when taking into account the overall direction of the product and it’s experience. I’m not saying that we don’t consider your idea for a solution though, some of your suggestions are incredibly creative and that’s the power of crowd sourcing ideas!  We evaluate each one and lay all options on the table to make sure whichever one we choose, we are providing the best solution.

Let’s see what we’ve accomplished in the past 3 months.

33 Ideas have been marked as Implemented

Some of these ideas are older ideas that we’ve just marked as implemented, and some are new ones that just got released. Others may have been implemented as a similar variation or as a first phase of a multi-phase project but solves the same problem.

Drawing Layouts	Unify WWW & APP Profile information	Slow down the default RPMs
Offset on Rectangle	Explode and Assemble	Boolean or combine selections
Remove Arrowhead on leader option in 2D Drawings	Better versioning and fewer auto saved versions	Intelligent Snap points
Sculpt > Collapse	Make orbit manipulation as easy as possible	Export to .obj
2D Drawing Association	Remove the “always save on close” option from the close dialog	Add support or library for 8020 products
Guide Geometry in Sketches	Add a save feature to Print Studio	Elliptical radius option in the Fillet tool
Group elements in timeline	Create a drawing problem	Drawings symbols
IdeaStation SSL issue	Plane at an angle bug	Texture shading
Shortcut for 3D Orbit	Make command like revolve work along surface edges, not only faces	Sweep with multiple rails or centerline(s)
Design Aspects Hierarchies	Cloud Sync upload deltas and in reverse chronological order	Mesh tools testing group
Control point spline	Custom drawing title block	Make orbit manipulation as easy as possible

17 Ideas have been Accepted

These ideas are now part of a project that our development teams are working on, or are already being worked on as a slightly different variation, yet still solving the same problem. Many of these are coming in the next few updates, or at least within the next 6 months. Woohoo!

Import SVG file at the same size as in Illustrator	Add “to next” for extrude extents	Lock file or mark as read only
Save, Don’t Save, and Cancel on closing a design	Rotate view on drawing sheet	Add other contact types in simulation models
Shape generator	Cam ability to set a post processor default	Break all subsequent links and selected links
Center of Gravity and Center of Moments	STL import unit selection	Remove 3D print from toolbar
Better drawing function	Support insert and copy between projects	No limit to zoom in
Measure an arc radius	Select edges by selecting a face

42 Ideas are Future Considerations

We’ve all done this. We’ve all said it, at some point, when we find something missing in a piece of software.

“It would literally take them 5 minutes to do”.

Sure, there are things that we can just knock out and get on with our lives, yet many times it’s not as easy as it looks. Changes in software development need to be prioritized against other work in the backlog, and may have to bump other important work down depending on it’s own importance. This takes time, not to mention the research (if needed), development, testing, and integration that follows.

Custom Shortcut keys have been a popular idea that we see come up every now and then. We love this idea, and trust me, I want this as bad as you do. This project is in our backlog, however we’re not confident enough to give a time estimate on when it’s coming yet.

Using multiple sketches as a single Splitting Tool has been getting lots of votes, and why not? It’s a great idea. We have this prioritized on our back log and will keep you all updated on its progress.

Pressing ESC to stock current tasks would be tremendous, we couldn’t agree more. Good news is that we have been working on providing the ability to interrupt compute.  Unfortunately, it’s proven to be a rather large task.  We’re implementing some core framework changes that should make this possible, but we’re not yet close enough to provide a date.

The ability to sort and group features in browser folders have a ton of votes, and we agree, we need this. This is in our backlog as we are currently working on building browser folders.

With this context, here are the other great ideas that we would love to do, and are considering for future updates.

Accessible user parameters for linked assemblies and components	Custom shortcut map keys	Don’t allow duplicate filenames in the same folder
Allow sorting and grouping folders in the browser	Importing AI and PDF files for sketches	Allow 2 tangent circle to use arcs/circles for tangents
Correct gear generator	Dockable Usable Parameter	Surface continuity options for Loft surfaces
Belt generator	Dogbone fillet feature	Keyboard shortcuts contextual
Splitting tool to support several sketch elements	Lay flat multiple selected faces for export to dxf laser cutting	Boost stl and obj quad conversion
Better loft profile options	Dual units	A more professional material library
Aerodynamic simulation wind tunnel	Add arc length to radius dimension options	2D drawings create interruptions and breaks in dimension lines
Tool-path trimming	Tangent joint	Fillet blend
UI customization	Add ability to define user defined parameters on the fly	Clockwise strategy to remove unnecessary retract movements for adaptive clearing
Surface continuity improvements	Join line/curve segments into a single entity in sketch	Curved Slider Joint
Use stock from previous operation in new setup	Add advanced materials for Simulation	Drawing broken view for long parts
Engineering toolbox for calculation and automatic part	Ability to stop current tasks	Ability to leave parameters window open while working
Color choices for interface	Change order of user parameters	Better tools to add edge loops to T-Splines
Joints to constrain animations	Show what referenced designs will be deleted

We have 370+ Ideas Implemented thanks to you! 

“When you do something right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all” – God from Futurama.

I’m a firm believer of that quote (also a huge Futurama fan). There are times it may not seem like we did much in a given update, but rest assured, there are tons of fixes and improvements that happen behind the scenes. We want you to have the latest, while having it be better, faster, and more stable. We will continue to implement ideas and this number will only get higher and higher. Thanks for being such an awesome community! Upward and onward!

Keqing and the Fusion 360 Team