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Hack Chat Transcript, Part 1

A event log for Autodesk Fusion 360 Hack Chat

CAD, CAM, and beyond

lutetiumLutetium 04/10/2019 at 20:040 Comments

Jan11:30 AM
oh, Fusion hack chat? let the CAD religion wars begin :)

Dan Maloney11:31 AM
Yeah, I think that's where we're headed. Plus the cries for native Linux support.

Jan11:31 AM
yepp.

Jan11:32 AM
to put fuel into that fire: I am SO happy we're working with SW at our company. it has some little features which makes working so much faster than Inventor. and I've been a hardcore IV fan for years

Jan11:32 AM
Guess that's not what todays chat is about though, so I'll be out this time hehe

Les Hall11:40 AM
Hi. There have been so many fascinating Hack Chats that I have missed, I feel like I've lost something crucial. So here I am turning over a new leaf.

Arsenijs11:41 AM
@Les Hall don't worry, transcripts are always available =) I too try to attend, but often it just isn't an option, we all have real life stuff =(

Dan Maloney11:41 AM
Welcome! We've had quite a few great chats this year, glad you're here now!

Les Hall11:42 AM
TY!

Prof. Fartsparkle11:48 AM
very excited for this one, been an eagle and fusion 360 user for years

Les Hall11:49 AM
I used Eagle for ages, then recently I downloaded it and it's all different.

Duncan joined  the room.11:50 AM

Jorge Garcia11:51 AM
Hi Everyone, hope you are all well!

Les Hall11:52 AM
Hi back atcha.

skitchin11:52 AM
Hello @Jorge Garcia

Jorge Garcia11:53 AM
Hey Les, yeah I know EAGLE's changed a lot if you haven't used it in a while its going to seem very different. The bones are the same, EAGLE's just put on more muscle mass :)

Miklos Marton joined  the room.11:53 AM

Jorge Garcia11:53 AM
Hi @skitchin

Miklos Marton11:53 AM
Hi guys!

Jorge Garcia11:54 AM
Hi Miklos!

Audi McAvoy11:54 AM
Hey everyone. Where are we posting questions? (besides that one)

Les Hall11:55 AM
That's good to know @Jorge Garcia. More powerful is good to hear.

Jorge Garcia11:55 AM
Hi Audi, once Matt jumps on you post them here and he'll answer. I can take care of some technical EAGLE questions in the meantime.

Audi McAvoy11:56 AM
Thanks @Jorge Garcia

Dan Maloney11:56 AM
@Audi McAvoy - Matt Berggren from Autodesk hasn't logged on yet. We should be ready to start in around 5 minutes

Les Hall11:56 AM
Here's a question: I recall Eagle's Gerber generation was always a pain. Has that been made easier?

Miklos Marton11:57 AM
@Les Hall since the introduction of the one click manufacturing export

Jorge Garcia11:57 AM
Hi Les, considerably easier now. You have a one-click CAM option that analyzes your board stackup and uses the right template.

Miklos Marton11:57 AM
which happened in the 9.x version I think

Miklos Marton11:57 AM
I would say it cannot be made easier :D

technolomaniac11:58 AM
hey hey, happy siblings day

Audi McAvoy11:58 AM
Is this chat going to be constrained to Eagle? Or is general 2D CAD also on the table?

technolomaniac11:58 AM
up to you.

Jorge Garcia11:58 AM
You also get more visual feedback in the CAM processor so if you need to do something special it's easier to do.

Prof. Fartsparkle11:58 AM
Eagle definitely changed for the better

Miklos Marton11:58 AM
Hi Matt!

technolomaniac11:58 AM
I can riff about 2D cad in general

Les Hall11:58 AM
I'm smiling a big grin at one click Gerbers!

technolomaniac11:58 AM
Hi!

Edwin Robledo11:58 AM
Hi

technolomaniac11:58 AM
Ahh yep, @Les Hall that needed to happen for ages!

Prof. Fartsparkle11:58 AM
(except for the new icon order, which drives me nuts)

Nicolas Tremblay joined  the room.11:59 AM

Dan Maloney11:59 AM
Hi Matt., welcome aboard. We'll get started in a few

technolomaniac11:59 AM
hahahaha

technolomaniac11:59 AM
thanks Dan!

