Week 5 Summary

Within the last two weeks, we were basically getting familiar with Autodesk Fusion 360 platform to sketch different creative ideas and transfer products into 3D models. It was very exciting to get first hand experiene on deign interface with Autodesk expert Lucas Ewing. The first half of class was spent on navigating the general layout of Fusion 360. In the second half of class, we moved to design stage which was learning how to create a pen tip, inspired by a Bic ballpoint pen, guided by our expert. For our next class, Professor Vishal brought in campus Autodesk experts Gina Taylor and Nicole Chimienti to help the class to create a lamp in the use of Fusion 360. The following are several selected design examples posted on course website.

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Desk Lamp

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We all enjoy playing different funcitons on Fusion 360 to create incrediable samples and display innovative ideas. Lots of classmates share the interesting using experience on their blogs.

For example, ” I always thought that 3D modelling was a black art of sorts, but in reality it’s extremely intuitive. It’s a lot like programming, something I’m very familiar with, but for physical objects. Programming is all about breaking a complicated process down to its individual steps, and modelling is about breaking down an object into its individual components. Now that I’ve seen how it works, I can’t wait to try more.” said by .

 comments, “It was a great learning experience and led to new insights about how objects are designed as well as how those designs tie in with construction. I’ve very much enjoyed these hand on experiences and am looking forward future classes at the FabLab. Every learning experience so far has broadened my horizons regarding making and creating, whether it be the introduction of new ideas and knowledge, or reaffirmation of previously gained concepts. Thinking in the terms of maker requires a large mindset change, but I feel that I am making good progress towards that end.”

“I have a very strong background in a few Autodesk product like AutoCAD, Revit, and Rhinoceros therefore a lot of what we learned in class felt like a review. Other things we went over though really amazed me. The simplicity of Fusion 360 and user friendly platform really won me over. Fusion is much simpler than many of the other software’s I use but still enhance enough to where we can design and create crazy awesome products.” shared by .

In sum, the workshops are good practicing time for us to be familiar with the software. While we have limited time to get more advanced trainings on Fusion, Youtube tutorials and other resources from professor or classmates are good tools to learn different functions and models. Some people are going to use this user-friendly software on their semester project ideas since Fusion 360 is a very flexible, easy-learning and comprehensive tool to help designers/engineers to transfer initial thoughts into practice. Furthermore, a few classmates think learning process is interesting and useful for their career development because they just knew a new skill from this class to enrich the technical background.

Week 5: Fusion Confusion

As Toheeb so wisely put it in his post, this class has gone from 0-100 in about 2 seconds, or more realistically 2 class meetings. For the past two weeks, we’ve been learning how to use Autodesk’s Fusion 360 CAD software.

In our first class learning how to use this program, we were joined by Autodesk expert Lucas Ewing. The first half of class was spent learning more about Lucas, his qualifications and experience, and navigating the general layout of Fusion. The second half of class is when things got very interesting. Our first task was learning how to create a pen tip, inspired by a Bic ballpoint pen, guided by our expert.

Now, I’m going to take a guess and say that there are two types of people reading this post: those who are familiar with Fusion or CAD in general, and those who are not. Both are probably saying to themselves, “A pen tip… What’s so special about that?!” Well, for the 20 of us using this program for the first time this task seemed like a mammoth undertaking. I had no problem following along with Lucas, but when I tried to recreate the process at home, I could not select the sketch plane that I wanted revolved. A week and a class later, and after asking a few people, it turned out my problem had a simple solution. I was in the wrong workspace *facepalm*. This took me days to figure out.

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The pen tip I created in class.

For our next class, Vishal brought in campus Autodesk experts Gina Taylor and Nicole Chimienti. Our task this week was to create a lamp in fusion. However, there was a problem for me; for our homework the previous week, I had decided to be a little ambitious and create a lamp! Luckily for me, I was still able to get something out of the lesson as Gina and Nicole used different processes than me to create a similar product. It was very enjoyable getting to see multiple workflows.

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My beautiful lamp 🙂

All in all, despite the slight confusion I had navigating the layout, I can see that Fusion is a very powerful modeling tool that will come in extremely handy this semester! I can’t wait to see what else there is to learn.

