Fusion 360 Tutorial: Basics And Tips For 3D Printing - Formlabs

What is Autodesk Fusion 360?

Fusion 360 is a cloud-based CAD platform that is an affordable, highly capable alternative to other major players in the industry. It is easy to use and has all the common features you can expect from popular CAD packages. Fusion 360 was built from the ground up to be an all-encompassing product development solution and aims to offer a simple workflow from conceptual design all the way through manufacturing. 

Fusion 360 has a very large knowledge base that thoroughly covers every feature of the software, these tutorials can be accessed through Fusion 360 as well as through the Autodesk website. There is also an official YouTube channel with many hours of free tutorials.

The software receives frequent upgrades and new features arrive every few months. Fusion 360 is ideal for high turnover businesses as well as start-ups looking for a professional tool to get them into the market.

Fusion 360 can perform resource-intensive operations on the cloud, including rendering, simulation, shape optimization, and generative design. This means that work can continue while all the heavy lifting is done on the cloud. 

How Much Does Fusion 360 Cost?

There are various licensing packages available, these are listed below:

• Free Trial: Autodesk offers a 30-day free trial upon signup. 
• Educational: Like most other CAD packages, Fusion 360 comes with an educational license to students, educators, and academic institutions.
• Start-up: A free license is available for start-ups, enthusiast, and hobbyist. In order to use this license, the user must run a company that has a turnover of less than $100 000 per year. The start-up license does not include any of the more advanced features such as generative design.
• Commercial: There used to be two versions of the paid license, namely a standard and ultimate, but these have been merged into one version that contains all the features that used to be in the ultimate version. The fees are structured as a subscription model.

Fusion 360 Basics and Interface

Workspaces

In Fusion 360, you can switch between seven different workspaces. Each workspace has its own set of tools and functions:

• Design: For drawing 3D models and surfaces by making use of sketches, extrusions, revolves, and many other standard CAD tools.
• Generative Design: Generative Design is a form of artificial intelligence that leverages the power of the cloud and machine learning to output efficient design iterations based on your mechanical constraints.
• Render: Create photorealistic renderings of components and products.
• Animation: Animate assemblies to see if they function as expected or to show functionality to prospective clients.
• Simulation: Computer-aided engineering to perform various stress analyses on the designs to make sure they can handle the operating conditions.
• Manufacture: Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) to assist with manufacturing the part on various digital fabrication tools, such as CNC mills, CNC lathes, laser cutters, and waterjet cutters.
• Drawing: Create shop drawings of designs for manufacturing in a traditional manual machine shop or to accompany the G-code for CNC machined parts.

The Fusion 360 workspace is divided into seven main sections, namely the tool bar, data panel, navigation, timeline, browser, view cube, and the marking menu. Each of these is described in more detail below.

Toolbar

The toolbar contains all the tools and features that are available in a workspace. In the case of the design workspace, these tools help create and modify 3D models, surfaces, sheet metal, and assemblies.

Data Panel

The data panel allows the user to open existing projects, create new ones, manually save a project and access the data panel. The data panel is a space where designs can be saved and organized in an easy to navigate format. The data panel allows you to create project folders as well as a place to find sample parts and tutorials.

Navigation

The navigation bar contains all the tools for rotating, translating and changing the visual style of a model. There are also options to break the canvas into subsections with each indicating a different view of the model.

Timeline

The timeline shows a history of all the operations performed to create the part. This includes all features, patterns, material changes, and sketches to name a few. This is a unique feature that allows you to see the complete history of their part without having to navigate through the browser tree. Any feature can be modified with a right-click within the timeline. The timeline can also be used to find that specific feature in the browser tree.

Browser

The browser contains all the components, features, bodies, sketches, and construction geometry of a design. The browser takes the form a tree-like structure which should be familiar from common CAD packages.

View Cube

The view cube allows you to manipulate the model in a more structured way. By clicking either on the corners, edges, or faces of the cube the model will re-oriented inside the canvas. This makes it easy to switch between standard views. If the user clicks the arrow on the bottom right of the view cube, a drop-down menu appears that provides more options to control the view. 

Marking Menu

The marking menu is a situation specific pop-up menu that contains commonly used features, it can be accessed by clicking right on the model or the canvas. The features that show up in the menu are determined by what is clicked and what workspace is currently active. This menu helps increase modeling speed and convenience.