Fusion 360 outage Sunday

This is beating up on an old subject a little but the Autodesk F360 on-line server has been unreliable since early this morning. I eventually found out about the server problems because I went to the F360 website but there appears to be no other way of finding out about problems like this unless you visit the website to check. Is it not possible to bring up a warning on the screen that people will see at log-on? You may not see it immediately but eventually, unless the server is totally failed (not the case this time) it should appear.

I figured that I could get some useful time on the project off-line regardless.

During the day I have been having problems with Fusion 360 but frankly I can't tell whether this is due to the on-line connection or some other feature of the program since it does tend to crash fairly often under normal circumstances if you do anything that is too complicated. The problems I am having seem to be due to my design work but who knows since I really do not understand which parts of the total F360 routine take place over the internet and which take place in my computer.

If the problems I am experiencing are due to the Autodesk server then it's my fault that I decided to try to get some work done knowing about the server problems. On the other hand, if a company (and now we see this on-line service being offered by an increasing number of providers) can't keep the on-line portion working how are machine shops going to get any work done? We know the companies can't control the internet connection which is bad enough but if they can't keep their own servers systems working then what is the point of going on-line - it can only ruin their reputation.

Grumble, grumble, grump.

.

F360 seems OK online right now. No obvious outage or connectivity issues to report. I have not had unannounced connectivity problems with F360 in many months. They very occasionally go offline for maintenance and upgrades, but it's been during off hours.

I just checked. The warning is still there under the CAM section.

Here is the link.
NOTICE: Intermittent Service Degradation - Autodesk Community

The warning is timed at 5 hours ago.

outage on a Sunday. Im ok with that.

But ya, I checked too and all works fine here. There notice did say the problem was intermittent and that retrying would usually solve the issue.

rklopp said:

, but it's been during off hours.

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Would you please define "Off Hours" for a "Cloud" based system?

I mean it's 2:30 am EST on a Sunday for me, and I am STILL working.
For those in the mainland, it's something like 8:30 am on a Monday.
Them Aussies are prolly finishing their day for Tuesday...

So can you please define when does the "off-hours" really applies?

SeymourDumore said:

Would you please define "Off Hours" for a "Cloud" based system?

I mean it's 2:30 am EST on a Sunday for me, and I am STILL working.
For those in the mainland, it's something like 8:30 am on a Monday.
Them Aussies are prolly finishing their day for Tuesday...

So can you please define when does the "off-hours" really applies?

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I am not the dictionary, but what I meant was a weekend night in the US.

rklopp said:

I am not the dictionary, but what I meant was a weekend night in the US.

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Are you saying that a weekend night in the USA means the "cloud" can have a night off?

That's a mighty bold statement you got there!

SeymourDumore said:

Are you saying that a weekend night in the USA means the "cloud" can have a night off?

That's a mighty bold statement you got there!

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I bet Autodesk is aware of their customer distribution globally, and makes outage decisions on a least impact basis..

rlockwood said:

I bet Autodesk is aware of their customer distribution globally, and makes outage decisions on a least impact basis..

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Well, the "ON" button on my computer doesn't give a hoot when I push it, neither does the "Inventor" icon on the desktop.

They just work.
Day and night, weekend or holiday, my birth day, your birth day, hell it even works during Superbowl.

SeymourDumore said:

Well, the "ON" button on my computer doesn't give a hoot when I push it, neither does the "Inventor" icon on the desktop.

They just work.
Day and night, weekend or holiday, my birth day, your birth day, hell it even works during Superbowl.

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I bet neither work particularly well when your power grid is down for service..

rlockwood said:

I bet neither work particularly well when your power grid is down for service..

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Bad bet.
Machines won't work, but the office is on a standby UPS.
So is the Kegerator.

SeymourDumore said:

Are you saying that a weekend night in the USA means the "cloud" can have a night off?

That's a mighty bold statement you got there!

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How is it bold to simply explain what I meant? I didn't say the off hours were good, bad, or indifferent, or anything about whole nights off.

rklopp said:

How is it bold to simply explain what I meant?

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Because you're assuming that the only thing matters when it comes to "off-hours" is what time it is in the majority of the US.

A cloud based service means 24/7/365.
No off hours, no excuses, no questions and no assumptions.
Period, end of story.

SeymourDumore said:

Because you're assuming that the only thing matters when it comes to "off-hours" is what time it is in the majority of the US.

A cloud based service means 24/7/365.
No off hours, no excuses, no questions and no assumptions.
Period, end of story.

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I also thought that was supposed to be THE selling point of the cloud. What is off hours supposed to mean?

I billed a 12 hour day on Sunday at expedited rate without breaking too much of a sweat - I'm failing to see the advantages of being down on "off hours". Weird.

The software still works offline, folks. Calm down, you can still work during cloud updates.

Atomkinder said:

The software still works offline, folks. Calm down, you can still work during cloud updates.

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Unless of course you've just sat down at home after a nice meal, hoping to get a few hours of work done before tomorrow's AM meeting, where your ass is already
on the line ...... only to find out that the updated model from Friday is ..... well, not there or at least beyond your reach.

SeymourDumore said:

Unless of course you've just sat down at home after a nice meal, hoping to get a few hours of work done before tomorrow's AM meeting, where your ass is already
on the line ...... only to find out that the updated model from Friday is ..... well, not there or at least beyond your reach.

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They announce maintenance well in advance of actual service suspension, so perhaps one should have been paying attention on Wednesday and planned accordingly. No different than our PDM maintenance or network maintenance. It's silly to think that this stuff can be seamless 100% of the time IMO. The software IS still developing, and users know that. If you can't deal with service outages for updates, don't use it. Vote with your dollars.

SeymourDumore said:

Unless of course you've just sat down at home after a nice meal, hoping to get a few hours of work done before tomorrow's AM meeting, where your ass is already
on the line ...... only to find out that the updated model from Friday is ..... well, not there or at least beyond your reach.

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Be careful when feeding the trolls.^^^

I dont think Mr Seymour was even using F360 on Sunday during the problem. If so, he would have realized that you did in fact have access to all your parts. The problem was just intermittent. In other words, if at first it didn't load try again and it will. Its not like the servers were completely offline for hours.

If your gonna piss all over something at least know what the hell you're talking about.

Atomkinder said:

The software still works offline, folks. Calm down, you can still work during cloud updates.

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That does make sense to me. There is no reason to block a user from using software that is not up to date and the cloud should make that transition perfectly seemless. Was the problem that the OP experienced related to retrieval of a previously used file, was he mistaken or is he blowing smoke?

I don't know how the cloud based systems work in detail. I doubt I will ever go that way but in my mind there's no such thing as "never". The more you know...

RTM said:

That does make sense to me. There is no reason to block a user from using software that is not up to date and the cloud should make that transition perfectly seemless. Was the problem that the OP experienced related to retrieval of a previously used file, was he mistaken or is he blowing smoke?

I don't know how the cloud based systems work in detail. I doubt I will ever go that way but in my mind there's no such thing as "never". The more you know...

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The original issue was an intermittent outage in communication with the data servers (the link to the Fusion Forums was posted earlier). This seems like a big deal, except it's more annoying than problematic. If one wishes to stop working, Fusion will save the part locally until it can communicate with the cloud server again to update the part there. Full functionality exists otherwise. It's pretty well thought out, but there will always be potential for connectivity issues.