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Hack Chat Transcript, Part 4

A event log for Autodesk Fusion 360 Hack Chat

CAD, CAM, and beyond

lutetiumLutetium 04/10/2019 at 20:080 Comments

Josh Lloyd12:43 PM
What features am I missing out on?

Josh Lloyd12:43 PM
Would I need them?

technolomaniac12:44 PM
4 layer board, a few restrictions on board size.

Jan12:44 PM
using the "real" software for years noone could ever like openSCAD or FreeCAD :)

technolomaniac12:44 PM
feratures? none

technolomaniac12:44 PM
I dont cripple features for free or paid.

Josh Lloyd12:44 PM
Right, so just workspace size, but all functionality is included

Prof. Fartsparkle12:44 PM
amount of layers is kind of a feature though :)

technolomaniac12:44 PM
that was something I was pretty heavily against.

technolomaniac12:44 PM
yah, I suppose.

technolomaniac12:44 PM
@Josh Lloyd yes.

Josh Lloyd12:45 PM
So I wouldn't be left wanting by that drool real?

Andrew Sowa12:45 PM
i there any talk about working on the hobby PnP integration? Some people are starting to play with "low" cost PnP and it seems like software integration is a problem.

Josh Lloyd12:45 PM
Nice.

technolomaniac12:45 PM
so they used to have something like 30 SKUs for eagle when we acquired it...I reduced it to 3

Prof. Fartsparkle12:45 PM
but yea, what is keeping Eagle from using the same Model as Fusion?

Jan12:45 PM
again, do you look at other CAD packages regularly for features and good ideas?

technolomaniac12:45 PM
@Andrew Sowa so I have a couple of the neoden machines and I have both connecting to eagle.

Arsenijs12:45 PM
@Andrew Sowa where exactly would be the problem? You pretty much need a CSV and that's it

Jakob Wulfkind12:45 PM
Does Eagle or any other CAD program plan to add disability aid features for users with dexterity or vision issues?

technolomaniac12:46 PM
@Jan yep, though technically I worked in many of those companies and drove (some of) the product decisions

Josh Lloyd12:46 PM
Oh - its $100 a year. Hmm. Yeah I can see why if its an unlimited version ( of 4 layers )

Jan12:46 PM
after all it would be quite stupid to not look at what the others do, right?

technolomaniac12:46 PM
@Jakob Wulfkind actually that's a good point, I would love to explore it more. I want to be sure that we make the SW accessible to as many folks as possible,

Rob Roberts12:46 PM
Re: what @Andrew said about PNP - @technolomaniac - and Referencing what you said 35 minutes ago: "eventually build a tool that included the entire ecad, mcad, & mfg workflow." Fusion360 contains a number of workspaces, and the integrated CAM is probably a huge game changer for many in the mcad mfg space. If you look at ecad and e-mfg, not a lot has changed, at least fundamentally, recently. What do you think is next that might be a game changer in e-mfg?

technolomaniac12:47 PM
@Jan yeah, and truth be told, most of THOSE tools <names deleted> did this to get what they have...

Jan12:47 PM
of course they did...

technolomaniac12:47 PM
@Rob Roberts good point...actually just the concept of nesting for sheet metal is super interesting when it comes to panelization of boards. there is a LOT of overlap there.

Jan12:48 PM
oh, sheet metal is an awesome topic on its own....

Andrew Sowa12:48 PM
@Arsenijs I don't have much experience with it yet, but everyone I talk too complains about setup issues. There is also the option on going further into the toolchain and generating cam data in fusion.

Jan12:49 PM
one of the things I like much better in Inventor than in SW :)

technolomaniac12:50 PM
@Andrew Sowa actually the machine shop is one of Fusion's strongest & most loyal user bases...the tech in there is actually one of the gold standards for machining (HSM) and the workflow is far easier than I'd found it in other tools

morgan12:50 PM
@Andrew Sowa @Arsenijs there's more to it than just have the CSV

Prof. Fartsparkle12:50 PM
I can totally see that, CAM in Fusion is amazing, especially for the price

Josh Lloyd12:50 PM
@technolomaniac The F360 <-> EAGLE workflow, is that available in the free version? I assume that too is included when you say you don't limit features.

technolomaniac12:50 PM
I can do setup, sim and post in under 15 mins for most jobs but I tend to do a lot of small, detailed machining wax models for silicon molds.

Josh Lloyd12:50 PM
I would really like to try that out

Prof. Fartsparkle12:51 PM
it is available

Josh Lloyd12:51 PM
Nice! I love F360 and I'm pushing my wife to it from SolidWorks, but obviously KiCad's mCAD integration is very poor

Andrew Sowa12:52 PM
I agree the cam is easy to use for machining. I have done a few contoured wood projects and have some aluminum projects in the queue

Jan12:52 PM
@Josh Lloyd don't get divorced over trying that pls

technolomaniac12:52 PM
@Josh Lloyd yes. and the nice thing is that the PCB is an item in the timeline with a sketch that defines it's shape...that will make things MUCH easier as a change in a feature (like if you project a face to produce an enclosure) will change the enclosure or likewise, you can cascade the change back to the board.

Arsenijs12:52 PM
@morgan such as? I work with a pick&place, and the only thing I need from KiCad is a .pos file, essentially a .csv with position info, references and values

Josh Lloyd12:53 PM
@technolomaniac That's excellent! I love the linked featured in F360.

technolomaniac12:53 PM
@Josh Lloyd this results in never having to rebuild joints and reinsert step models to make the enclosure again

Jan12:53 PM
that sounds nice indeed

Josh Lloyd12:54 PM
@technolomaniac Last time I checked, when specifying constraints in Sketch mode, I cannot type a name of a parameter, or a math function, instead of just a number. This was a feature I expected. Am I using it wrong or is it not present?