Rob Speed joined  the room.11:59 AM

Edwin Robledo11:59 AM
Hey Matt!!

technolomaniac11:59 AM
no sweat...I heard when clint eastwood directs, he doesnt actually say action...he just sits down and waits for the actors to start.

technolomaniac11:59 AM
so we might slip into this without even knowing it started ;)

Audi McAvoy11:59 AM
Does Autodesk see an opportunity to pick up light 2D CAD users with the recent Draftsight policy change?

Dan Maloney12:00 PM
Welcome everyone, looks like we can get started. I'd like to welcome Matt Berggren from Autodesk to the Hack Chat today to talk about Fusion 360 and anything else that comes up. Matt goes by @technolomaniac on the chat, BTW

Rob Speed12:00 PM
I just started using Fusion 360 a few weeks ago and I'm loving it. I was previously trying to use Blender for 3D printed components and… it did not work well.

Prof. Fartsparkle12:01 PM
Hi Matt and Jorge

stansanders joined  the room.12:01 PM

Dan Maloney12:01 PM
@technolomaniac - Can you give us a little bit about yourself?

jim joined  the room.12:01 PM

technolomaniac12:01 PM
probably too soon to tell but of course we want to build the tools that people come to for the right reasons -- ie we built better tools. :) @Audi McAvoy

technolomaniac12:01 PM
sure sure...

Dan Maloney12:01 PM
Oh, and @Jorge Garcia too - forgot to mention you

Edwin Robledo12:01 PM
Hi Prof.

Dan Maloney12:01 PM
Sorry

technolomaniac12:02 PM
so I started my career like a hundred years ago at Accel Technologies which made PCAD which was acquired by Protel (later changed to Altium)...

stansanders12:02 PM
@technolomaniac is there a plan to make documentation more consistent? seems like feature changes come faster than documentation changes. often find myself reading fusion docs that explain things in a way that no longer works

technolomaniac12:02 PM
I left Altium and move to Supplyframe (yay Frame!) and strted another comapny with the ex-Altium CEO

Lane Copley joined  the room.12:02 PM

stansanders12:03 PM
if nothing else, at least deprecating stuff even if updated docs dont exist yet

technolomaniac12:04 PM
when EAGLE became avail, I riffed with a number of folks at Autodesk and elsewhere about an acq and I wasnt really interested in getting back into ecad. however the prospect of integrating ecad, mcad and mfg. was interesting and autodesk had the tools. so I joined with one simple premise in mind...eventually build a tool that included the entire ecad, mcad, & mfg workflow.

technolomaniac12:04 PM
disclaimer: not sure if that was the autodesk mission, but it's the only way I told myself I'd get back into ecad again...only way it'd be interesting after 15y in that industry...

technolomaniac12:05 PM
if we wanted to be coy about the strategy, I suppose Fusion wasnt the best choice in names.

technolomaniac12:05 PM
:)

Prof. Fartsparkle12:05 PM
well it makes total sense, if Autodesk doesn't see that...

Dan Maloney12:05 PM
Hadn't thought of that...

technolomaniac12:05 PM
so I run the Fusion Platform team, EAGLE & Tinkercad teams.

technolomaniac12:05 PM
but wrt to CAD, I've been around since Daisy was a company.

technolomaniac12:06 PM
so hit me with anything, I like talking about and thinking about all of these things :)

Rob Speed12:06 PM
@technolomaniac Do you see a lot of users transitioning from Tinkercad to Fusion?

Duncan12:06 PM
FYI: Dasiy was a company that built purpose-built computers for ECAD. Khosla's venture form before SunMicro.

technolomaniac12:06 PM
actually more than I thought...it's actually quite interesting and we've added now an export to Fusion

technolomaniac12:07 PM
the way that it works is by storing the recipe for how a model is built, which means we can transition from mesh models (tinkercad is mesh) to solid models by just "replaying" what it takes to get there.

Prof. Fartsparkle12:07 PM
thats cool

stansanders12:08 PM
also is there a reason appearance and physical material aren't one and the same? it's oddly tricky to do stuff like using the LED material because it's buried in appearance and the editing of that kind of texture is not in an obvious place

Dan Maloney12:08 PM
I'm actually coming to Fusion via Sketchup. Is that a common route too?

technolomaniac12:08 PM
that Mesh to BREP conversion was always a sticking point, as the boundary representation (solid model) is so much easier when it comes to grabbing edges, adding fillets, etc.

