Talking with some people at the Hackaday meet taught me that there are some real fans of Autodesk Fusion 360. It was already on my to-do list to evaluate the software, but the enthusiasm pushed it to the foreground.

The first frustration is learning the software. All the resources I found are in the form of tutorial videos. I personally prefer information in written text format, but I’ll watch the videos if I have no alternatives. The videos on Autodesk’s own site is built using a Flash-based video system. I avoid Flash when I can, so as an alternative I chose the udemy.com course titled Product Design in Autodesk Fusion 360 from idea to prototype.

The quality of the course was uneven: different sections in the course were recorded by different instructors each with their own style. Fortunately, the introductory and starting sections about content creation were pretty good, teaching me Fusion 360 basics and then how to create a design. (Sections 1 through 3)

Where these sections fell short was teaching me how to fix problems. That is, beyond hitting Control+Z immediately after a mistake. I know I’ll change my mind on certain design decisions and need to adjust the file later. The class didn’t spend much time over the editing tools and I felt this gap would prove to be a hindrance to my productivity.

Section 4: Rendering, animation, and drawings were very perfunctory and barely enough to get me started. If I actually want to make use of these features, I’ll need to find additional education before I can be proficient.

Section 5: Computer Aided manufacturing(CAM) assumed the student is already familiar with machining and wanted an overview on how to use their existing knowledge inside the Fusion 360 UI. If the student didn’t already know CAM, the section would make no sense.

I think I picked up enough basics for me to start poking around on my own to fill in gaps in my knowledge, so it worked well enough as a brief overview. I’m just a bit disappointed because my expectations were higher.