CAD and CAM tools are fairly complex, and we believe that a successful user experience is one that helps you quickly and painlessly master them—no matter what kind of CAD and CAM experience you have.

The Fusion 360 Learning Experience (LX) team is here to help you do that. We keep an ear open for the kinds of challenges you’re having when you use the software, and we have a keen interest in hearing about what you need that you’re not getting enough of. So the things you’ve been telling us about in forums and surveys, help article feedback and usability sessions are coming across loud and clear.

Here are four recent themes that stand out:

• Why Fusion 360: What’s the rationale behind our unified design-to-fabrication experience, and how should you design differently as a result?
• Show us how to be successful: Coming from another environments like SolidWorks, you need well-laid-out guidelines and workflows for sketching and building joints and assemblies, to name a couple of things.
• What are things called in Fusion 360? A visual glossary would help explain key terms and what they mean in different contexts.
• Error messages: Explain the why of the error and not just the what—for example, “you can’t fillet that edge because *this* corner is too close to *this* surface”.

In the coming weeks and months, these are exactly the things that the LX team will create for the community.

In Fusion 360, we’ve done things a little differently from other CAD programs. For our June 20 update, we’re collaborating with SolidProfessor on a series of videos on the top 10 things SolidWorks users need to know about Fusion. The goal of these videos is to explain key concepts in Fusion 360 and spell out how you can be successful with these new workflows. 

Some of the topics that we’ll cover include:

• Fusion 360’s unified design-to-fabrication experience
• Sketching techniques and sketch constraints
• How and why to use joints to create assemblies
• When to take advantage of direct modeling in a parametric space
• Sharing designs and collaborating on projects in product, on the web, and via mobile

In July we’ll begin to add learning modules that allow you to put the concepts into practice with real-world design problems, then reinforce your approaches with videos where Fusion 360 experts solve the same problems using recommended best practices.

In addition to the SolidProfessor work, starting on June 20th you’ll start to see the results of a multi-phase project to improve our online learning experience. We’ll be increasing the quality and depth of our content, improving discoverability, providing content in formats that support a variety of learning modes, and updating the navigation and look-and-feel of the website.

You’ll see learning improvements inside of Fusion 360 as well.  We’ve added imagery to tooltips, provided tips & tricks inside of command palettes, and updated our in-product tutorials.

In the coming months we’ll build a visual glossary of terms, and inside the software beef up error messages with info on how to resolve the issues you’re having. Beyond that, we’re working on material for medium to advanced-level users to help you develop a sense of mastery with Fusion360.

As always, the Fusion community is the place we come for inspiration and to understand the real–world problems you’re trying to solve.

So—just like you request product functionality on IdeaStation—let us know what kinds of learning content will help you succeed in your design projects. We’re excited about building a learning experience that makes it easy for you to get the most out of the Fusion 360 experience overall.

As we continue to release this new learning content, we’d love to get your feedback.