Get a sneak peek at what’s to come in the 2023 Fusion 360 Roadmap and an understanding of the “why” behind the features we’re investing in.
“Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”
In the same spirit of what Dr. Emmett Brown said to Marty McFly, we’re also blazing new trails with Fusion 360, and we’re always excited to share what we can about what we’re working on and what’s coming in the near future. Before we jump in, let’s recap our broader vision for what we’re setting out to achieve with Fusion 360.
Our vision for Fusion 360
We’ve all experienced these obstacles one way or another: disconnected workflows between software packages, data compatibility issues, and a multitude of confusing paywalls. These exist because of how software used to work, not how it should work today or in the future. We want to remove these obstacles for you, and that’s exactly what we’ve been doing.
At Autodesk University 2022, Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost introduced Autodesk Platform Services. This includes three Industry Clouds: Autodesk Flow, Autodesk Forma, and Autodesk Fusion. We’re building a future where you can move seamlessly between Autodesk products, connect end-to-end workflows, and extend your reach to other services. Thus eliminating the headaches of jumping through hoops, and wasting time, money, and resources.
Autodesk Fusion: our vision for product development & manufacturing
Our vision for the Autodesk Fusion Industry Cloud is no different. We want to build an open and extensible platform to accelerate collaboration across design and manufacturing. We’re striving to connect siloed workflows and create a unified experience throughout the entire design-to-make process.
Where we are now
The good news is, Fusion 360 is the furthest along in terms of realizing this vision. If you haven’t used Fusion 360 in the last few years, you have no idea how much better it’s gotten. You’re in for a treat.
Fusion 360 was built on the foundation of a unified product development platform from the very beginning. What started as a cloud-based CAD/CAM tool is now a multi-disciplinary platform -connected by a common data model at its core. Fusion 360 enables you to take your concept from design and engineering to 2D and 3D PCB design, to simulation and documentation, to prototyping and manufacturing, all within a seamless experience.
By integrating powerful automation tools, we envision extending what you have with Fusion 360 into other Autodesk products and beyond. This is what sets us apart from everyone else. This is why Fusion 360 is the answer for many of you when choosing the right product development solution.
Our 2023 goals
This year, we will continue realizing our vision and put our development focus toward three major goals:
- Unify Workflows
Unify once disparate workflows into a seamless experience to help you be more agile. - Connect Cloud Data
Strengthen our common data platform and expand our API to enable more third-party applications to help you stay connected. - Increase Quality & Automation
Increase quality, stability, and performance across the entire platform while automating time-intensive tasks to let you focus on what’s important.
Roadmap update
The Fusion 360 community is one of the most diverse, passionate, and fastest-growing communities in the industry. People from all walks of life use Fusion 360 to bring their concepts into reality, in their own unique way. That’s why we’ve organized this roadmap by areas of focus rather than a giant timeline of when things will happen. Feel free to read the entire post, jump to sections that matter most, and click on projects for more details.
Design & Engineering
So much of what you do starts with your design. It’s not surprising to see that many of you spend most of your time in this area of focus. This year, we continue to prioritize work on core design workflows. Meeting your design needs and providing tools that enable design teams to work better with each other.
Electronics
Getting electronics design right is a make-or-break situation for any tech-enabled consumer product. What we’ve brought to Fusion 360 is a comprehensive 2D to 3D PCB design experience. This experience is connected to the overall design workflow, enabling designers and engineers to collaborate closer than ever before.
We’ll continue to focus on enabling time-dependent performance insights, mechanical/PCB collaboration workflows, and improving the default preferences experience. We’ll also continue to improve performance, usability, BOM accuracy, and component handling performance.
Manufacturing
Over the years, the manufacturing capabilities of Fusion 360 have grown significantly. Thus allowing you to produce more complex and precise parts with ease. Integrated manufacturing workflows and CAM capabilities have made it possible to seamlessly transition from design to production, ultimately accelerating the manufacturing process. This year, we’re prioritizing projects that contribute towards turn/mill and milling. We’ll also be putting more focus on delivering a more seamless CAD/CAM experience, making sure important data is kept throughout the workflow, completing tool definitions, as well as continuing to push our automations capabilities.
Data management and collaboration
The Fusion 360 data management experience has come a long way. We are the pioneers of cloud-based CAD/CAM, breaking new norms in the industry. Offering easy access to your data from anywhere, anytime, and on any machine. The past few years have shown the true benefit of cloud-based data. It’s imperative to enable individuals and teams to collaborate in real-time, staying connected with their projects even when working remotely. Now, we’re working on connecting your data together on a common data platform. We’re expanding on our APIs, and making sure that relevant data is captured and retained through the entire design-to-make process.
Single-user data storage upgrade
To allow for more secure data management tools, access permission controls, and role assignments, we’ll be rolling out a multi-phased approach those of you still using a single-user data storage upgrade to your new Fusion Team data environment.