Week 5 Reflection on Autodesk Fusion

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Within the last two weeks, we have learnt Autodesk Fusion 360 platform to sketch different creative ideas and transfer products into 3D models. It was very exciting to get familiar with the deign platform in the first tutorial class. The introduction class was a good opportunity to understand the functions as well as implementations of the software, such as the use of MODEL, MODIFY and SKETCH. The options are flexible that allows us quickly build shapes, tailor existing design or even assemble discrete parts together. After learning the function menu, I tried to follow a tutorial video designing a lampshade for an off-the-shelf lamp cord. The instruction is straightforward and helpful to practice what we saw in the class. I believe that the self-practice is indispensable to help me better prepare the workshop on the second Fusion 360 workshop. In the second workshop, we moved to a more complex model—lamp, which involved several types of functions, including extrude, offset faces and FORM.

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During the workshops, I saw the flexibility and customizability of the platform that allow users to complete the same project in multiple ways. It is convenient to track design steps and check errors by looking at the project in various angles. I am very enthusiastic to learn this new software and gain interesting experience on industrial design. In addition, Fusion 360 really opens my eyes on product designing because it is an efficient technology to transfer ideas into reality in short period of time with no limitations. Business and manufacturing industries should take plenty of advantages from Fusion 360 in developing new products, testing inherent functions from current designs, or printing intricate models in order to reduce operation and research and development (R&D) costs, more importantly curtail the time of introducing new projects to the marketplace.

I am very glad to have Fusion 360 design experience in BADM 395 because there is one more technique skills that I am able to add on my resume. In the next five years, I aspire to work as technology management consultant to assist business convert intangible assets into profits. Equipping with the skill of 3D designing, I believe this unique and intriguing experience will help me better understand of their research and product development progress.

 

Week 5 – 3D modelling with Fusion 360

These past 2 weeks were a lot of fun for me. I have been using 3D modelling software for a couple years now, and Autodesk has by far the best products. I learned AutoCad and Inventor in high school, so fusion 360 was really easy for me to get the hang of because its essentially just Inventor with a whole lot of bells and whistles. To refresh my memory, I chose to model the bolt. Yeah, it was probably the easiest design template to pick, but I felt like it had all the basics: chamfers, fillets, extrudes, revolutions, etc. bolt

I definitely noticed that I am much more comfortable with the parametric modelling than the free form stuff. Something in me just doesn’t like eyeballing or grabbing and pulling the free form designs. Because of this, I was very grateful for our art and design mentors as they seemed really comfortable with the free form modelling.

In the spirit of shaking the rust off of my 3D cad skills, I thought it would be nice if I made something for my friend who is coming down to visit this weekend. The picture below is my 3D model of a logo for a team that we are both big fans of.

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I have also started thinking about my semester project. I am currently torn between two ideas. Im either going to make a Stirling engine, which is just a fancy candle-powered wheel, or an audrino powered rotating LED display. The Stirling engine is definitely more 3D printer dependent, so I have already started modelling my design for it. Here is what I have so far:

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I’m really looking forward to being able to use this software that I know with my brand new knowledge of 3D printing to make some really cool things!

Week 5: Autodesk Fusion

Time for a new software! In the past few weeks, we’ve been going through a new software (well, new to us) that can be used in designing 3D items – Fusion 360!

We started out learning all the basic functions of F360, how to ultilize the commands and all that jazz. Since we were essentially freeforming, here’s a pic of the slightly off shape I ended the lesson with:

Week 5 Reflect

After that for our weekly assignment we had to follow one of the tutorials posted on the Autodesk website and create something from there. Honestly, it wasn’t as easy as I imagined it to be. After all, we’re following something step by step! There were a couple of times when I ended up in the wrong environment and couldn’t find a specific tool that I needed, and other times when I just clicked on random buttons and couldn’t go back, so I guess this practice was a great one to familiarize ourselves with the program.

Anyway! I created a lampshade from the tutorial, which was awesome fun.

Week 5 Reflect

During class on Monday, we were supposed to design a desk lamp (which mine ended up turning wonky at the very last few steps to connect the lampshade and the arm). One of the really cool things about Fusion 360 is that we get to pick what materials we would like our lamp to be rendered into, and I ended up picking platinum for the base, gold for the arm and silver for the lampshade, which was utterly unfeasible, but still really cool. Look at how shiny that is!

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Now that I know a bit of the basics, I can’t wait to create more stuff and print them!

Ready, steady, GO!

 New CAD software, new ideas, new designs. Part 1 of 2. (Part 2 coming soon)
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fusion360_facebookFusion 360 Publisher Example

 

Having been introduced to Fusion360 over the past 2 weeks, I’ve followed a few tutorials to practice the key CAD capabilities available through this software (free to download, have a play around!). (Tutorials here). Most notable about using fusion is that while parametric modeling is still very key to producing most models, there is also a free-form sculpting function where shapes can be sculpted and molded by push/pull actions.