Prof. Fartsparkle12:54 PM
absolutely, the only reason why I'm still considering KiCad for non profit open source work is the limitations of Eagle to free users, doing anything in 4 layers immediately looks out everyone who doesn't have a license :(

Prof. Fartsparkle12:54 PM
*locks

Arsenijs12:54 PM
@Prof. Fartsparkle also, the Python API is a godsend when you want to do more advanced stuff

Josh Lloyd12:55 PM
@Prof. Fartsparkle Its strange because, compared to a sallary, $100 a year isn't that much. But it does feel much, like, I haven't dived in yet and just paid for it and thought "Whew, no more KiCad". I guess because I'm not sure I'm going to be satisfied. I need to feel satisfied with the decision before I make it.

technolomaniac12:55 PM
@Josh Lloyd formulas work.

Jakob Wulfkind12:55 PM
One of the things I like to do for my clients is examine potential failure scenarios caused by heat or mechanical issues -- I find the components that would be most likely to fail due to proximity to a heat sink, height from the board, or proximity to a moving part, and then look and see how their failure would impact the schematic. Right now I do that just by making a copy of the schematic and layout files, deleting the components that could be effected, and then examining the remaining schematic; is there or will there be a way to streamline that in Eagle?

technolomaniac12:55 PM
if u struggle to get it working, lmk and I'll get you sorted out.

Miklos Marton12:56 PM
@technolomaniac are there any plans to improve the current XREF label formatting?

Prof. Fartsparkle12:56 PM
@Josh Lloyd in this case its not about the money, Eagle Premium could cost 1$ a month and it would still be the same issue

Josh Lloyd12:56 PM
@technolomaniac When copying things from datasheets that specify every dimension as a, b, c, D, E, f, etc. It would be nice to add a dimension constraint, and just type "a" or something, and that gets added to the editable parameters. I would also like to be able to do this for multiple constraints, giving them the same source parameter. So that I don't have to link them, instead they are linked by name.

Prof. Fartsparkle12:57 PM
as long as there is a paywall it restricts who can use it

Josh Lloyd12:57 PM
@Prof. Fartsparkle I don't think its about the money for me, but there is something.

Miklos Marton12:57 PM
it is a long standing ask I think, there were mailing about it on the cadsoft ML,

technolomaniac12:57 PM
so thermal cooling / heating is actually in fusion and you can produce a board using Fusion Sync in eagle and use the built-in sim in Fusion to do thermal analysis. this will imporve over time as well. I think it would be a HUGE "miss" if we didnt enable a LOT more for thermal sim. we have all of the solvers after all.

Miklos Marton12:57 PM
it was topic in the Farnell erea

Miklos Marton12:57 PM

https://www.element14.com/community/thread/20798/l/formatting-xref-net-labels?displayFullThread=true

ELEMENT14

Formatting Xref net labels

Hi Normally I have used only the text-based net labels on line that goes from one sheet to another. My wish is to use the XREF option but I am not comfortable with the format options. My "big" problem is that the signal name for a given net label comes inside the flag.

Read this on Element14

Miklos Marton12:58 PM
and most of the ECAD tools (Mentor, Altium for sure) supports it

Prof. Fartsparkle12:58 PM
I adore Fusions license model, its everything I'm looking for in a professional cad tool, its so open to everyone and as soon as I earn money with it a have to pay. Could not be fairer

Miklos Marton12:58 PM
I dunno if Kicad does

Josh Lloyd12:58 PM
@technolomaniac I was designing an Miandered F-Antenna in F360 the other day, and linking all the dimensions together was a total PITA, not being able to just group them by name. But, I've only 50 hours in F360 so maybe its me.

technolomaniac12:59 PM
@Josh Lloyd I'm keen to walk thru that with you. I have a LOT of thoughts there and I know the guys. :)

Josh Lloyd12:59 PM
@technolomaniac That would be excellent.

Dan Maloney12:59 PM
So we're getting near the one hour mark, and that may mean the Matt needs to get back to work. I'm going to call an official end to the chat, but everyone is welcome to stay on and continue the conversation. I'll just say thanks to Matt for coming along and giving us insights into where EAGLE and Fusion 360 are heading - interesting stuff!

And don't forget that next week's Hack Chat will be all about the 2019 Hackaday Prize: https://hackaday.io/event/164375-hackaday-prize-2019-hack-chat

Josh Lloyd1:00 PM
Thanks @Dan Maloney for hosting and thanks Matt @technolomaniac for joining us, its been exciting and informative.

Nicolas Tremblay1:00 PM
Thank you for all this info and insight @technolomaniac

Mvrk20191:01 PM
@Prof. Fartsparkle Fusion 360 is only free to hobbyist for one year. After that, you have to pay, whether you're making money with it or not.

Audi McAvoy1:01 PM
Thanks @Dan Maloney , @technolomaniac and @Jorge Garcia!

Andrew Sowa1:01 PM
@Josh Lloyd you can use the parameter menu to setup named variables or reference other dimensions on one manually entered dimension with an arbitrary name (d123) Sketches will re-draw when you change variables in the parameter menu

Rob1:01 PM
Thanks @technolomaniac , would love to see an updated inverted F demo spanning Fusion360 and Eagle too :-)

Prof. Fartsparkle1:01 PM
thanks a lot for the chat @technolomaniac @Dan Maloney @Jorge Garcia

Jan1:01 PM
yeah, interesting insights, thanks @technolomaniac

Audi McAvoy1:01 PM
And thank you @Prof. Fartsparkle for that excellent name!

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