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 sketches?

Sketches are profiles of geometric objects that are built within Fusion 360. These sketches could be just a simple line that creates a surface object or an enclosed circle that generates a solid object. You can create any enclosed shape to generate a solid object, so long as it shows a light blue interior shaded area. Once you have created your sketch and generated your 3D object, you can go back into the sketch to make further changes to your 3D model. You can see the location of the Create Sketch tool here:

Figure 2.10 – Create Sketch tool location

Figure 2.10 – Create Sketch tool location

We will now explore the SKETCH environment, which changes the toolbar icons at the top of your screen once a plane is selected and will show new tools for this design space.

The SKETCH tab

Once you have started a sketch by clicking on the Create Sketch tool and have selected a plane to draw on, you will notice that your toolbar changes into a new layout:

Figure 2.11 – The SKETCH tab toolbar
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