I’ve shifted gears a little, and moved from being the product manager for drawings, to being the product manager for Design AI on Fusion. You may have seen the announcements at Autodesk University, we’re going to ship AutoConstrain very soon. This is an AI tool to help you complete your sketches, by using AI to suggest the best Constraints and dimensions to fully constrain your sketches.
I’ve been working on AI projects in stealth mode for some time now, and as things ramp up, it only makes sense to hand drawings over to a new PM who will focus on them. We’re currently in hand over mode, and I’m excited to see where our new PM, Sandip takes drawings in the future!
I’m extremely proud to have worked alongside some incredibly talented individuals, who contributed to the success of Fusion drawings over the years. Yes, there’s still work to do, but we have been chipping away, making improvements, and have made steady progress. We’ve shipped over 120 customer-facing features and squished a truck load of bugs. I even got to mentor an incredibly talented Intern over the summer of 2023.
I would like to thank the customers who have met with me and the team over the years, specifically our lighthouse customers who have partnered with us and have helped steer some of our efforts, as you can see, your time has really helped us focus on what matters.
To ALL former and present members of Jasper, Garnet, Ruby and Vellum scrum teams, including Program Managers, User Experience Designers, Architects, Product owners, CXD, Researchers, Customer Advocacy Managers & QA (you know who you are!), I want to say a Massive “Thank You”. Your efforts have been immense and are I’ve loved working alongside you.
Together, we have delivered a ton of useful tools, that make creating drawings easier and faster, here’s a list of some of our achievements;
We shipped Drawing Automation, an industry first, AI-powered drawings tool that:
- Automatically lays out a sheet for each component in a model
- Auto rotates components into the best orientation
- Auto Breaks long components
- Automatically scales view and nests them on the sheet
- Applies Center Lines & Marks
- Places Sheet Metal Flat Patterns and Bend Tables & ID’s
- Placing Parts Lists & Balloons for Assemblies
- Ignores components in the Omit list
- Uses AI to Detect & Omit fasteners
- Shows you “Generative” style dimensioning strategies
- Tools to set custom datums
- Default dimension recipes > use your preferred dim strategy by component type
- Tidy Up command to scale & Nest your drawings
Below are some of my favourite projects classified by groups:
View Types
- Break Views/Broken Views
- Auxiliary Views
- Support for Mesh Objects
- Support for Surface Models
- Perspective Views
- Breakout Sections Views
- Crop Views (coming soon)
Annotation Types
- Document Settings >> let you set size, colour, line type, line weight, arrow type for drawing objects
- Revision Tables, Markers & Clouds
- Hole Charts
- Properties Anywhere > Model Properties & Parameters in text, leaders, dimensions, custom tables, practically anywhere that you interact with text
- More accommodations for DIN and JIS users in ISO standard templates > Dimension Gap control, Section Line visibility & Line Type controls, as well as Comma v Decimal Delimiter support.
- Curve Min/Max dimensions & Snap points
- Arc Length Dimensions
- Jogged Dimensions
- Dimension Format Painter (Match Dimensions)
- Flip Arrows
Usability Enhancements
- Configuration Support > Switch Configuration
- Configuration Support > Support Multiple Configurations on the same sheet or in the same drawing set.
- Custom Sheet Sizes, with automated, dynamic border creation
- Duplicate Sheets
- Arrange Dimensions
- Right Click Improvements (selection improvements)
- Hatch Improvements, including Solid Fill and additional hatch types
- More Unit types (architectural etc.)
- Unit overrides support > document a model in alternate units to it’s model & override title blocks and Parts Lists units and precision.
- Enhanced Print controls, the ability to print a drawing 1:1
- Right Click > Open Model from drawing view
Things we fixed that now just work:
- Flat DXF exports (I know, right!)
- Accidental Drag improvements (it used to be easy to accidentally drag unintended objects)
- We added support for Attribute Fonts in Title Blocks
- Copy/Paste Custom Tables
- Native Apple Silicon Support, we run fast on Apple M chips
- Windows High-Performance graphics by default > no more tweaking settings, things just work out of the box!
Below are snapshots of projects that the drawings team delivered in the 4 years. As this is a public blog, unprotected by NDA’s there’s not much more that I can share here, as projects that are work in progress (carrying over to 2025) or planned for next year and beyond, are confidential. Everything shown below has been delivered. Insiders will get some really cool new tools in January 🙂
Clint Brown 