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

What are planes?

Planes are flat surfaces that you can use to create sketches, use as references to build other geometry, or use as cutting tools. When you first start Fusion 360, you will notice that you have a large grid with red and green axes and a central dot. The dot is your origin (0,0) location, with the red line being your x axis and the green line being your y axis:

Figure 2.1 – Origin location on a grid

Figure 2.1 – Origin location on a grid

Choosing any tool in the toolbar, such as the Box tool under the SOLID tab within the CREATE panel, you will see three planes appear on your screen with a Select a plane or planar face option:

Figure 2.2 – Planes once a command has been chosen

Figure 2.2 – Planes once a command has been chosen

Think of these planes as your drawing paper, and you can choose which side of an object you want to draw on. These planes represent the top, side, and front views of your object.

Once you choose a plane by left-clicking on it, you can then draw the size of...