Using Fusion360 to produce drawings for 3D printing
Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2020 6:40 pm
I saw that someone in the sketchup & 3D printing thread asked if a similar one could be done for Fusion 360.
This is in two parts, a video and a writeup. The video is just a screen recording with no audio, the explanation is in text form below. I havent gone into complete detail on what every little tool does and how it works, there are better tutorials than this for a complete beginner, but I hope it shows the general workflow.
As with many things, there are 12 ways to skin this cat, this is one way, showing off a few interesting features of Fusion. You may notice there are some similarities to the Sketchup way of doing things.
The video is under 3 mins long, remember you can slow down the playback using the gear menu. I had to sit on my left hand to stop myself using keyboard shortcuts, so if anyone sees anything magically happen without a mouse click let me know so I can explain what I did.
When making scale models, I like to set up a user parameter with the scale factor. This is the first thing you see me do: "Name" is what you use to recall the parameter. I want to work at 16mm/1ft, so that is what I put in the expression field. Fusion understands quite a few units, and you can mix and match metric and imperial. Since a scale factor is a length divided by a length, it is unitless.
NOTE: If you don't have the parameters "Fx" button visible, you can find it in the modify drop down menu: Next, I draw a square. I think the video is relatively self explanatory. The first step is to create a new sketch, and click on the yellow xy plane I want to draw on. I then use the rectangle tool to sketch the box, and use the dimension tool to firmly define the size as 45x45 real-world mm. Now I use the offset tool twice to create the inset lines. You see me type 3"*sm32scale. You can do mathematics within a lot of the numeric inputs, so this takes 3 inches and multiplies it by the 16mm/ft scale factor defined earlier, resulting in a scale size of the offset of 4mm.
Now I start drawing the lines that create the separate panes. I first draw the required lines, not bothering to get them lined up or centred, only letting Fusion snap them perpendicular to the other lines already there. I then use the collinear constraint to force them inline where they should be.
Now using the equal constraint to make them all the same length. You can see in the video how this makes it so dragging the lines affects the thickness of bit between the panes. I finally constrain this last degree of freedom by dimensioning this size. All the lines turn black showing everything in the sketch is constrained.
Now we turn the sketch into a 3D body. This works similarly to Sketchup. You use the push/pull tool to create a 3D object, extruding the bits of the sketch you want to a certain height. I then do it again for the outer frame, but extruding by a larger distance this time.
You may find after the first extrusion Fusion will hide the sketch, to bring it back use the eye icon in the project browser: At the end of the video, you see me use one of the most powerful features of Fusion. You can go back and change parameters, like a dimension as in the video, and the 3d model updates with the change. This means for example, we could make a different size window by just changing the first 45mm dimensions we put down at the start, and the model would update accordingly.
If anyone has any questions about a specific part I would by happy to try and help.
This is in two parts, a video and a writeup. The video is just a screen recording with no audio, the explanation is in text form below. I havent gone into complete detail on what every little tool does and how it works, there are better tutorials than this for a complete beginner, but I hope it shows the general workflow.
As with many things, there are 12 ways to skin this cat, this is one way, showing off a few interesting features of Fusion. You may notice there are some similarities to the Sketchup way of doing things.
The video is under 3 mins long, remember you can slow down the playback using the gear menu. I had to sit on my left hand to stop myself using keyboard shortcuts, so if anyone sees anything magically happen without a mouse click let me know so I can explain what I did.
When making scale models, I like to set up a user parameter with the scale factor. This is the first thing you see me do: "Name" is what you use to recall the parameter. I want to work at 16mm/1ft, so that is what I put in the expression field. Fusion understands quite a few units, and you can mix and match metric and imperial. Since a scale factor is a length divided by a length, it is unitless.
NOTE: If you don't have the parameters "Fx" button visible, you can find it in the modify drop down menu: Next, I draw a square. I think the video is relatively self explanatory. The first step is to create a new sketch, and click on the yellow xy plane I want to draw on. I then use the rectangle tool to sketch the box, and use the dimension tool to firmly define the size as 45x45 real-world mm. Now I use the offset tool twice to create the inset lines. You see me type 3"*sm32scale. You can do mathematics within a lot of the numeric inputs, so this takes 3 inches and multiplies it by the 16mm/ft scale factor defined earlier, resulting in a scale size of the offset of 4mm.
Now I start drawing the lines that create the separate panes. I first draw the required lines, not bothering to get them lined up or centred, only letting Fusion snap them perpendicular to the other lines already there. I then use the collinear constraint to force them inline where they should be.
Now using the equal constraint to make them all the same length. You can see in the video how this makes it so dragging the lines affects the thickness of bit between the panes. I finally constrain this last degree of freedom by dimensioning this size. All the lines turn black showing everything in the sketch is constrained.
Now we turn the sketch into a 3D body. This works similarly to Sketchup. You use the push/pull tool to create a 3D object, extruding the bits of the sketch you want to a certain height. I then do it again for the outer frame, but extruding by a larger distance this time.
You may find after the first extrusion Fusion will hide the sketch, to bring it back use the eye icon in the project browser: At the end of the video, you see me use one of the most powerful features of Fusion. You can go back and change parameters, like a dimension as in the video, and the 3d model updates with the change. This means for example, we could make a different size window by just changing the first 45mm dimensions we put down at the start, and the model would update accordingly.
If anyone has any questions about a specific part I would by happy to try and help.