Synthesis Exporter

August 21, 2025 · View on GitHub

This is an addin for Autodesk® Fusion™ that will export a Mirabuf usable by the Synthesis simulator.

Features

  • Materials
  • Apperances
  • Instances
  • Joints
  • Static and Dynamic components
  • Mesh Quality
  • Thumbnail Capture
  • Local Save
  • Simple Motors
  • GZip compression
  • Motion Links
  • Complex Motors
  • Sending compressed file
  • File Diffs

Pre-requisites

Protobuf

You can download Protobuf v23.3 here.

Dev Tools

We use VSCode Primarily, download it to interact with our code or use your own at your own risk.

How to Build + Run

  1. Open Autodesk Fusion
  2. Select UTILITIES from the top bar
  3. Click ADD-INS Button
  4. Click Add-Ins tab at the top of Scripts and Add-Ins dialog
  5. Press + Button under My Add-Ins
  6. Navigate to the containing folder for this Addin and click open at bottom - clone-directory/synthesis/exporters/SynthesisFusionAddin
  7. Synthesis should be an option - select it and click run at the bottom of the dialog
  8. There should now be a button that says Synthesis in your utilities menu

How to Debug

Debug Non Start

Most of the runtime for the addin is saved under the logs directory in this folder

  • Open logs/synthesis.log
    • If nothing appears something went very wrong (make a issue on this github)
    • If something appears and you cannot solve it feel free to make an issue anyway and include the file

General Debugging

  1. Open Autodesk Fusion
  2. Select UTILITIES from the top bar
  3. Click ADD-INS Button
  4. Click Add-Ins tab at the top of Scripts and Add-Ins dialog
  5. Press + Button under My Add-Ins
  6. Navigate to the containing folder for this Addin and click open at bottom - clone-directory/synthesis/exporters/SynthesisFusionAddin
  7. Synthesis should be an option - select it and click Debug at the bottom of the dialog
    • This is in a dropdown with the Run Button
  8. This should open VSCode - Now run with FN+5
    • Now you may add break points or debug at will

How to Package

Packaging is mainly for compressing the files into a smaller footprint

Contact us for information on how to use the packaging script to obfuscate all the files using pyminifier.

How to Format

We format using a Python formatter called black Code style: black in conjunction with isort.

  • Install by pip3 install black && pip3 install isort or pip install black && pip install isort
  • Use isort . followed by black . to format all relevant exporter python files.
    • or, alternatively, run python ./tools/format.py to do this for you!

Note: black will always ignore files in the proto/proto_out folder since google formats those

Docstring standard

This standard is inconsistently applied, and that's ok

def foo(bar: fizz="flower") -> Result[walrus, None]:
    """
    Turns a fizz into a walrus

    Parameters:
    bar - The fizz to be transformed (default = "flower") ; fizz standards are subject to change, old fizzes may no longer be valid

    Returns:
    Success - She new walrus
    Failure - None if the summoning fails ; the cause of failure will be printed, not returned

    Notes:
    - Only works as expected if the bar arg isn't a palindrome or an anagram of coffee. Otherwise unexpected (but still valid) walruses may be returned
    - Please do not name your fizz "rizz" either, it hurts the walrus's feelings

    TODO: Consult witch about inconsistent alchemical methods
    """
    # More alchemical fizz -> walrus code
    some_walrus = bar + "_coffee"
    return some_walrus

Note that not this much detail is necessary when writing function documentation, notes, defaults, and a differentiation between sucess and failure aren't always necessary.

Where to list potential causes of failure?

It depends on how many you can list

  • 1: In the failure return case
  • 2-3: In the notes section
  • 4+: In a dedicated "potential causes of failure section" between the "returns" and "notes" sections

Additionally, printing the error instead of returning it is bad practice