This week in class, I enjoyed getting to learn a new modeling system. Mr. Banach was very knowledgeable about Fusion 360, and his step by step instructions and assistance was very beneficial to my learning. It was pretty amazing that he was able to help us design an ice scraper and also a phone charger shelf in the duration of the class, especially since we missed out on a significant chunk of time when the technology assistance took a long time before arriving. I learned not only how to create circles, rectangles, and other basic shapes, but how to extrude an object to make it three dimensional, how to fillet edges (and what the word “fillet” means), and how to insert holes into objects. Making my own object on this system would have been intimidating without having as in depth of a lesson as we got, but I felt more than comfortable designing on Fusion 360 for this assignment. I designed my very own Chief Illiniwek Koozie to keep drinks cold. I would, however, need to be able to print with some sort of squishy, spongey material in order to have a koozie that successfully insulates a can.

Through my research on Fusion 360, I was most surprised to see how many free instruction articles and full online classes that are offered on the Autodesk website. There are classes on the webpage called “Introduction to CAD and CAE using Fusion 360,” “Fusion 360: Foundational Concepts,” and even “Modeling and Prototyping for Mechanical Engineers.” These classes range from thirty minutes to over three hours long. The length of the one that is three hours and fifteen minutes (entitled Fusion 360: Introduction to CAD, CAM, and CAE) especially surprised me- that seems like it would be an especially thorough class for a free online class. It was also interesting to me that essentially anyone could sign up for three full years of access by saying they were a student; this got me wondering whether a person needed a University email address to sign up for free access, so I tried to sign up with my Gmail account, and it worked! It’s crazy to me how much free access to this product a person can get, even if they’re technically not a student. I know this isn’t really on the “digital making” topic so much, but I think it is something Autodesk may want to look into, in order to capture as much revenue as possible and to have money to put into improving the software when necessary.

Attached below is my koozie design.

http://a360.co/2EBmRhJ

Also attached are my ice scraper and phone charger shelf designs.

http://a360.co/2BUMFEJ

http://a360.co/2G7J9F5