James Krenisky
Discover 5 powerful new Autodesk Fusion features that streamline design, drawings, and CAM—from custom properties to multi‑axis clearing.
Elevate your design and manufacturing processes with Autodesk Fusion
The January 2026 Fusion release includes packed set of updates across data, design, drawings, and manufacturing. There are five capabilities that stand out for how directly they can impact your teams day-to-day work. From tighter governance of part metadata to multi-axis roughing, these features are here to help reduce friction and scale your workflows.
1. Custom properties: Structured data for your company controls
Custom properties let your organization define additional component properties beyond the standard out-of-the-box fields. Now you’re able to standardize company-specific metadata in Fusion. Hub admins configure these properties in hub administration. Once defined they appear where users expect them in Fusion’s property panel. You can assign values, include them in the bill of materials, and reference them in drawings as text, notes, parts lists, or title blocks. The result – one structured source of truth across deliverables.
Because these values are stored as structured data, they are indexed in the new search experience on the Home tab. You can easily find parts using your own business attributes. Custom properties are available to users who have Fusion Manage access. For teams that have been waiting for a way to standardize metadata across design, documentation, and lifecycle, this is a major step forward in making Fusion behave like an enterprise product data backbone.
2. Intent‑driven design: Part, assembly, or hybrid from day one
When you start a new design, Fusion now presents a new dialog that asks you to declare the design type up front, bringing the workflow closer to what many users expect from other professional CAD tools. With intent-driven design, you choose whether you are creating a part, an assembly, or a hybrid design so Fusion can align the environment to your design intent from the start. A part design keeps you focused on a single component without assembly controls. This reduces the risk of modeling in the wrong context and keeping things lean.
An assembly design is optimized for bringing parts together, connecting them with joints or constraints, and maintaining fast performance as assemblies grow larger. For users who like the existing everything-in-one-place approach, hybrid designs remain fully supported, so you do not lose flexibility. You can convert between all three design types at any time and even set a default design type in preferences. The design type is also visible in the Home tab and Data Panel, influencing how drawings and electronic designs are created going forward.
3. Streamlined drawing automation: Faster, more discoverable setup
Drawing automation has been reworked so that your automation settings live directly inside the “Create New Drawing” dialog. You can now review and adjust automation preferences before the drawing is generated. This cuts down on both the number of clicks and the total time required, especially when producing drawings repeatedly. Once you dial in a preferred configuration, you can save those automation settings as a template, making it easier to apply consistent drawing standards across projects or teams.
The net result is a faster, more discoverable workflow that puts automation controls at the very start of the drawing process instead of hiding them behind secondary dialogs. For teams that produce families of similar drawings, this update reduces setup friction while reinforcing consistent title blocks, views, and annotation schemes.
4. Automatic thread definition for turning: Design‑driven CAM
On the manufacturing side, the January release brings automatic thread definition to turning, tightening the connection between design and CAM. Turning programmers can now consume thread data directly from the design workspace, and that thread definition is parametric. If the design changes, the manufacturing setup automatically stays in sync. This keeps everyone working from the same source of truth and eliminates manual redefinition or guesswork around thread callouts.
Because the capability is driven entirely by native Fusion design data, any thread that exists in the design can be read in manufacturing without duplication. The same benefit applies to imported models that have additional thread features added in the design workspace—for example, threads added to holes or cylinders after import. The result is a much higher confidence that the threads you machine are the threads that were originally designed, which is critical for fit, safety, and quality.
5. Multi‑axis clearing: A new roughing workhorse
Multi-axis clearing has now graduated into the Manufacturing Extension as a full release. This strategy allows clearing toolpaths to follow a curved floor surface, offsetting from the 3D curvature to produce true multi-axis motion. It also works in three-axis workflows, so shops that are not running full simultaneous motion all the time can still take advantage of its behavior.
You can blend between floor and ceiling surfaces, choose between pocket or adaptive-style roughing, and even machine undercuts using a spherical tool, making multi-axis clearing a very versatile option. The strategy supports three-, four-, and five-axis machining, strengthening Fusion’s four-axis and multiaxis roughing capabilities. When you zoom out, Fusion now offers five different 3D roughing strategies plus two dedicated 2D roughing strategies. Gain more control over how you rough a part, regardless of geometry or machine configuration.
What this release means for your workflow
These five capabilities focus on structure, intent, and confidence:
- Structured metadata through custom properties
- Clear design intent with explicit design types
- Configurable drawing automation
- Design-driven turning threads
- Aproduction-ready multi-axis roughing strategy.
If you’re not using Fusion, learn how it can take your design-to-manufacturing workflows to the next leve.