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 Rule #1 is

When someone using Fusion 360 mentions Rule #1, they refer to an unwritten rule within the Fusion community that, when first starting a design, you need to be sure to use components. If you don’t plan on using components, your timeline and browser will get very large, making it difficult to locate objects. This helps not only you but also anyone else who you may want to collaborate with on a project.

What components are

A component is basically like a top-level assembly of a part. You can also think of it as a large box that stores all the basic pieces that make up your 3D part, which could be the sketches, the construction planes, the solid body, and so on. This helps with the organization of parts and will shorten your timeline at the bottom of the Fusion 360 user interface if you have a large assembly model.

Figure 3.25 – The location of the component tool

Figure 3.25 – The location of the component tool

If you look at this project example of a tool shed, you can...