Fusion 360 is Autodesk’s latest product development tool, and in this course you will learn the basics of:

Solid Modeling

Freeform T-Spline Sculpting

Sketching

Direct Modeling

Assemblies

Rendering

Collaboration

Course Synopsis: In this course, you will learn how to navigate, sketch, solid model, sculpt, assemble, and render realistic images in Autodesk Fusion 360. You will leave with an understanding of direct modeling, dimensioned sketches, T-spline bodies, functional design and final product rendering. There is a lot to learn in Fusion 360, so this course is intended to serve as a “jumping off” point to get you started and make you dangerous with all aspects of the product in some sense. With this course under your belt, you’ll be able to dive deeper into the areas of Fusion 360 that interest you the most! Time Required: 3 Hours Tools Required: Computer with Fusion 360 installed, and a 3-button mouse (highly recommended)

1. Introduction to Autodesk Fusion 360 What is Fusion 360? Fusion 360 is a cloud-based, collaborative, product development tool for exploring form, function, and fabrication. Quickly and easily explore product ideas by using simple free-form modeling tools to get just the right organic shape, or create precise, dimensioned sketches to drive your entire design – its up to you! Engineer and test your design for function by exploring how your parts interact and move together. Lastly, prepare your design for manufacturing by generating tool paths for CNC (computer numerical control) machining, or rapid prototyping using the 3D printing utility. Creating Your Autodesk ID

When you launch Fusion 360 you will be prompted to sign in with your Autodesk Account. If

you don’t have one, simply create an account from this window and you’ll be up and running in a few minutes.

If the sign in screen does not appear, make sure that it is your account that automatically signed into Fusion 360, or sign out of the current account before continuing through the account options in the upper-right corner.

Dashboard & Data Management Your Fusion 360 dashboard is the central location for data management and collaboration. Your Fusion 360 3D models are called Designs. These designs, along with imported external data are grouped in your dashboard in particular Projects that act as a home folder for specific work. Projects and designs in Fusion 360 are the equivalent of folders and files on your computer. You can invite collaborators to particular projects where you can share designs, keep track of events, and share data in one single location. We’ll break down the dashboard in more depth below.

1. Recent – This feed represents the recent designs that you, yourself have created. 2. Activity – This feed shows the recent work of any of your collaborators from all of your

projects. 3. This is the area to Upload or Create data in Fusion 360.

Create Your First Project & Design

As shown in the above image, create a project for today’s workshop – Lamp Project will do. After creating the project, you’ll see all of the project information. Now, create a design within your Lamp Project by navigating to the create menu on the

upper-right side and selecting Fusion 360 Design. We can call this Lamp.

Tour of the UI & Navigation After creating your Lamp Design, you’ll enter the Fusion 360 design environment. We’ll take a minute to discuss each of the main sections of the UI below!

1. Ribbon – The ribbon is the primary toolbar within Fusion 360. All of the commands are located under the various drop-down menus.

2. Browser – The browser is the organized list of every object in your Fusion 360 design. Solid bodies, sketches, construction geometry, etc. are sorted and listed in the browser.

3. Navigation Bar – The navigation bar includes various commands to help you move around Fusion 360’s 3D environment.

4. Parametric Timeline – The parametric timeline shows every feature, or essentially each step of your design process. As you create your 3D design, the timeline will populate with each and every one of your commands. These are editable, as you can make a change to any feature in the timeline at any point in time.

5. View Cube – The view cube is a visual representation of the current view of the 3D environment. You can click and drag on the view cube to move around Fusion 360’s 3D environment, or click on a face to snap to a specific orthogonal view.

2. Start Modeling Let’s get started and jump into designing your own desk lamp in Fusion 360. We’re going to work our way from the ground up, so first we need to create the cylindrical base of our lamp. Create Cylinder

Under the Create dropdown menu, select Cylinder. This will create a primitive cylinder – essentially a “cookie cutter” piece of 3D geometry - that we can dimension to our liking!

The next step is to select a plane for the bottom of our cylinder, in our case the bottom plane. Next, we need to define the center point of cylinder’s 2D profile. For this we’ll click on the origin

to ensure our design is centered about the origin. Now, move your mouse to draw out the circular profile of our cylinder. You can click at any time

to define the cylinder’s diameter, or you can type in a specific value. Type 200 mm and press enter.

Lastly, specify the cylinder’s height either by using the arrow manipulators, or by typing in a specific value – set the height to 50 mm.

Angle Top Face We now need to angle the top face of our cylinder, and we can do this by applying a draft to the top face.

