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

Importing a mesh model to Fusion 360

For the mesh model that we will be working with in this chapter, I was lucky enough to scan my father before he passed away a few years ago. We will take that original mesh and import it into Fusion 360, then scale up the model, fix any holes within the mesh, and then turn it into a bottle topper. Let’s start by importing the mesh:

  1. Open Fusion 360 and start a blank Fusion 360 design file. Click on the Save icon and create a new folder within your Packt Pub project folder and name it Ch15 Scanned Mesh. Finally, save the design file with the name Bottle Topper.
  2. Download the start_Dad Model.obj mesh body from the Ch15 GitHub folder, the link to which is mentioned in the Technical requirements section.
  3. Go to the INSERT panel and click on Insert Mesh.
Figure 15.1 – The Insert Mesh tool location

Figure 15.1 – The Insert Mesh tool location

  1. Locate the start_Dad Model.obj mesh that you downloaded from the GitHub link and click Open...