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

Project setup in Fusion 360

Knowing how to start a project is a crucial step when working in Fusion because if you don’t start off on the right foot, it can result in poor design and unexpected results.

It’s a good idea to think about and plan out your design before you start drawing anything in Fusion. Let’s go over a few thoughts on the design we want to achieve:

  • We know the design shape we want, which is an S-shape, but for this S-Hook design, we want it to grow from the center out when the size changes. This way, we can easily control both halves as they grow to different sizes.
  • We want the thickness to change when we adjust the overall size.
  • We want the ends to have a larger diameter to not allow for slippage.
  • We may want to change the shape of the body depending on the purpose of the hook.

Now that we have some idea of the results we want to achieve, let’s set up Fusion 360. Open up Fusion 360 and check to see whether...