Select the Draft command located under the Modify dropdown menu. The draft command needs a reference plane to angle - in this case it will be either of the

vertical planes (we’ll choose the XY Plane). To easily select the XY plane, click on the small triangle to open the Origin folder in the Browser on the left-hand side of your screen. Now we can simply click the listed XY Plane.

Next, Select the top face of the cylinder to apply the draft to that face. Set the draft equal to 10 degrees either using the direct manipulator, or by entering 10

degrees.

Offset the Top Face We’ll now use the Press Pull command to slightly offset our top face down by 5 mm.

Select the Press Pull command (Modify > Press Pull) and select the top face. Use the direct manipulator to drag the face down by 5 mm, or simply enter in -5 mm to the

dialog window.

Round the Top Edge To round off the top edge of the drafted face we will use the Fillet command.

Select the Fillet command (Modify -> Fillet) and select the top edge. Use the direct manipulator to add a 10 mm fillet – or enter this value.

Create the Lamp Arm From a Base Feature Fusion 360 can serve as a great direct modeling tool, as it allows for very intuitive push/pull commands that let you tweak your geometry in a direct fashion. This functionality is always available, but for even more direct modeling capabilities, we can create a Base Feature – a sandbox for very direct, parametric-free modeling. Don’t worry if this doesn’t ring any bells, as the example should highlight the differences.

Create a Base Feature (Create > Base Feature).

Create a Sketch (Sketch > Create Sketch) on our top, sloped face by clicking anywhere on its surface.

We want to look perpendicular to our sloped face for accurate sketching, and there’s a way to precisely do this within Fusion 360. Click the small Look At icon at the bottom of the navigation bar, and then select the face that you’re sketching on. The camera will adjust for a perfect view!

Our next step is to sketch out a rectangle that is centered on our sloped surface (note: slightly different than centered about the origin). To do this, we will use primitive sketching tools within Fusion 360.

Create a Center Rectangle sketch (Sketch > Rectangle > Center Rectangle). Place the center-point of your rectangle on the center of your circular face by clicking once

on the small, purple circle icon . Move the mouse around to freely draw out the 2D-profile for your rectangle, but don’t click

quite yet. With a rough rectangle displayed, we can enter in specific dimensions for our rectangle. In our case these values are 45 mm and 145 mm for the width and length, respectively.

To do this, we’ll type in 45 mm for the width and hit the tab key to switch to the length, type in 145 mm, and hit the enter key twice to lock in our values.

With our rectangular profile in place, all that’s left to do is extrude it up and create a 3D-body from our 2D-sketch. To do this, create and Extrusion (Create > Extrude). Select the rectangular profile and drag the direct manipulator arrow up until you have a

length of 270 mm. As you can see in the above image, we can also enter this value in the Extrude dialog

window. We have various additional options in this window, so we’ll go through them one-by-one.

o Our direction is set to One Side, as we only want to extrude in one direction from our sketch.

o Our operation is set to New Body, as we want to create a separate body for our lamp’s arm. By creating a separate body for the arm, we’ll have the flexibility to move it freely later if we like.

o We’ll keep the Extent set to Distance, as this is how we are defining how far we want to extrude.

We’ll now see the direct modeling capabilities Fusion 360 offers by simply moving an extruded face.

Left-click on the thin face facing down our sloped surface, and right-click on the selected face to bring up the marking menu. This menu is a dynamic menu that will give you the tools you need based on what you have selected. In this case, we’ll move our mouse to the Move section of the menu and left-click to choose the move command. (note: we could also get to the move command through the Modify drop-down, but using the marking menu will speed up your modeling!)

With the move command activated, we can move our selected face. We’ll first want to change this face’s angle, so we’ll look at our piece from the Right side view by clicking on the Right face of the view cube in the upper-right corner.

Now, using the rotation manipulator - displayed as the arc with a circle - change the angle of this face to make it angled straight up-and-down. Due to our draft angle of 10 degrees, this will specifically be 10 degrees counter-clockwise, or -10 degrees.

With our face perfectly vertical, we can now push it “in” a bit. We will use the horizontal arrow to move this face in 40 mm. Because we’re moving in the direction opposite of the arrow, it will be shown as a negative number (-40 mm is what we want).

Now all that’s left is to perform some direct manipulation on the top of our rectangle. In the same way, select the top face, and activate the move command. Again, viewing

from the Right side of the view cube, we’ll adjust this face so that it’s at a 45-degree angle (as seen in the above image, specifically -45 degrees).

With our direct manipulation complete, we can complete our base feature by clicking the Finish Base Feature button in the top ribbon.

The last step here is to add a 25 mm fillet to the two edges shown above. Being that we’re modifying existing geometry, the fillet command will be located under the Modify drop-down menu.

