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 reference model using parametric designs

We can see from the previous model that primitive modeling is a very crude, simple way of creating an object for quick reference. That method works great when you’re short on time, but what if we need a few more details and want to see some size adjustments? This is where parametric modeling works very well. In this section, we will recreate the handlebars, the handlepost, and the handlepost clamp and demonstrate why parametric modeling is a much better way to build models:

  1. With the top level active, right-click and select New Component. Name the new component Parametric Handlebar Ref and click OK.
Figure 7.18 – Showing the top level active and New Component

Figure 7.18 – Showing the top level active and New Component

Important note

If you happen to create the New Component within the previous component, your model will still work fine but may show incorrectly for a Bill of Material (BOM). If you notice that it was placed in the wrong...