The pressure to deliver high-precision components faster and more efficiently is greater than ever. You're expected to meet rising demands while managing disconnected workflows, surprise rework, and growing competition.
Autodesk Fusion® gives you a modern, cloud-connected platform that unifies CAD, CAM, CAE, data, and team collaboration in one solution. It’s designed to help you handle complexity, respond to change, and work more flexibly—without sacrificing control or quality.
By mastering a few essential practices shared by one of Hagerman & Company’s expert engineers, you can eliminate common bottlenecks and streamline every step from design to manufacturing. In this article, you’ll find six key tips to help you get more value from Autodesk Fusion.
Starting your design with raw bodies might seem like a quick way to dive in—but it often backfires when your project grows. Maybe you’ve experienced it: you build out the model, only to realize you need joints, a BOM, or assemblies, and suddenly everything needs restructuring.
A simple habit, starting with a clearly named Component, saves hours of rework. It gives you cleaner organization, supports advanced workflows, and makes your design much easier to scale.
Assembly issues are another common source of frustration. When motion isn’t defined properly, things don’t align or simulate the way they should—and that confusion often makes its way to the shop floor. Instead of wrangling traditional constraints, use Joints to define motion. Whether it's revolute, slider, or rigid, Joints let you simulate real-world movement. And if your parts are already placed correctly, As-Built Joints make capturing relationships fast and efficient. This isn't just good practice—it’s how you catch costly mistakes before they happen. For teams working on complex motion or assemblies, a second set of expert eyes can go a long way.
If your components are shifting around without warning, chances are nothing’s grounded. This might not seem like a big deal at first, until a small nudge causes alignment issues that throw off your entire setup. Use Ground to Parent on your base part to lock its position within the assembly. It keeps your structure stable without limiting flexibility. Especially in multi-part designs, that stability pays off in CAM and final assembly, reducing the risk of drift and saving time on setup.
Autodesk Fusion’s Timeline feature allows you to view and manage your model history with precision. You can revisit earlier steps, suppress or reorder features, and make edits without needing to rebuild your entire design. This is especially valuable when responding to late-stage client changes or internal design adjustments. Keeping sketches and features clearly labeled enhances navigability and reduces time spent troubleshooting.
Even the best design can get derailed by poor data management. If your team’s constantly asking, “Which file is the latest?”, you’re probably spending more time searching than building. Autodesk Fusion’s Team → Projects → Folders structure helps bring order to the chaos. Create separate projects by client or job, assign roles, and control access to avoid overwrites and confusion. For teams working across departments or locations, this structure is key to staying aligned.
Incomplete geometry, tiny features, or sharp internal corners might look fine in CAD, but they’ll slow things down fast when it’s time to program toolpaths. Before sending a model to CAM, use Autodesk Fusion’s tools to simplify, inspect, and clean up geometry. Try Minimum Radius Analysis to check for cutter accessibility, close gaps, and remove detail that won’t translate to machining. Cleaner models produce more reliable toolpaths, reduce back-and-forth between design and manufacturing, and help you deliver on schedule.
Fabricators who apply these six Autodesk Fusion tips see real gains in efficiency, from cleaner CAD models to faster CAM programming. With the right habits in place, like organizing data, using Components, and mastering joints, teams can reduce cycle times, minimize rework, and accelerate delivery.
In addition to these best practices, partnering with Hagerman helps you get even more from Autodesk Fusion. Our experts offer hands-on training, workflow consulting, and support tailored to your team’s needs—so you can unlock the full value of your investment and stay ahead of the curve.
Get started with smarter workflows in Autodesk Fusion and experience the connected future of fabrication. Partner with Hagerman and Company today and we’ll help you find the right tools to speed up your delivery and cut rework.