If you want to automate the creation of Linux VMs from a script on VMWare Fusion, I have published to GitHub the script tool I use and created:
https://github.com/castedo/vmxor
There are many alternatives (I think), especially Vagrant. But vmxor is small and simple and you might find it useful to cherry pick autoinst.xml contents and shell commands.
I currently have examples and use the tool for Linux distributions openSUSE, SLED and Fedora.
Enjoy,
Castedo Ellerman