Today I Learned - about Fusion -

[jz79]

I just checked with the laptop, and now, if I have Fusion open on the home PC, then start it on the laptop, an option is given to suspend the older session on the other computer and allow you to run Fusion on the current one, but it wasn't like that a while ago, I distinctly remember having to go to the other pc and close Fusion so I could run it on the other one, and that still doesn't help if the internet is down, no luck for you then

They could in theory make something like a HASP key option, so that you could stick something in the offline thing to allow it to start the app up, but I'm going to guess that it never is going to happen, since Fusion is oh so integrated into the cloud and meant to run in online mode, sort of true for the "advanced" features, so perhaps the "offline" people are the minority and simply not worth the effort to fix these things

edit: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/supp...n-Fusion-360-without-internet-connection.html this suggests that one should be able to start it without internet, but none of the 3 pcs I tried it on can do that, you can update it to latest version, login, work, log out, pull the ethernet cable out, and when trying to start Fusion it will tell me that I need internet connection and no option to start in offline mode
and nah, I'm not going to contact support over it, very rarely do I ever run out of hardline internet, and if I do, I can use phone to get online over cellular

 

[Oldwrench]

Too bad you can't just own the disks and not need the effing cloud. Didn't $11BN worth of crypto accounts just go missing from there?

 

[jz79]

here is another gem:
NOTICE: Important OS support information after March 2023

After the March 2023 product update, Fusion 360 will no longer fully support the OS versions listed below:

• Windows 8.1
• Windows 10 (Version 1803 or older)
• macOS 10.15 (Catalina)

-------------------------

Mind you Microsoft is supporting W10 till 2025 at least, and these people decided to drop support for it 2 years prior, that is a really screwed up thing... might be a really good reason to start making some noise about it

Now my machine is I7 6700, DDR4 ram, RTX 3080, and it isn't compatible with W11 due to CPU or motherboard, I can't recall, and now I need to get a new cpu/mobo to be able to run Fusion, because they won't support W10 in less than half a year

edit: I really have to go get some sleep, since can't read properly, support is dropped for 1803 and older versions of W10, not more recent, so not all that bad

 

[Oldwrench]

After the March 2023 product update, Fusion 360 will no longer fully support...

I've posted this before.
If you like (which assumes you are adept at using) your software, and want to keep using it without interruption, dedicate a computer with a compatible OS to it and air-gap it from the internet. If the software doesn't exist in disk form, try to obtain a version that does.

You will have to forget the hype about each year's "upgrade" being an improvement (it isn't, really). Anything worthwhile that hasn't gone to the subscription-only business model will have been available in earlier years on disk with a hasp or dongle. I purchased mine to the tune of almost $29K and kept up with the maintenance subscription until they would no longer support my version, at which point continuing to pay them was pointless. The rep told me that if my hasp ever burned out I'd have to pay for every missed year in order to get the new version, and as it was no longer available on disk I'd have to download it. Which also meant all further use of it would be over the cloud. Being old-fashioned and leery of the cloud (which seems uncomfortably out of my control compared to my very own hard drive inside these walls) I declined. Instead, I had a duplicate computer built with the same OS, and duplicates of all my important design and publishing software installed on it. For the hasp, I just found somebody in Istanbul to burn a duplicate, which works flawlessly.

Now the above is technically a violation of the original user agreement, BUT the pricks unilaterally discontinued support of the software, the use of which I paid for, with the good-faith expectation of having the use of it in perpertuity, so forgive me for not feeling guilty. I also feel no pressure to upgrade each year to a version whose only apparent change is to the icons and drop-down menus, which wastes my time until I learn it—just in time to be inconvenienced by the next version.

OK, rant over. But complaining about your design software is not a solutionless problem.

 

[Mud]

I just found somebody in Istanbul to burn a duplicate,

How did you do that, do you have to ship the dongle to them or is it done over the www? I'm in the same boat with a single seat of a program that I can't replace.

 

[Oldwrench]

How did you do that, do you have to ship the dongle to them or is it done over the www? I'm in the same boat with a single seat of a program that I can't replace.

Emailed them the number they asked for, they checked and said, yeah they can burn that. Sent a wire transfer for $1000. Came FedEx with instructions for booting up. Worked flawlessly. Process took about 3 days total.

 

[Oldwrench]

Don't have the contact's name but it was probably vipdongle.com. There's also donglecopy.com or sentineldongle.com. Basically all are filling an apparently growing need in industry. The one I used is in a part of the world where the policies of US software companies don't frighten anybody.

 

[Mud]

Emailed them the number they asked for,

Is that something on the outside of the dongle, or do you read the dongle somehow?

 

[Oldwrench]

They will tell you what to read

 

[Oldwrench]

Still had the shipping envelope...

 

[Pattnmaker]

We have been using Fusion a little bit the last few months to program our new 5 axis router and as I am getting used to it both I and the one guy working for me that toolpaths are liking it better than HSMworks for toolpathing. I got 3 seats 2 with the manufacturing extensions and that's around what I would be paying for maintenance for 1 seat of the other options we were looking at. All our HSMWorks posts should work for our 3 3 axis machines and the post changes for the 5 axis from the stock post cost me a couple of hundred bucks. I think I was quoted $5000 for the 5 axis post and a couple thousand for each post for the 3 axis for one of the other software packages we looked at.

