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

Creating a 3D model

Now, we can start to create a 3D model of the sword and handle. We can use Google to determine the thickness of the sword and the general size of the rest of the handle.

The sword model

We will create the 3D model of the sword first to give us a guide for the centerline of the handle, which we will create next. Follow these steps to create the sword:

  1. After doing a quick Google search, I found that a typical sword thickness is about .28 inches thick. So, let’s extrude the sword to that thickness:
    1. First, set the sword as the Active Component, then click on the EXTRUDE tool, and select the sketch profile for the sword.
    2. Set Direction to Symmetric so that the sword is extruded on both sides of the sketch profile, which will make it easier to mirror along that profile.
    3. Set Measurement to the whole length and Distance to .28 inches, and then click OK.
Figure 14.16 – Extruding the Sword profile

Figure 14.16 – Extruding the Sword profile

  1. To create the...