Fusion 360. Not the right tool for big assemblies/projects?

[joanlluch]

Fusion 360 has been recently adopted by some members with little or no previous experience on 3D CAD Modeling.

Before we get all too excited with the possibilities of Fusion 360, we must be aware that this is not a software package designed for big assemblies. Ok, it's modern, it has an intuitive user interface, easy to use, and it allows you to do CAM and CNC with it.

BUT. It is possibly not right to model an entire locomotive, specially if you want to model everything up to the most tiny detail. 

Watch this:

youtu.be/9zL8pRDxPck

And this other video that the same author made some time after:

youtu.be/Ur0b6hh9joM


The first video was posted just three weeks ago.

This is a REAL problem that appears to be acknowledged by virtually everybody that tried to do serious stuff (read: big projects) with Fusion 360.

I mean, my locomotive lacks a huge deal of detail because you all know which is my approach and what I favour most, but it still has 2155 total parts with more than 600 individual parts as reported by the software. I mean my loco doesn't have a single part with complex geometry in it. Everything is flat or geometrically straightforward. I can't imagine the number of parts and complexity of same that a true model scale locomotive may have.

The workaround to big assembly sluggishness reported on Fusion 360, is just that, a workaround. In my book it's totally wrong. What he proposes is to ground all the subassemblies to their absolute positions in the main assembly to prevent you having to move them. Well, that defeats all the purpose of parametric CAD, and you end working on something static that is not reacting to isolated changes on parts or subassemblies (!?)

I do not want to be negative about this software because it obviously has a lot of strengths. In fact, I did consider to migrate to Fusion for any new projects because it also supports the Apple platform and I may get trapped with having to pay huge licence fees on what I currently use (Solid Edge) because the spare license I'm using for free be reclaimed by my friend. Another reason is that I do not have the CAM module because my friend doesn't use it. However, after investigating it a bit I'm really concerned that Fusion 360 would work at all for the kind of performance I'm currently used to.

So, I'm posting this just to give some awareness of what could happen if somebody engages themselves to use Fusion 360 for too serious stuff or as a replacement of one of the more mature 3D CADs around. Please do not take this as a negative comment, but just as a matter of information in case this possible issue was not known.

Joan.

[atgordon]

I use F360 for all my work, professional and hobbyist. I went to F360 so I could move away from MasterCAM for my CNC stuff. MC claims to have 3D drawing features, but it really doesn't, so it has to be used with a 3D cad package. I had used Autocad for years, and although it has 3D features, it wasn't "really" 3D. Solidworks would have solved all needs, but it is VERY expensive, and to use all the 3D surfacing features of SW in MasterCam, you have to invest in the 3D surfacing add-on. Altogether, a tidy $4000 for SW (+ annual fees of $1k+), plus almost $4k for MCam 3D mill add-on. F360 is much more modestly priced!

In terms of performance, I have not had too many issues to date, but most of my work is sub-assemblies and single part files to allow a CAM post processed file to be created to drive the CNC mill. I have been putting my long delayed Super Simplex into F360 over the last year when I have a few minutes to spare, and have quite a number of parts arranged in sub-assemblies, and the the sub-assemblies being assembled into a chassis (see below). 

If I see any slowing down on my computer (Windows 7 64 pro graphics workstation with 128GB of memory), which will happen if I have been working on F360 for a long time made worse by complex CAM 3d surfacing ops, I close F360 down and reopen it.  It will normally become very responsive once more (since Windows is so poor at managing memory usage, I put the problem down to Microsoft, but after seeing the videos in your post, it is clear that F360 does have some issues with complex calcs - maybe my memory freeing trick should be used by Autodesk!).

In terms of meeting your needs; I guess it comes down to what you want to do.  It works well for my needs, which is the odd individual parts, or sub-assemblies from clients (I rarely need to see how the SA fits into a luxury yacht!).  My Simplex work has focused on sub-assemblies to test fit with other parts over time. I guess I will see if it meets my needs as the model grows and  get more complex! It moves easily on screen, and the rotating parts move too. I can carry out moves of SA without any noticeable delays (I tried to do a BOM to count the total number parts, but F360 only reports the sub assemblies!).

(The motion plate is hanging around in outer space until I work out where  it goes on the chassis ... Martin Evans suggests fitting from valve gear once installed!)