BUT for modelling I absolutely HATE it. I will be honest we need to spend some time to learn it. Purely learning time not trying to get a job out time. We use Solidworks for our modelling now and model some tricky shaped parts. We extensively use multi body parts that then are derived into other parts to create cope and drag patterns from the parts as well as coreboxes. So far I even in just creating stock and confinement geometry what takes me seconds to do in Solidworks takes much longer particularly in creating parts related to existing parts.

Is this just me and the fact we have not put the time in yet? I want to like Fusion and we love the associativity we have in Solidworks Hsmworks. I want the same with Fusion and this is why we are still using HSMworks for 3 axis.

We usually have to heavily modify customers models (adding draft) being able to simplify their models easily like lots of the online videos show. So hopefully its just a learning curve.

 

[Oldwrench]

Is this just me

No, it's not just you. Even high-end manufacturing software like M'cam won't model anywhere near as easily and efficiently as Solid Works. I started SW in 2001 and it has been worth every nickel. Making cope and drag models and coreboxes is great, even though they don't publish any tutorials on foundry tooling. All their examples are aimed at moldmaking, which is a different animal. Guess their people can't visualize anything not made of plastic.

I'd stick with doing your 3D modeling in SW and just make sure your postprocessing can use it. By now I don't imagine there's any CAM that doesn't use SW models...

 

[jz79]

Is this just me and the fact we have not put the time in yet?

Fusion has some pretty retarded quirks on the modeling side, sometimes I can come up with excuse to it being that way, but mostly it seems they just intentionally make it a different way than how SW does it

about the only good thing on the modeling side I can think of is the previously mentioned ability to just delete chamfers and fillets, but on the other side of that scale is the mating system, which makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever, and I really tried to understand how it works and just gave up, haven't touched it for over a year, maybe it has improved since, but I don't feel like trying and getting frustrated and disappointed in it again

and why, when you upload a STEP or parasolid and start working on it, it doesn't capture design history by default, is just beyond me, why the almost always useful function has to be turned on every single time...

 

[Vancbiker]

So much depends on familiarity. I model most of the time in NX and occasionally in SW. I find NX easier than SW. I expect that If I spent more time in SW and less in NX, the preference would reverse.

 

[Pattnmaker]

One thing we do all the time in sw is to relate a sketch to another body making it culinary or coincident. In fusion when doing that sort of thing if the other feature is on another plane it was turning the sketch into a 3d sketch and we couldn't get the sketch to stay 2d as we wanted it to. I wonder if learning Fusion would actually be easier without knowing SW.

I really miss the design tree and being able to easily track and modify features of the tree as the whole basis of the software.

I really need to try out NX but the quote the local reseller quoted me for just the cad alone was close to 3 times what I have heard guys talk about for a 3d cam seat at the other site. I can't afford around $120,000 for 2 seats of cad and cam.

I have to spend some time with my Autodesk reseller for some training as he tells me there's a way to made fusion associative with a SW file. If that works as he says we'll probably fully transition to fusion for cam while modeling in SW. That being said no way I will get rid of my perpetual license seat of hsmworks.

 

[Mud]

I have to spend some time with my Autodesk reseller for some training as he tells me there's a way to made fusion associative with a SW file. If that works as he says we'll probably fully transition to fusion for cam while modeling in SW.

I'd REALLY like to know about that. I design in Solid Edge, and I'm converting to Fusion for CAM, fusion imports native SE solids, I've been looking for some hint of associativity.

 

[Mud]

and why, when you upload a STEP or parasolid and start working on it, it doesn't capture design history by default, is just beyond me, why the almost always useful function has to be turned on every single time...

That is really unnecessarily dumb. We should at least be able to make it a default somehow. I had to dig through forums just to find out that it existed and could be turned on.

I agree with you that the modeling is full bozo. Even editing sketches seems completley unintuitive (at least to me), to the point I usually quit.

A current frustration in CAM is that there's no provision for inserting a rapid move. Trying to create a move for a bar puller requires fingercam according to autodesk.

 

[jz79]

those Fusion UI "developers" need some serious trout slapping done to them, first they remove the useful +/- buttons from UI because of clutter and whatnot, and then they introduce these stupid icons in CAM menu windows... I mean, who decided that this is an actual UI improvement... introduce a useless tiny icon, it is 4mm tall on my screen, and it pushes the text out of the window...

 

[jz79]

another Fusion update and another disappointment, thankfully someone came up with a quick fix

in short - 5mm endmill ramping and doing a 2d contour of a 6mm hole stopped generating a toolpath. 8mm endmill started generating ramp toolpaths for 9.6mm holes and larger
solution - click and select an entry path to one of the features you're trying to do and Fusion will generate a toolpath

quite odd that that particular option made it work, I wonder how heavily they at AD are using GPT-3 to produce the code for their software...

link to AD forum topic discussing this - https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusi...-toolpath-any-more-since/m-p/11681251#M132815

 

[Mud]

I discovered I can load more than one version of a solid into Fusion at one time. I insert a model (body) into a new file and start programming on it. Then I can insert another model into the same file and program on that one. For example I can load a model with chamfers and one model without chamfers. (fusion chamfer toolpath is buggy, this can help). As long as I don't move the models they have the same XYZ origin. I can turn one on and one off as desired. The toolpath is undisturbed when a model is turned off. I often program while still designing so things change frequently. This isn't associativity but is almost as good. I have one file with 4 bodies inserted ATM, has active toolpaths created from all 4 bodies. Doesn't seem to slow anything down, and with storage on AD's cloud I don't care about file size. In my case I'm inserting Solid Edge solids, I'm sure this would work with fusion solids as well.