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

Getting ready for 3D printing

The first thing we need to do is to convert the mesh into a solid body. You do have the ability to 3D print meshes without converting, but I ran into some issues when I was adding supports to this model as it treated each model separately. Converting the mesh to a solid solved this issue, so let’s get into it:

  1. Select the MESH tab and click on the MODIFY drop-down arrow and select the Convert Mesh tool. The CONVERT MESH floating window will open up.
  2. Select the body and leave the other settings as is and click OK.
Figure 15.25 – Converting the mesh to a solid body

Figure 15.25 – Converting the mesh to a solid body

Now that the mesh is a solid body, we can use various solid modeling tools on it, such as the Combine tool to connect it with the base model. Let’s first move the model down slightly so that it forms a clean edge.

  1. Click on the SOLID tab, then select the Move/Copy tool located within the MODIFY panel.
  2. Set Move Type to...