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

Creating a model by stacking with the Extrude tool

In this section, we will learn how to create the same doorknob model through the method of adding material by stacking extruded shapes on top of each other. This method is another way of creating 3D models with simple shapes. Extruding a shape is a very basic form of creation in all 3D programs but is also the most used as it is very straightforward and simple. You draw a simple 2D shape, then lift that shape in a direction to form a solid body. We will be doing this multiple times to form the doorknob model in this exercise.

Creating the doorknob component

Just like before, we will continue in the same Fusion 360 project file and create a new doorknob component. Be sure that you make the top-level project active before you create the new component, or you will be creating a subassembly within the last created part:

  1. Make sure that the top level is active (see the red arrow in Figure 5.50), then right-click on the top...