The Fusion development team went much further than that.įusion 360 consists of two parts: A cloud-based back-end, running on Autodesk 360 web services, and a “thin” desktop client. My initial guess, when I first saw Fusion 360, was that Autodesk had just taken the existing Inventor Fusion technology preview and added some cloud-based storage and dashboard features to it. Now, with the announcement of Fusion 360, it all makes sense: Instead of integrating Fusion into Inventor, Autodesk has used it as the basis of a brand new cloud-based CAD application. They made it available through Autodesk Labs, with no hint at trying to get people to pay money for it. What was surprising was that Autodesk seemed to be in no hurry to commercialize it. Inventor Fusion was actually a very capable direct modeling CAD system. Yet, it’s not a panacea: There are many modeling tasks, especially families of parts, for which the feature-based parametric approach is better. It introduced a level of flexibility and intuitiveness in use that is hard to match. A response to the challenges offered by Siemens PLM’s Synchronous Technology, and SpaceClaim’s eponymous direct modeling CAD system.ĭirect modeling, a method that allows users to push and pull on CAD models, with the system figuring out the technical details necessary to make sensible edits based on those actions, was (and is) a major threat for traditional feature-based parametric CAD systems. You might wonder, though: Hasn’t Fusion been out for several years, as a technology preview? Yes, indeed: When it first came out in 2009, Fusion was called “Inventor Fusion.” It was seen, by most, as a technology experiment in direct modeling CAD. And it’s a future you’re likely to find mighty interesting. It represents Autodesk’s best thinking on what the future of CAD is going to look like. Here is the real story: Fusion 360 is a major generational change in CAD.
They actually intentionally underplayed it.
What they didn’t do, however, was tell everyone the real significance of Fusion 360. This week, at Autodesk University 2012, Autodesk unveiled Fusion 360, a new cloud-based mechanical CAD solution.
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