October 1 Changes to Fusion 360 and its impact on FireControl

As many of you are aware, on October 1 Autodesk implemented changes in Fusion 360 functionality for those that are using the Personal Use license. You can read about the various changes here: https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/changes-to-fusion-360-for-personal-use/

Among the changes, Fusion 360 now manipulates the G code programs created to remove all G0 rapid moves between cuts. They are instead replaced with a G1 straight moves that is assigned the same feed rate as the previous cut loop. This means that rapid moves between cuts are going to be slower than what you are used to.

More concerning is that the changes Fusion 360 has made has caused issues with the way that the FireControl post processors work. Those issues are dependent on which post processor you are using. The issues are described below:

  • Post Processors up to and including V1.5

Programs posted with V1.5 will load into FireControl properly and can be run successfully. Your rapid moves will be slowed down to the feed rate of the program. In addition, none of the run from loop functionality will work. This means that if you have a misfire or other mishap, you will not be able to run the program from where you left off.

  • Post Processor V1.6

Programs posted with V1.6 will load into FireControl properly and can be run successfully (remember you will need to make sure that you are running CrossFire V1.2ls machine firmware with V1.6). Your rapid moves will be slow. In addition, none of the run from loop functionality will work. This means that if you have a misfire or other mishap, you will not be able to run the program from where you left off.

As many are aware, we were planning to release FireControl 20.5 which includes a host of new features and some bug fixes that we have been working on for the past few months. We have decided to postpone the release of 20.5 so that we can modify the how ‘Run From Loop’ and the new ‘Run From Line’ algorithms work in these new circumstances.

Unfortunately there is nothing that we can do to restore the rapid moves between cuts, as doing so would violate the Fusion 360 personal use license. We are hoping to have these changes in FireControl 20.5 by the end of next week. Our team is working as fast and efficiently as possible to make this happen.

As always, SheetCAM can be purchased from our website. Now is probably as good a time as ever to convert over.

Thanks for your understanding.

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Wow! That is a pretty rude thing to do! It’s one thing to withdraw support because of expenses etc, but this is like amputating a limb just to spite you!

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@langmuir-daniel What about those with the og crossfire? Does the only thing that change is the rapid between cuts?

Seems like a work around is to set F300 (or whatever your rapid speed is) on G1 moves when the torch is off.

This is terrible news! I’ve spent that last four months learning Fusion 360!

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Will the paid version of Fusion 360 have the same problems and will it work with FireControl. Cheer.

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No the paid version does not have this issue.

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Since this Oct 1st update using mach 3 it obviously doesn’t rapid between cuts anymore but there’s something else the speed is wrong for cutting its always goes to 6ipm even when the post processing is set for anything from 45ipm to 300ipm its always 6ipm.
For now I’ve just been changing it in mach 3 before cutting but is this something to do with fusion post processing or just fluke that it happened around the same time?

A Fusion 360 licence which remedies these issues is €300 a year (special offer). These seems to me like a better option than buying sheetcam. I don’t have any Windows machines so I would need to run it on Ubuntu and Firecontrol on another machine or use windows emulators.

Im guessing the Fusion ^$^#@ ( cant say it here ) has struck. The following Error happened at line 11 : feedrate has not been set or is underfined. sigh*

Sweet, glad I paid when the crossfire 1st came out.

I found a workaround for this. You have to edit the G code as follows using a text editor:

  1. Delete line 6 altogether. Line 11 now becomes line 10 after you do this.

  2. To line 10, add F100. to the end.

The new line 10 should look something like this:

G38.2 Z-5. F100.

  1. Save the g code and it should work.

Fire control is looking for the initial F100. But the newest version of fusion360 is deleting it

This works for me.

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Nice info, So your just adding a feedrate where Fusion took it out? If im reading that right.

Yes that’s correct

I know nuttin about edeting Gcode. But Im sure several here will read that and be very happy knowing what you have discovered.

The day of running such a good software for free is coming to a end, I suppose I can’t really fault them… all together Fusion is a great package I switched from a very expensive Software “leaving unnamed” to Fusion “this year” then also “this year” Fusion tweaked it where to get the “Simultaneous Milling” I need you must purchase the “Manufacturing Extension”…$1,500 extra a year so I made the purchase this week while it’s on sale… In the end like posted above its easy enough to add rapids back in manually if your running a production job but most of you are not so its probably not worth the effort…

My question is inquiring when will the “Run from hear functions” be back and available? I’m decent with code can you “Langmuir” just post the line of code here needed for it to work so if we want to add it in by hand we can? I don’t want to scrap material if it’s a rather complex cut!

Thank you

Working on the end of this week- fingers crossed.

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Thank you for the speedy response and the hard work from you and the team, take care Daniel

If anyone has a gcode generated before the fusion upgrade and a gcode from the same project after the fusion upgrade we can figure out whats different and write a text script to insert whats missing. I dont have my table yet so no gcode or I would do it myself.

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