Tag Archives: Week 4

Discovering the Beauty of Autodesk Fusion 360

Overview:
This week we had Dan Banach from the Autodesk 360 company run a workshop introducing Fusion 360 software, the uses for it as well as walk us through creating our own models. We went through and made 2 different items, which I will discuss in detail later, while introducing many different functions and tools within Fusion 360. Dan had a slide discussing the various industries and companies that use Autodesk software, one I was surprised by was the movie industry and special effects. Many films use Autodesk software to design and create special effects. I am absolutely amazed by the capabilities this one software has and look forward to honing my skills in the coming months to be able to better design and create objects of value.

Fusion 360 Creations:

Our first item we designed was an ice scraper. In this workshop we walked through over 20 different tools within the software in order to create the exact look we wanted. One neat feature within Fusion 360 is that you can change the material of your creation. This then allows you to determine the specs, for example how much it weighs, which would then tell you how much it would cost in time and money to 3D print. I was also amazed by how many material options there were to model items in including metals, ceramics, paper, canvas, and even water.

In class we designed 2 items: an ice scraper and an iPhone charging stand. The phone charger I kept as the plastic PET material (since that is typical for 3D printing) thus why it is transparent, while the ice scraper I applied a “paint” layer to color it teal.

Ice scraper: http://a360.co/2snHF7x
Iphone charging stand: http://a360.co/2BpSWas

I thought the iPhone charging stand would be a useful item for my everyday life and was interested in seeing how the fusion file transferred into Cura to 3D print. I ended up printing this model and was excited to try it however, it is not very functional. The section that goes around the charger is too large to stay easily and when you put a phone on the shelf it is thrown off balance and falls to the floor. I was happy that I printed it because I got to see the iterative process, not everything comes out exactly as planned however you are easily able to go back to the drawing board and adjust the design for improvements. 3D printing is a series of trial and errors which makes it that much more exciting when you print something that works exactly as planned.

My Own Fusion Creation:

As for my own creation, I decided to make something to keep my electronic cords organized on my desk. I plug quite a few different cords into an outlet below my desk and have been getting annoyed that they fall off my desk and get tangled thus I’m constantly picking them up. This figure is a way to help keep the charging ends of cords on my desk. I incorporated a small shalf to keep it from sliding all over my desk however I still think it will need to be secured with a command strip. Hope this is of use to others! I’m excited to try printing this this week and will share updates on how it goes!

http://a360.co/2Bov1bl

Resources:

The most useful resource I resorted to throughout this small project is actually Autodesk’s Support & Learning page. They provide wonderful tutorials, explanations and examples of many different tools as well as products that you can use when creating your model. I found the tutorials quite helpful.

http://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/

Learning Autodesk Fusion 360

Overview

Hello! This week we learned how to use Autodesk Fusion 360. I originally thought that Tinkercad online was the coolest software, but now I understand how much more superior Fusion 360 is in comparison. While both of these programs are owned by the same company, I was ecstatic to jump into Fusion 360 because of the extended capabilities within the program.

We were fortunate to have Dan Banach come talk to our class and walk us through creating a few designs (shown in the next section). Dan is an instructor from Autodesk,  and he was extremely knowledgeable and helpful as we learned this (to most of us, completely-new) program. One of the neatest things I learned from Dan is that Fusion 360 is used by many large movie production companies to add in animations and special effects to films. As someone who would love to work in the entertainment industry someday, I found this extremely interesting. I think it is so neat that a company can essentially create a character within this program, animate it, and make it come to life in a film. I plan to dive deeper into the animation aspect of this software as I gain more expertise in designing objects. Check out some of the designs I’ve created over the past week in the next section!

 

Autodesk Fusion 360 Designs

Valentine’s Day Paperweight – I created this when I was playing around with Fusion 360 because I figured that with Valentine’s Day coming up, some of my peers might find it useful. As a college student, it’s easy to let holidays creep up on us. Thus, I thought it’d be useful to share this idea with the class incase they would like to print a Valentine’s Day 2018 heart paperweight for their significant other: http://a360.co/2FVSKP6

 

Ice Scraper – This was the first object that we created with Dan. He walked us through each and every step, so we were able to learn a lot of crucial details right off the bat. This design essentially consists of two shapes: a long T-shape on the bottom and a rectangle block on top. We used the fillet tool, used the chamfer tool, and created a hole. It was also neat to learn how to apply paint to the object. This skill will definitely come in handy when using this program to create objects and present to clients/managers! http://a360.co/2GTF1JP

 

iPhone Charging Holder – This was another one of the designs that we created in class with Dan. It was surprisingly simple to make after extruding the rectangle on the bottom, putting a hole in it, and then extruding a rectangle on the top. With some minor tweaks with the fillet tool and some additional details, we were able to come up with the following design: http://a360.co/2EqneLX

 

Pen Holder (Everyday Object) – For my everyday object assignment, I chose to create a pen holder. I chose this object because I was looking at my desk and brainstorming what I could use on it. With many pens/pencils laying around, it was a no-brainer. I began by extruding a square (2” x 2”) up by 3”. I used the fillet tool to smooth out the side corners, and then extruded a smaller square from the top of this block down towards the bottom (thus creating the open space within the pen holder). I stopped extruding before I hit the bottom so that this object would not be open the entire way through; I used the fillet tool once more to smooth out the inside walls and was left with the following object: http://a360.co/2G3LQHJ

 

 

Further Thoughts

Overall, the skills I have learned over the past week have been very useful in my path to becoming a better creator. My plan is to stay fresh with the content that I have learned and continue creating more in-depth/complex objects.

Since I noted how interested I am in this software being used for animations in movies, I found the following video that shows how animations work (for beginners) in Fusion 360. Definitely check out this short video because it shows how simply we can now animate the designs that we create: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJkI6N8VAiY

Thank you for taking the time to read my post. I hope you are having a great day, and I look forward to checking back in with you in a week!

 

-Scott Provenzano