Book Image

Improving CAD Designs with Autodesk Fusion 360

By : Kevin Michael Land
Book Image

Improving CAD Designs with Autodesk Fusion 360

By: Kevin Michael Land

Overview of this book

Autodesk Fusion 360 has become an indispensable tool for designers, tinkerers, and engineers worldwide thanks to its versatility that allows for large-scale assemblies and smaller, quick 3D prints. If you’ve faced challenges with learning Fusion 360, this book will help you overcome them and build the confidence to design your own projects, explaining step-by-step instructions and the purpose of each tool. In this book, you’ll dive into the design workspace and learn sketching fundamentals such as setting up a component, recognizing when a sketch is fully constrained, and parametrically flexing models. Through trial and error, you’ll work on multiple easy-to-build projects to create simple, useful items that can be quickly 3D printed for use around the house and then advance to much bigger projects that require joint connectivity and large assemblies. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to sketch fully parametric designs, translate them into 3D models, and create your own unique designs.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
1
Part 1: Simple, Fun Projects for Around the Home
7
Part 2: Bicycle Water Bottle Holder Project
13
Part 3: FORM Modeling Techniques
17
Part 4: Working with 2D and 3D Scanned Images

Adding in a joint

A great feature of Fusion 360 is adding joints to see parts move as they would in real life. One nice feature is what is called an as-built joint. What this means is that if you have two parts that are already placed where they would go and that are connected how they would be in real life, you can easily connect them with an as-built joint without having to worry about selecting multiple faces of different parts as you would in other design programs. Follow these steps to add an as-built joint:

  1. Turn off all the sketches by going into BROWSER on the left side of the screen and selecting the top-level eyeball icon, which will turn off the remaining eyeball icons within that folder:
Figure 9.38 – Turn off the top-level sketches

Figure 9.38 – Turn off the top-level sketches

  1. Go to the ASSEMBLE panel’s drop-down arrow and select As-Built Joint.
Figure 9.39 – As-Built Joint location and description

Figure 9.39 – As-Built Joint location and description

The AS-BUILT JOINT...