 

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As seen in this tutorial, the free-form tool can be used push pull designs into all kinds of fluid shapes and forms.

Here (below) are some headphones I designed following tutorials, entirely through the free-form sculpting function. The lamp was created through mostly parametric modelling.
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Note: when using the free-form sculpting, particular care must be taken to ensure that when molding your shape, not to cross the shape into itself otherwise you’ll receive an error when you get to the end of your sculpt session. Very painful if you’ve spent some time one it. A lot of re-work, and I learnt the hard way.

 

In comparison to other  Engineering CAD packages (Solidworks, Creo, Catia) that I’ve come across, Fusion is a relatively easy piece of software to use, user intuitive and navigable, but does lack high end features available in the other CAD softwares that I’ve mentioned. It’s probably my go-to now for everyday designing though. Rendering designs also works a treat, with a basic library of materials and full scope of lighting effects that can be utilised.

 

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These are all possible designs in Fusion360. I best get practicing…

 

So what next? We have 3D printers, and Fusion360. Obviously time to get designing!

 

Week 5 Reflection

Over the past two classes, students had the unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience with Fusion 360. Unfortunately, my initial encounter with the software was delayed because my laptop wouldn’t allow me to download the software until I installed updates. However, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Autodesk’s Lucas Ewing on Monday, February 15th. Although interesting, I found it quite difficult to keep up with Ewing’s lecture on Fusion 360. Later that week, I played around with the software on my own and quickly became frustrated. I had no idea what I was doing!

During next Monday’s class, my frustration with Fusion 360 began to dissipate after Gina Taylor and Nicole Chimienti’s tutorial on how to construct a lamp.  Even though I had to continually ask for help from both the lecturers and my peers, I became a lot more confident in my ability to design using the Fusion 360 software. By the end of class, I ended up with a pretty sweet-looking lamp. Check it out below!

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Through the use of the render tool, I changed the material of the lamp as well as its color. To me, this is one of the coolest features Fusion 360 has to offer. Once class was over, I was left contemplating different ideas on how to move forward with this newfound knowledge. The impact this software can make on one’s life is astounding. Now, I have the ability to tweak existing products to my personal liking. On a much larger level, however, I want to design innovative products that can help alleviate the human condition such as a purifying straw. My hope would be to have this product mass produced and available to individuals who don’t have access to clean water. Before I can aspire to this, I need to become well versed with Fusion 360. My short-term goal is to use this software to create relatively easy, generic objects and work my way up until I’m proficient.

The importance of the Fusion 360 software is significant. It serves as a platform that enables individuals to design almost anything. My experience with Fusion 360 has expanded my narrow mindset into an open abyss of endless possibilities.

Week 5

The past two weeks have been filled with a lot of Fusion 360 Tutorials. On Monday, February 15th, Lucas Ewing of Autodesk joined us for our first tutorial and showed us how to build the tip of a mechanical pencil. I actually had great difficulty keeping up with his tutorial since it was my first time using the software. But after a little one-on-one help I realized my main problem was that I didn’t understand the controls of moving around the 3-dimensional space. That helped tremendously.

BoltWhen I went home I was able to practice a bit on my own using another Autodesk tutorial. I had made a bolt, and surprisingly I didn’t have nearly as many difficulties as I did when trying to make the tip of the mechanical pencil.

 

Snapchat-5488057531534068942This past Monday, the 22nd, Gina Taylor and Nicole Chimienti demonstrated a tutorial for how to build a lamp. This seemed a lot more complicated, so I’m glad we had people to guide us through on how to do it. I learned a lot of valuable information when it came to using the software: like the difference between push/pull and extrude. This was also my first time using the design tools and took my abstract lamp idea and turned it into a plausible design idea.

These past two sessions and the on-our-own session in place of a reflection last week have certainly made me more comfortable with the software. Though I certainly don’t consider myself to be an expert any time soon, I am content with the amount of knowledge I have obtained within the past few weeks. I’m not really used to hands-on classes, so this style of teaching is very different to me. But so far I am really enjoying it!

In the next few weeks I’m hoping to become even better with the software. I need to start thinking of objects in the sense of how they can be designed in Fusion 360. When we first had our session with Lucas Ewing, his thought processes blew my mind in designing the mechanical pencil tip. I believe thinking in those terms will help me in my future semester project so that I can easily design whatever I’m going to make. Changing your thought process isn’t always easy, but that’s what learning is all about!