Duncan12:08 PM
Hey Matt: is Autodesk transitioning away from products for Makers?

Prof. Fartsparkle12:08 PM
(can we just ask away or is there some sort of question sheet like in earlier hackchats?)

Rob Speed12:08 PM
@technolomaniac I don't know how realistic this is, but it would be kinda cool if Tinkercad became sort of a "lite" version of Fusion that's totally web-based, but sharing the same cloud backend.

Lane Copley12:09 PM
I remember you saying at one of those workshops at SupplyFrame (about designing and building pcbs for production) a couple of years ago that nobody makes a really good CAD program and that you just had to pick the one you hated least. Does this mean you have made a choice? I think we were using EAGLE at that workshop.

Steve Hall joined  the room.12:09 PM

technolomaniac12:09 PM
@stansanders there is more work there to make that consistent and it's on my radar...I dont like how that works and moreover, in the future you'll be able to use a full F3D component in a board (whcih can include things like emissive properties for LEDs in a material deifnition)

Josh Lloyd12:09 PM
@deshipu That pybadge is cute!

technolomaniac12:10 PM
this will crush it because STEP has no knowledge of materials

Josh Lloyd12:10 PM
@deshipu The screen and that chip are connected via the 40 lane parallel bus

Audi McAvoy12:10 PM
@Prof. Fartsparkle (lmao) We're just blurting them out for this chart.

technolomaniac12:11 PM
@Duncan I dont think Autodesk is moving away form Makers, I think makers are becoming more sophisticated...and I think we need to connect with them where they're at. 10 years ago things were very different than the hacks are today and we need to enable bridging that divide.

Josh Lloyd12:11 PM
@deshipu ESP32 -> EVE2 -> ILI6480BQ -> Display

stansanders12:11 PM
@techno

Kris Winer12:11 PM
I purchased the EAGLE "professional" license some years ago (and must be one of the few people who actually like it) and can't seem to upgrade anymore without paying additional fees, so I am stuck at version 7.6. Is this just a business decision on the part of AutoCAD?

Dan Maloney12:11 PM
@Audi McAvoy - That's the way it goes sometimes, sorta freeform. If you need to ask a question again, feel free

stansanders12:12 PM
@technolomaniac i think the absolute worst offender is eagle's 3d models, basically every tutorial online (including autodesk's own) is totally incorrect for current versions, it's damn difficult to just add a 3d model to an existing component

Jan12:12 PM
but STEP is always the thing everyone can handle, especially in the "real" working environment. it's the 3D of DXF to say. we provide all customers with STEP because they're all using this or that CAD

technolomaniac12:12 PM
@Lane Copley yah, I also said at a workshop that "if only they gave me eagle, I'd make that thing awesome.." :) careful what I wish for I suppose. lo and behold I have control now and I'm driving a LOT of new stuff, but oh man, I wasnt expecting to ever have to actually DO it

Duncan12:13 PM
@technolomaniac A good point - e.g. RF designs seems to be table stakes nowadays

stansanders12:13 PM
it'd be such an amazing workflow if fusion-eagle sync embedded each part as a component, and you could dive in and model that component in fusion, and have that model sync back into the part library for eagle

Jeffrey Garman12:13 PM
Is the CAM(Manufacturing) side of Fusion 360 as capable as FeatureCAM(another autodesk product) ?

technolomaniac12:13 PM
@stansanders in the next rtelease youy can add models directly at the board level

technolomaniac12:13 PM
so you will no longer have to bounce back to the library to assign a 3D model.

Lane Copley12:13 PM
You have my pity. It could be worse: you might have to do the documentation.

technolomaniac12:13 PM
the relationships will be much more loosely coupled.

stansanders12:13 PM
@technolomaniac beautiful, how soon?

technolomaniac12:13 PM
that was part of the reason we had a server deployment yesterday :)

technolomaniac12:13 PM
soon.

Prof. Fartsparkle12:13 PM
cool then I'll just get on with my most important question, @technolomaniac given that Eagle is a full cross platform product and will grow closer with Fusion 360. Will you make a Linux version for Fusion 360?

I made a topic in the idea station. tldr; Wine is like 90% of the way there for Fusion and it would be very awesome if you could speak with Codeweavers about doing a porting effort assement.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-ideastation/official-linux-support-through-wine/idi-p/8676002

stansanders12:14 PM
sick

Jan

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