Installed Fusion360 -Reliability Question

Ray C

Ray C

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Well... Decided to give Fusion 360 a try and did the basic installation last night. It was getting late so, I woke-up early to register the license. A big banner is showing:

"Some cloud services may be temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working to resolve the issue. For live status updates, please visit https://health.autodesk.com. "

I was unable to complete the registration process. So, quick question... Does the Fusion cloud service cause frequent problems like this? I happen to have very fast and reliable Internet service at home but, once in a while, it glitches-out for a few moments. Do brief network outages like this cause painful problems with Fusion? What aspects get impacted most heavily when network glitches arise?

Yes, I know... Fusion is currently "Free" so I'm not complaining. I'm thinking of switching to Fusion so I can keep $400/year in my pocket by not paying the current license fees for Alibre.

Ray
 
Fusion's cloud service is very reliable. I've seen very few outages. Even when it does happen you can still work off line. The files are stored on both your local hard drive (you can set up how long) and in the cloud. The only thing you can't do is access cloud specific services during any in-frequent down time, like a scheduled maintenance period.

It's not a problem,
Ted
 
I've only seen it once in nearly a year, but I'm not on it every day. Once you have things going, you'll be able to work offline, and it won't make any difference. I think you'll like it.
 
Ray, think nothing of it. Fusion is very reliable. Save your money! I have been watching the Lars Christiansen Youtube videos and have found them to be very helpful in learning the way around the software.
 
Well... So far, so-so... The stock set of training videos are very well produced. The information is presented very clearly and after watching for 2 hours, everything seemed very clear. The concepts are quite well thought-out and my hat is off to them for some really novel invention and implementation.

Now for the bad part. The second time through the training videos, I followed-along carrying-out the steps one-for-one. Right out of the starting blocks on training video #3 about "open/close/save" when executing the "Save As" steps to obtain the files from the demo project into a new project, the "Save As" function does not do as it should. In the training videos, a dialog box of your hard drive folders appears so you can save the demo files somewhere. Nothing of the sort shows-up when executing the steps. I can save the file somewhere but have no idea where it's going. As a result, attempts to navigate the project files as per the training video is completely shot in the foot. Cannot proceed beyond this.

Of course, I went onto the forums and searched for clues... no -luck. And of course, with forum-based support, you have wait a day or two until someone takes pity on you and decides to help...:frown 2:

Was looking really good at first but have a bad taste in my mouth right now. Maybe it will be better tomorrow morning.

Ray
 
I'm not exactly sure I understand what you are trying to do, but maybe this will help.

If I open one of my earlier designs I can go to the file menu and select "Save As". Doing this prompts me for two things: a file name and the second line is the file location (where I want it saved).

If I want to bring in an earlier project into the one I currently have open, I can right click on the project I want to import (while I've got the target project open) and select "Insert into current design". This will bring that project into the one I'm currently working on.

Hope this helps,

Hang in there! Fusion is AWESOME!
Ted
 
Finally figured it out and now I can actually find the files needed to do the tutorials. There is a gear icon next to the "Upload" and "New Folder" buttons. Inside the gear toolbox is a button for "View as list". It was set to Grid. I did not change this so, the new version of the program has a different default. Anyhow, it now allows me to navigate my hard drive to pull-in the downloaded tutorial files.

This has been a real annoyance because, the tutorials are giving very explicit instructions about how to navigate, what buttons to click etc so, you're not in the mindset that you need to change program default options to see things properly.
 
There are a lot of videos and sources of help/training on-line. But, probably one of the best I've been following (still watch new ones a few times a week) is Lars Christensen at https://www.youtube.com/user/cadcamstuff

My suggestion is to start with some of his absolute beginner series, subscribe, and watch them every week as he puts them up. He starts off every session with what he sets up as default settings (so your PC will be setup the same as his) and walks you through everything step by step by step. In fact, for now I would suggest you only use his videos for training since too many cooks can ruin the soup! It get confusing at times and some trainers just go too fast. He does not.

Good luck and have fun learning!
Ted
 
Technical Ted said:
I'm not exactly sure I understand what you are trying to do, but maybe this will help.

If I open one of my earlier designs I can go to the file menu and select "Save As". Doing this prompts me for two things: a file name and the second line is the file location (where I want it saved).

If I want to bring in an earlier project into the one I currently have open, I can right click on the project I want to import (while I've got the target project open) and select "Insert into current design". This will bring that project into the one I'm currently working on.

Hope this helps,

Hang in there! Fusion is AWESOME!
Ted
Click to expand...

No doubt... this is a really advanced tool. Clearly, it's the product of some very novel thinking and a lot of step-wise refinement. Over the years, I've come to like Alibre but, hands down, comparing Alibre to Fusion360 is like comparing a 1980's NC brideport conversion mill to a top of the line Mazak, Haas, Mori, Hurco etc...
 
Technical Ted said:
There are a lot of videos and sources of help/training on-line. But, probably one of the best I've been following (still watch new ones a few times a week) is Lars Christensen at https://www.youtube.com/user/cadcamstuff

My suggestion is to start with some of his absolute beginner series, subscribe, and watch them every week as he puts them up. He starts off every session with what he sets up as default settings (so your PC will be setup the same as his) and walks you through everything step by step by step. In fact, for now I would suggest you only use his videos for training since too many cooks can ruin the soup! It get confusing at times and some trainers just go too fast. He does not.

Good luck and have fun learning!
Ted
Click to expand...

I've been viewing their own online info located here: http://f360ap.autodesk.com/courses#getting-started-for-absolute-beginners

There are dozens (if not hundreds) of well organized, well produced videos.

Indeed, it was annoying to hit this snag but, the videos clearly demonstrated some advanced stuff. Clearly, the problem was due to some steps left out because the video fell out-of-date with the latest rev of software. I get it... It was just annoying that it took so long to get back on track.
 
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