This past week has been my favorite week so far. This is most likely because we finally started learning and using Fusion 360. From what I remember of Inventor, another CAD software, it’s extremely similar to Fusion 360. One thing that makes Fusion 360 such a great CAD program is the whole cloud system they are using, hence the title Fusion 360. We are currently shared on a class folder that allows us to save our project to that folder and let other students see what other students are doing. This is also great for collaboration with team members. I can see this being extremely useful when working on our semester-long project. We won’t have to email different versions back and forth. It will all stay in one place. In addition to their cloud system, the timeline at the bottom is fascinating. This timeline lets the user play to see their product from start to finish.
Jeff Smith, an instructor from Autodesk, gave us a workshop on the basics on Fusion 360. Personally, I believe he did a great job selling Fusion 360 to our class. He also taught me multiple things about Fusion 360 that I did not know about. I think the craziest, most mind blowing tool Fusion has to offer is the “create form.” I don’t remember Inventor having this tool so I wasn’t sure what this tool was all about. After Jeff’s demonstration on this, I was mind blown. The possibilities of creating objects are endless.
We all have different learning styles. I definitely prefer to be hands on versus learning from a text book and this is exactly what Lars Christensen’s tutorials are all about. Lars is the maker of the video we had to watch last week. I went ahead and watched his other videos and he’s been extremely useful. I enjoy how he takes the time to explain why we do certain things and how it works. Thanks to Lars, I have definitely been trying to learn the keyboard shortcuts and it has made my experience significantly better thus far. Click here to watch another useful video. I really enjoyed learning about saving and versions. Although this may sound simple, it’s important to know about this collaboration tool. Like stated before, I’m sure it will come in handy when our group members are modeling our idea. I was able to use what I learned from his tutorials to make my own product. I honestly had no idea what to make. I thought about making a water bottle but I figured many would be doing the same thing. I ended up making a flash drive. Here’s a gif from the start to finish. I haven’t had any complications when making this flash drive and the box. This is probably because of the exposure I had with inventor in high school.
Overall, I’m extremely happy with this course. I can’t wait to keep using Fusion to make some complicated objects, like a Lego car made from scratch!