They always had the feeling of being afterthoughts-probably because they were. In years past, CAD systems supported special workspaces and operations for dealing with assemblies. If you have an existing dumb model, you can add features to it just by selecting and defining them (e.g., selecting a face, and defining it as a chamfer feature causes subsequent editing operations to treat it, contextually, as a chamfer would be treated.) There is no modality to either direct or feature-based modeling. If you want to build a model using the feature-based method, then just proceed as you would with most any other mainstream feature-based CAD system: Create some sketches, build features from them, and add or subtract other features as you like. If you want to build a model using the direct method, you can either grab an existing model, or start with some primitive shapes, and push/pull edit it them into form you want. There’s nothing that feels hacked together or added on about how it works using either method. Fusion 360 has the advantage of having been designed, from the ground-up, to support both. Let’s start with mechanical design: There are about a half-dozen well known competitive CAD systems that support some combination of direct and feature-based solids modeling. For industrial and aesthetic surface design, it supports surface modeling using T-splines. For mechanical design, it supports direct and feature-based modeling of NURBS-based Brep solids. Fusion 360 doesn’t support all of them, but it supports some good ones. Over 30 years time, Autodesk has gone through nearly every 3D modeling paradigm possible. Autodesk has looked at the issue of off-line operation, but isn’t delivering the capability as of yet. Currently, Fusion 360 is an online-only application.
The client is built using open source components and technologies (e.g., Webkit, WebGL, and HTML5), as well as Autodesk proprietary technologies (e.g., geometric modeler and constraint solver.) Initially, the client is available in both Windows and Mac versions.ĬAD data is manipulated locally, on the client, but is stored remotely, on the cloud. Here are my takeaways, based on what I saw and heard at Autodesk University:įusion 360 uses a substantial thin client application, connected to a multi-tenant cloud-based back end. But the version of Fusion 360 previewed last week provides enough hints that it’s possible to read between the lines, and see that the vision is a big one.
That’s not to say that Autodesk’s full vision for Fusion is out in the open, for everyone to see. Now, after years of work, Fusion is finally approaching the threshold of capability and maturity where it makes sense to use as a serious production tool. They’ve added, changed, and removed capabilities, without the constraints they would have faced with a commercial product. They’ve taken quite a bit of time, trying out ideas through Autodesk Labs. Interestingly, Autodesk hasn’t rushed Fusion to market. The technology preview is the first step in delivering the full vision of Inventor Fusion to engineers everywhere… The June 2009 preview is the first step toward Autodesk’s goal of providing seamless bidirectional parametric and direct workflows to users by allowing them to adopt the modeling approach that best fits their needs in a single application.” “Autodesk Inventor Fusion is new Digital Prototyping technology that unites the power and control of parametric, history-based modeling with the speed and ease of use of direct, history-free modeling, enabling users to choose the modeling approach that is right for the task at hand. It’s the situation a few lucky people in the Emerging Products and Technologies (EPT) group of Autodesk were presented with a number of years back.Ībout three and a half years ago, the first fruits of their efforts appeared in the form of Inventor Fusion Technology Preview 1. This is more than just a fantasy exercise. Just a big toolbox full of component technologies, enough money to buy anything you need, access to an international team of smart developers, the freedom to experiment, and a reasonable amount of time to get it done. No requirement to build on the existing generation of products. Next, imagine that you were given the task to develop a next-generation 3D mechanical CAD product. Imagine, for a moment, that you worked at a major CAD developer, with massive technical resources, and more than a billion dollars in the bank.