Fusion 360 and electronics

[Holger]

Hello

Can someone explain to me whether this is something interesting: https://youtu.be/HMFRioFxcbw
Fusion 360 with a full electronics development system, including schematics, PCB layouts, and 3D modelling, if I understand it correctly. Then again, I'm probably not understanding it correctly. My electric design experience is limited to solder together photosensors based on pre-defined schematics.

Cheers

Holger

[Stuart Young]

Probably worth a listen to The Amp Hour #471 with Matt Berggren, as he covers a lot of good stuff in there.

Basic (simplistic and possibly wrong on some points) overview:

This is part of the acquisiton of Eagle by Autodesk. Eagle desktop is NOT going away, but Fusion will add a whole lot of EDA stuff to their platform.

One of the cool things is that stuff like tracks will be properly modelled (not just visualised) and you could then do thermal analysis on things based on the properties of those elements.

The example was using buried vias under a BGA for heat transfer. Rather than guessing or basing it on a manufacturer spec (which may or may not give suitable info such as copper thickness, via size, etc), you will be able to lay it out and model the thermal conductivity yourself to make sure your design is good.

Note: I have not seen anything on it myself. I just listened to that exact episode in the car this morning. :D

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[Jonathan Oxer]

I've poked around in the example projects and my initial reaction is that I'm excited by the potential, but it's not quite there yet.

Now that Eagle and Fusion360 can link designs, my standard workflow is to have both of them open at the same time on 3 screens: schematic on one, PCB on another, and the 3D view on the third. I'm constantly re-synching them because I find that having the 3D representation of the board (and other things associated with it, such as the case) visible to me provides extremely valuable feedback into the PCB layout process. It's closing a loop and seeing instantly the end result, instead of working blindly for a while and then seeing the result later.

This takes it a step further, and means everything can be done within Fusion360, no need for Eagle anymore.

But it's still a bit disjointed, like separate programs jammed together inside the same outer skin. The rate of development of both Eagle and Fusion360 over the last 2 years has been incredible, so I'm sure those rough edges will be smoothed out over time.

I don't think it will be long before I'm 100% in Fusion for an entire project, including schematic, PCB, mechanics, thermals, and stress analysis.

As they say in the podcast episode mentioned by Cef, it's called "Fusion" for a reason.

Cheers

Jon

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