Manufacturing Toolbox

It's as Easy as Ctrl+C Ctrl+V…

The three most commonly used commands in any software are Copy and Paste, so much so that they are also universal hot keys or keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+C & Ctrl+V. It shouldn't surprise anyone that a Powerful Tool like Fusion 360 can use these keys to such power.

 

I was recently Showing off Fusion 360 to an Industrial Design group. They shared with us that one of their pains and frustrations  was their inability to create design Iterations quickly. I thought to myself, "I couldn't have set me up any better myself, it's like they knew where I was going." Right on our website it states that using Fusion you can "Quickly iterate on design ideas with sculpting tools to explore form and modeling tools to create finishing features." So when I went into demo mode I figured I would show them the power of T-Spline and our Freeform modeling & Sculpting tools. To my surprise it wasn't all the cool Direct edits, Bridges, and Boundary fill commands that wowed this customer: It was a simple copy and paste of some existing complex surfaces. They had used about every CAD tool under the sun and what they were most impressed with was how easy

I could get to the start of a new variance of a current idea. So I'd say that we proved to them, on that day, that Fusion - indeed - can solve their Ideation problems pretty quickly.

 

Check out this quick video tip and  try it yourself.

 

 

I promise this time coping won't get you in trouble with your teacher!

 

-Travis @travis36evans

Let's keep it in motion…

 

Sir Isaac Newton's law of motion states that an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion. So the real question I had was: How to get it into motion?

 

I want to discuss motion as it relates to Fusion 360. If you haven't tried it yet, I challenge you. One thing you will notice is that it is different.

If you've used a traditional CAD system there are ways we do things that are a little different. One of those is mates and constraints. We call them Joints and they enable motion rather than limiting motion - like you've seen in traditional CAD systems.

For example: if I want something to slide amongst another part/component, I simply add a “Slider” joint.

Another example would be: if I have a ball joint, then I assign it as ball joint. If you want a good overview of Joints check out this video…

 

 

 

Welcome back. Now that you know everything about “Joints”, here’s what we can do with them: we can Drive 'em, Lock 'em, Animate 'em, and one of my favorites Render those motions. 

 

 

Let me explain all of those with a video. As the canvas for highlighting these joint examples, I’ll be using a custom 1982 International bus I'm converting into a RV/tailgater. So let's take a look…

 

 

In summary:

• Drive Joints allows you to manually move your component through its range of motion.
• Edit Joints Limits allows you to specify the range your component can move.
• Locking Joints, does just that locks a joint so you can test the other ranges of motion it can have or just minimize the motion.
• Animating Joints give you a nice preview of the Joints motion.
• Animate model animates your joint but also takes into account the relationships your components has with other surrounding components and those components come a long for the ride in the animation.
• Motion studies allow you to analyze the kinematic motion based on a joint or joints.  You can also use these studies to create animated renderings.

So thank you Sir Isaac Newton for your Fusion 360 motion tips.

- Travis @travis36evans