Anyone use fusion360?

Hi, does anyone here use fusion360? I mostly works on consumer products and what interests me is their subscription price model, I know their tools are below solidworks but if its quite close enough, I’m willing to compromise. Look forward for your thoughts,pro and cons, what I should consider. Thanks

We have been using it for the last 2 years. The support from Autodesk has been great. The combination of solid works like tools and rhino like tools makes it useful, as does the rendering right in the platform. The biggest positive for me personally has been the cloud capabilities. When I’m traveling and someone updates a CAD file, I get a notification as soon as it is saved (assuming you have a shared folder) and can open it on my phone or laptop while on the go, annotate, and save back. A couple of clients have started using it as well.

As far as workflow, typically we are getting a STEP from the client with internals which comes in fine, building our parts around that, and shipping them back a STEP. It hasn’t been an issue, but we don’t go past design intent CAD. Prototypes are machined and printed from it, but not tooling.

I’ve been messing around with it for about 2 years now. Wanted a more accurate version of SketchUp, but without the cost of Solidworks. I do like it, and I like how “lightweight” it feels. However, with that “lightweight” feel, I don’t have as many features I did enjoy in Solidworks. Sheetmetal tools, specifically, is still in it’s early stages in Fusion. (Which is odd because Autodesk Inventor is a pretty powerful tool that the developers conceivably have access to…)

I’ve used the CAM functions once or twice. That’s really where I was impressed, actually. I needed a specific post processor for a slightly obscure CNC router table, and the Fusion team was able to find one for me and test things out. That was surprising, to say the least. All SW ever did was try to sell me add-on modules for CAM work…

I tried it, really wanted to like it and use it more, but when push came to shove came to holy-crap-I’m-gonna-be-late I went back to SolidWorks. It has a lot of promise and sounds like a lot of internal support at Autodesk. Plus if I ever “had” to go on my own, no way am I paying Dassault whatever SW costs. Glad to hear its working for professional people, not just students. Will give it another shot (in between also trying to learn Sketch and XD).

is there any case where your cad modeling is limited by the tools fusion offered? I don’t want to compromise my design intention with the tools offered so I should put that in mind.
Also, what the best tools you enjoy in fusion compare to your previous cad software?

I have been occasionally stepping into Fusion360 for the past few months and wrote a few courses on it as well.
With its different workspaces including mesh editing tools and simulation, its cloud capabilities and generative design it is well-geared towards the era of Digital Manufacturing. Its modeling environment is basically a simplified Solidworks in a new outfit. Even the design history timeline is there. For basic modeling it works well, but when it comes to more precise curvature controls, SolidWorks remains superior. As a whole it feels very beta.

What do you know, my millenium post!

Good questions. Seems a lot like the questions I was asking around 1997 when another “new” program came out (that was not quite as powerful as ProE. yet less expensive and better UI). As some of you know, I started with SW on 97Plus. Almost 5 years ago, I joined Autodesk on their Education team helping Colleges use Fusion 360. More recently, I joined a team that supports Fusion360 Customers. Happy to help if anyone has questions or would like direction on how to kick start Fusion. As a long time SW guy, I know there is a transition period. Please reach out if I can help, that is what my team does.
Jeff

I’ve been using it regularly for the past month or so. I’m pro-level with solidworks. I haven’t dared to attempt swoopy surface parts, just blocky engineering type parts. What I like/don’t like:

What I like:
The whole region select thing, just click a face and extrude it. Super easy, no sketches, etc.

What I don’t like:
Limited extrusion settings: (ie. extrude along a vector, thin extrusion, inability to override the region-select, finickyness with through-all extrusions, etc. I find I do a lot of clicking vs Solidworks, even for parts that I thought are simple extrusiony-engineery type parts)
About 10% of the time I try to make an STL I get an error, something about the cloud based translation server. I don’t know what I’d do if I had a deadline during those 10% of times.
Measure tool, as bad as Pro-E.

In general, it’s great for the price and for prototypes/hobbies, but it’s not quite there for tooling parts, professional deliverables. It will get there. I’m also looking at Onshape, which really is basically cloud-based SW, and keeps improving as well.

I like the direct selection of faces and features as well.

When saving after having created new features, it asks for a name of this version. Does Fusion360 now store the part as an entirely separate part, or just the version information? Sometimes it is annoying when I simply want to override the past saved version. I would like to have a bit more insight into how much data it stores.

I too started with Solidworks 97 and have been using continuously since. Also Rhino since before release one.

I like the idea of Fusion 360, I have been dipping my toes into it for 2 years. I like being able to convert quad mesh objects into solids - as T-Spline could in Rhino. The built-in CAM functions are powerful and a real bargain compared to MasterCam and PowerMill. But, there are some basic sketch features that are not included - helix for example. I have to create threads with very specific profiles for glass and plastic packaging and it can’t be done without a lot of kludgy workarounds. It also feels very slow with everything being done in the cloud.

I’ll stick to Solidworks, Rhino and Keyshot.

What hesitate me to dip in further is fusion limited surfacing capabilities compared to solidworks, I know they have t spline but to me its not as defined. Furthermore autodesk, please don’t upload tutorial on tspline creating blooby shape with horifying zebra, its like amateur with playdoh instead of pro with clay modeling. Well maybe I stick with sw for a while now.

I’ve tried it too. The sculpture mesh tools are the most amazing thing I think I’ve ever seen in a 3D program. What stops me from replacing Solidworks is just muscle memory.

When I was unemployed for a couple months, I tried some tutorials, but I never found one that was a-z for dummies. I know I’d cover a bunch of 3D basics that I know, but I find the work flow the most intimidating part of Fusion360 and the only way to learn that is to do a project.