This guide is for developers and content providers new to publishing add-ins and other content on the Autodesk App Store—either free, trial or for fee-based versions. It outlines best practice guidelines and a few requirements for publishers to follow when creating products for the Autodesk App Store. These guidelines are designed to ensure that users on the Autodesk App Store have a consistent experience when downloading multiple products from the store.
APP STORE
AUTODESK DEVELOPER NETWORK
Autodesk App Store—information for Fusion 360 developers
Requirements
You will be presented with a detailed list of requirements for publishing on the App Store when you first register to be a publisher. The information that follows is a summary. If there are any differences, then the online Publisher Agreement takes precedence.
All content types
Most of the information we need from you is collected via the web form you complete when submitting your content. This includes gathering information to create a HTML ‘quick start’ page that is included with the download of your product and viewable online. Other requirements are:
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Compatibility
Your product must be relevant to (and usable with) the latest version of Fusion 360.
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HTML help page
The documentation information you provide when submitting your app will be used to create a standard format HTML page, and must allow the user to quickly understand how to use your product. You can reference additional information (for example, additional help files posted on your website) from the standard HTML documentation.
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User privileges
We strongly recommend you make use of the standard the Autodesk App Store app installer we create for you. Installers can be created for Windows and Mac depending on which platform(s) you submit your app for. Fusion 360 apps are installed per user in a user specific directory and do not require any additional privileges.
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Ready to run
If you use a licensing system then it must allow your product to run as soon as it is installed by the user. This means either instant activation (for example, online activation), or your product must run fully functional for a time-boound grace period that is long enough for you to send activation information to the customer.
Stand-alone applications and other content
There are no additional requirements for products that are not integrated with Fusion 360. Such products might include eBooks, video tutorials, industry specific calculators, and the like.
Guidelines
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Add-In loading efficiency
Minimize add-in start-up time. Fusion add-ins are loaded when Fusion is started so every add-in affects the time it takes for Fusion to become available for the user to begin working. Fusion supports getting some add-in performance information so you can measure the load time of your add-in.
- To get add-in performance information you need to create the environment variable “APPLOG_FOR_PERFORMANCE=yes” before starting Fusion. When running Fusion it will now log performance information to a log file in your user specific local appdata folder. For example: %localappdata%/Autodesk/Autodesk Fusion 360/5RL5Q5DP5XU5/logs/AppLogFile20150819T145311.log
If you search for “ran script”, you’ll see a line for each add-in in the log file where it will have the load time and run time listed. The load time is the time it takes for Fusion to load the add-in from disc and the run time is the time it takes to run the run() function. You’ll see that most add-ins load and run in around 0.005 seconds. If your add-in is significantly slower than that you should investigate why. You should just be adding your command and connecting to the command events in the run method. Additional loading of libraries should only happen once an add-in command has been executed.
- To get add-in performance information you need to create the environment variable “APPLOG_FOR_PERFORMANCE=yes” before starting Fusion. When running Fusion it will now log performance information to a log file in your user specific local appdata folder. For example: %localappdata%/Autodesk/Autodesk Fusion 360/5RL5Q5DP5XU5/logs/AppLogFile20150819T145311.log
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Command access
Access to your apps commands should be in a logical location. You are strongly discouraged from creating a new panel in the toolbar but should instead use existing panels or in the case where your functionality doesn’t fit within an existing panel, your command(s) should be added to the Add-Ins panel, as shown below. Users can choose to promote your command(s) to the top level of the toolbar if they use it frequently.
Your 'bundle'
Inside one of the below root folders you need to create a uniquely named folder whose name ends in “. bundle”. Directly inside this folder should be a configuration file named “PackageContents.xml”. There should also be a “Contents” subfolder where you put your deliverables.
So, the minimum ‘development’ installation would have 2 files, and be along the lines of:
Windows:
- % APPDATA %\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins\ ADSK.MyApp.bundle \ Contents\ ADSK. MyPlugin.dll OR MyPlugin.py
- % APPDATA %\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins\ ADSK.MyApp.bundle \ Contents\ v ADSK. MyPlugin. Manifest
Mac:
- ~/Library/Application Support/Autodesk/Application Plugins/ ADSK.MyApp.bundle / Contents/ ADSK. MyPlugin.dll OR MyPlugin.py
- ~/Library/Application Support/Autodesk/Application Plugins/ADSK.MyApp.bundle / Contents/ v ADSK. MyPlugin. Manifest
Locations
The following locations are supported for loading Fusion Apps.
The per-user root folder for Windows version is:
- %APPDATA%\Autodesk\Application Plugins
Whilst the per-user root folder for MAC version is:
- ~/Library/Application Support/Autodesk/Application Plugins
Apps installed in the per-user folder will only be available for that user.
Every submission of the same app should have updated version number.
More information
The ADN team is here to help you be a successful publisher on the Autodesk App Store. We’ll do whatever we can do to help you. If you have any further questions after reviewing these guidelines and the other documentation on www.autodesk.com/developapps, email us at appsubmissions@autodesk.com.
Thank you for participating on Autodesk App Store.
Resources
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