On September 23rd, the Fusion 360 Hackathon goes live. Unlike other Hackathons, this one is slightly different in that you’ll be able to get some sleep at night. Instead of an intense few days, this one is spread out over 5 weeks with the goal of you being able to learn about the Fusion 360 API, write your custom app, and share it with others via the Autodesk App Store. Plus, if you submit your app by October 30th you’ll get $500!

You can learn all the details about the Hackathon and sign up on the official Fusion 360 Hackathon site. Even if you don’t have an idea for an app, this is a great chance to learn about the API and get started writing your own utilities. The Hackathon will consist of several presentations and also scheduled time where you can get help with your specific issues.

Learning more about the API is a great way to better understand the internals of Fusion and how it works, which can help you in your day-to-day use of Fusion. The API also allows you to do things that you wouldn’t consider doing interactively because of how tedious the work would be. Plus, it’s really fun!

For example, here’s a design Brian Ekins, an Autodesk Principal Developer Consultanst has been working on. It’s nothing special as far as features in that’s it just a bunch of combine features, but positioning the tool bodies like this would not be fun through the user interface. Once the program was written now it’s just a matter of a couple of minutes to run the program to generate this geometry.

We look forward to you joining the Hackathon and showing off your Fusion 360 skills!