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 constraints?

There are multiple ways to set rules to geometry within Fusion 360. These rules that you set allow the geometry to flex only in ways that you would like it to move, such as always making a line stay horizontal or two lines parallel. Fusion 360 will automatically add constraints to 2D objects while you draw depending on how closely it matches a constraint. In order to see the CONSTRAINTS panel, you will need to have a sketch active and be within the SKETCH tab:

Figure 2.14 – The CONSTRAINTS panel within the SKETCH tab

Figure 2.14 – The CONSTRAINTS panel within the SKETCH tab

In the next few sections, we will go over how to add constraints manually, what they do, and also how to remove them when you need more control over your 2D sketch.

Placing constraints nonautomatically

To place constraints without the assistance of Fusion 360, you will need to have a 2D object placed on the screen without a constraint already added to it. You have to then click on the constraint that you...