Moving from Desktop to the Cloud – What You Should Know By Jerry Berns With so many tools for cloud-based workflows, it is now easier than ever to collaborate remotely. But what are the challenges of the cloud? Find out before you make the switch. Are you ready to move from designing with a desktop application to a cloud-based program? More specifically, are you considering moving from Inventor to Fusion 360? What other cloud products does Autodesk offer? Many users have moved to cloud-based designing and have been very successful. Others have discovered concerns and limitations. Before you decide, be sure you’re aware of both the benefits and challenges of making the switch. File Storage First and foremost is file storage. Using Fusion 360, your files are stored in the cloud. For many companies, this causes concern for their intellectual property. Although I have not heard of any security breaches with Autodesk 360, many companies are not ready to take that risk. Others have embraced the cloud and find it secure and easy to manage their files. Since Autodesk is managing the files, you don’t need to schedule daily backups of your CAD files. However, it is recommended to create archives of your designs periodically… just in case, and for added security and peace of mind. File versioning is 8 www.cadlearning.com common for many of the Autodesk cloud products, such as Fusion, so it is easy to roll back to a previous version to take your design in a different direction. If you are a regular user of Vault’s Copy Design tool, though, you will miss this in Fusion. Installation and Updates Installation and updates of any desktop-based application can be difficult for CAD managers and IT staff. Yearly updates can pose quite a burden on large corporations. Fusion 360 generally wins the advantage in this area, but it can be a cause for concern. Since the updates are automatic, you are forced to receive them; you cannot decline the update. If a bug is introduced, you may have to wait a few weeks for a resolution. With a desktop- based app such as Inventor, you control when to update it, and you can uninstall your current version in favor of reinstalling a previous version, if necessary. Collaboration Sharing files is generally easier with Autodesk cloud products like Fusion, since they use A360 as the warehouse. Just share a link by email or chat and specify the recipient’s file permissions. No Pack and Go required, no zipping of folders, and no worries of how to send large attachments through email. It is worth noting that in Inventor 2016 R3,