after effects user question

So I'm coming from an after effects background and I'm trying to get my head wrapped around the workflow for fusion. In after effects you have individual comps that you can nest. But in fusion I'm not seeing a way to do that. After watching all of the tutorial videos on this site, I'm left thinking the closest match is having a node graph act as a comp. Is this correct or am I missing something? Thanks.

Fusion is a non destructive workflow by design. This will be something you need to wrap your head around coming from after effects. There is NO need to nest comps in fusion.

Nested comps in fusion generally would managed with a precomp to branch. There is a simple disk icon in every tool. Click on it and it will render out your comp up to that point. You can choose interactive (default) or force a render of cache. Fusion is smart enough to de-validate the cache if you make changes upstream of that node. You can lock the cache if you want to prevent that (good for testing some node settings)

Some things to note however, if you have a node within the cached branch, that is being used to drive/mask tools in another branch, then you will see that branch get re-rendered each time that tool is requested, meaning the cache becomes less efficient. Place as many caches as you like, try to be smart about where you have them, and it can be quite a blessing.

Another thing to note is that there is currently no system to manage your caches, meaning if you do 20 caches on 20 comps and don't cleanup, you'll eventually run into some issues.
I'm not sure if someone has written this, but there should be easy way to write a script that purges your comps cache, buy explorer delete is much easier

Hope that helps

Thank you. I'm sure it will become clearer as I spend more time in Fusion. I just wanted to clarify that I wasn't missing something.

So I'm coming from an after effects background and I'm trying to get my head wrapped around the workflow for fusion. In after effects you have individual comps that you can nest. But in fusion I'm not seeing a way to do that. After watching all of the tutorial videos on this site, I'm left thinking the closest match is having a node graph act as a comp. Is this correct or am I missing something? Thanks.

A node graph is a comp. You can branch off several connections from the last node of whatever graph you've built and (for example) merge it multiple times over an image (using different rotations or time offsets, as you would with a precomp in AfterEffects) or use it on several ImagePlanes in 3D.

It pays off to keep your node graph tidy so coworkers (or yourself 2 months down the road) understand which parts of your composite are considered precomp elements that get re-used.

edit: Fusion can seem more confusing due to the node graph, if you're coming from AE. But actually it's the other way around once you get used to a node graph It's also much more powerful (imagine being able to re-use a single mask across several AE precomps without comps nested inside comps nested insode comps). But with great power comes great responsibility: It's also to create a tangled mess that you don't understand anymore. I've seen compositing artists trained by Lucasfilm who follow a horizontal and vertical graph structure so diligently it's ridiculous. On the other hand I've seen a great artist's comp once that actually went in circles from the inside out