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

Setting up the project

Grab the notepad that you used to write down the dimensions of the bicycle handlebars and handlepost as it’s time to place those dimensions into Fusion 360. Here is the diagram from the previous chapter for reference.

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Figure 7.1 – Bicycle handlebar and handlepost dimensions

Figure 7.1 – Bicycle handlebar and handlepost dimensions

It’s always a good habit to get into saving the project first; this way, you don’t lose any data if the system crashes. Fusion does save your project while you are working, but if you never saved a drawing, then there would be no information to retrieve.

Here is how you can save your project in Fusion 360:

  1. Open Fusion 360.
  2. Click the Save button.
  3. Create a folder within your Packt Publishing project and name it Ch07 Handlebars Reference.
  4. Now name the Fusion 360 file Bicycle Handlebars.

Now that we have saved the project, let’s change the units of the project to meters since the dimensions we...