If you’ve been using Fusion 360 for over two years, you likely have access to two hubs to save designs. We realize that this may be confusing, and we’ve been working to simplify the process. We want everyone to take advantage of the security and data management benefits that come with Fusion Team. Fully moving over to Fusion Team (included as part of your core Fusion 360 subscription) allows you to take full advantage of our new Home Tab experience. You’ll gain access to better roles and access permissions management and AnyCAD workflows. This will be rolling out in phases soon, and we’ll keep you posted with the latest updates around this process.
Platform updates
Native Apple Silicon support
With the Apple Silicon chipset becoming more and more mainstream (now in its second generation), we’ve been working hard to bring native Apple Silicon support to Fusion 360. We’re happy to say that it’s coming along nicely. So far, testing has shown significant performance and stability gains. We’re really excited about this, and we can’t wait to make this available to you. We’re expecting native Silicon support to land sometime this summer. If you’re interested, join our Insider Program. Be among the first to give it a test drive before it gets released to the public.
Product updates and snooze
To continue delivering value, new features, improvements, and fixes will come in 10 product updates over the year. Please keep in mind this is a snapshot of our current plan, and it’s subject to change at any moment. That said, this will give you a good idea of how many updates to expect and when to expect them.
We understand you don’t want to be interrupted by an update when you’re in the middle of an important task. Coming soon, you’ll have the ability to snooze a product update, delaying Fusion 360 from updating for two weeks. Once you snooze the update, during that time Fusion 360 will remain in the same version, even if you restart.
Access Fusion 360 online
The nature of work has changed drastically in the past few years. Thus, the need for flexible access anywhere, anytime, on any device has never been more relevant. We’re working on providing a flexible option to access Fusion 360 online via a web browser, free of charge. You’ll have access to the same capabilities entitled to your subscription. You can also continue working as if you’re using an installed version of Fusion 360. There will be no need to install it on the device you’re on. More information about this will come out in the near future, so keep an eye on the Fusion 360 Blog.
Better security with our new sign-in experience
Data and access security for Fusion 360 have been a priority for us since day one. As a result, there’s been a lot of work done behind the scenes that doesn’t often get surfaced. One of the projects you’ll see very soon (now available as of the last April Product Update) is an updated sign-in experience for Fusion 360. This experience is consistent with other Autodesk products and adds an additional layer of security. It will allow companies and businesses to leverage their own single sign-on policies. You’ll also be able to use your own password manager to automatically fill in your account info. Many of you asked for this, and we’re glad to say that it will roll out in phases soon.
Community
Always testing what we build in our Technology Centers
As we make progress on the projects, not only are we always testing the code on as many computers and OS versions as we have available, but we’re also running real-world manufacturing tests in our various Technology Centers. Our Birmingham Technology Center, for example, is one of our major testbeds for machining projects. It’s where we constantly test new operations and tool-path strategies against our own CNC machines. Our technology centers enable us to catch issues before they make it to you. Thus, saving you the headache of replacing expensive parts and losing valuable machining time.
Join the growing community of Fusion 360 Insiders
To understand how Fusion 360 has gained so much momentum over the years, you must look at our community’s passion. In the early years of Fusion 360, much of what we implemented was influenced by our community’s feedback. Today, this spirit is still very much alive. We invite you to give your feedback on WIP projects by joining our Insider Program. With almost 4,000 members, it’s a great way to get closer to software and try features before they are public.
Join the Fusion 360 Insider Program
5 Million Education Users and Counting
We want to give a special shoutout to all the students and educators who’ve embarked on this journey with us. Whether you’re new or a skilled user, 5 million of you have shown dedication to learning, creating, and inspiring others. Your relentless appetite for creating helps push the boundaries of design and innovation. And your willingness to share your knowledge with others is invaluable. You are the future of design and engineering, and we can’t wait to see the amazing things you’ll create.
If you’re an educator and would like to connect with other educators to learn more about how they are using Fusion 360 in the classroom, check out our official Fusion 360 Educators Forum.
Go to Fusion 360 Educators Forum
Come back soon; we’ll be here
And there you have it — the 2023 Fusion 360 roadmap. In closing, we hope that you’ve found this update insightful. We want to remind you that this is not a one-and-done update. We’ll be updating this article throughout the year as projects progress. Come back soon and check out our progress in the different areas of focus. If there are any topics that have peaked your interest, or if you have questions about this roadmap update, please do not hesitate to ask in the comment section below, or reach out to us directly through our major channels. We’re here for you.
Cheers,
Keqing Song | Fusion 360 Community Manager
- Roadmaps are plans, not promises. We’re as excited as you to see new functionality make it into the products. However, the development, releases, and timing of any features or functionality remain at our sole discretion.
- The projects mentioned in this roadmap are highlights. They do not account for ongoing efforts like bug fixes, platform, and service maintenance.
- These roadmap updates should not be used to make purchasing decisions.