Cutting the Lamp Arm (trust me, it’s a good thing) We’ve created the basis for our lamp arm, but it’s far too big. We want to keep the geometry we have, but simply thin it out to a reasonable thickness – somewhere around 3 mm. There are a few tools we can leverage to achieve this, and you’ll find yourself using them on nearly every design.

Create a sketch on the side of our arm body, and look at it using the Look at tool. You’ll see the purple lines appear on your sketch, representing the geometry that is

already there. We can use this to our advantage in the next command – Offset.

Choose the Offset command (Sketch > Offset), and click on the purple sketch curve that outlines the face. The offset command will copy a selected curve and add a specific distance between the two curves.

In this case, we want to offset the curve by 3 mm, so we can move our mouse until we have an acceptable offset, or we can type in 3 mm and hit the enter key to lock in our offset.

Next, we need to extend the offset line that runs down the right side of our arm. To do this, simply click and hold on this straight line and drag it out until it is past the existing side of the arm. This is necessary so that we can remove an entire side of the arm, rather than hollowing out the existing arm.

Finish the sketch by clicking Stop Sketch in the top ribbon.

Create an extrusion and select the two profiles shown in the above image. Next, simply drag the extrusion all the way through the arm. You’ll see that Fusion is smart in that it will automatically change the Operation to a Cut – it assumes we want to remove material, and its assumption is correct! Finish the extrusion by clicking OK.

One last, small step to finish our arm! We can see that we have a nice, uniform arm except for the end that has less-than-idea taper to it. We’ll use the tools we’ve already learned to clean this up.

Create a sketch on the side of the arm, and use the Look at tool to easily sketch on it.

Create a sketch line (Sketch > Line). Click once to define the first point on the corner shown above. Hover the mouse over the opposite edge and click when you see the green perpendicular icon. Complete your sketch by clicking Stop Sketch in the top ribbon.

Lastly, we’ll remove this excess material by extruding the above profile. Create an extrusion, select the triangle we want to remove, and drag the cut all the way through the body.

We’ll complete our lamp arm by applying a fillet to our two top, outer edges. Using the fillet command, select the two small outer edges and drag them inwards using the direct manipulator. You should notice that Fusion 360 will automatically snap to a perfect fillet size that creates a smooth arc – alternatively you could enter in the exact value of 22.5 mm.

Create a Sculpted Body So far we’ve been creating very prismatic, dimensioned geometry for our lamp, and Fusion 360 does this very well. Additionally, Fusion 360 allows for organic and conceptual form creation through its sculpting capabilities. Sculpting in Fusion 360 is similar to working with a divided piece of clay that you can push, pull, and twist until it looks the way you like - let’s jump into creating our sculpted lampshade!

To create a sculpted – or T-spline – body, click on the purple Create Form icon in the top ribbon. This will take you into the sculpt environment where you can perform all of your sculpting operations.

For our lampshade we’re going to start with a T-spline Cylinder as our primitive, and we’ll sculpt it to our liking.

Create a T-spline cylinder (Create > Cylinder). We now need to select the plane we want to draw our cylinder’s 2D-profile and also stick the bottom to. We’ll select the face on the under side of the lamp arm shown in the above image and use the Look At tool to get a good view of this face.

Similar to our solid cylinder, this T-spline cylinder requires a center point and a diameter. Select the purple circle that denotes the center of the arm’s arc as the center point of our T-spline cylinder, and move the mouse outward to set the diameter. In this case, we’ll set it to roughly 125 mm, and click.

We can now see our T-spline cylinder taking shape, as well as a final dialog window. This window allows us to add specific details to our T-spline body before we start sculpting it to our liking. Use the direct arrow manipulator (shown above) to increase the Height of the T-spline cylinder – 100 mm will do. Click OK to exit this dialog window.

With our primitive T-spline cylinder in place, it’s now time to sculpt it into the shape we

want. Under the Modify dropdown menu you’ll see a variety of manipulators specifically for T-spline bodies. The most common tool you will use in sculpting is the Edit Form command.

Choose the Edit Form command (Modify > Edit Form). We’ll select the edge loop nearest to our lamp arm to modify first. To do this, double-click

on one of the edges to automatically select the entire loop. The edge loop will become highlighted, and you’ll see the direct manipulator appear.

We want to scale these edges inward, so we’ll click and drag the universal scale manipulator in the center (shown as a circle and three surrounding triangles, and in the above image). Dragging to the left or right will scale this edge loop in or out. Scale the edge loop in until it is a bit smaller than the existing arm.

Similarly, we will now scale up the outermost edge loop to flare it out. Double-click on an outer edge to select the entire loop and perform the same universal scaling operation to increase its size.

At this point your shade will look similar to the one shown in the above image. Take this time to sculpt the shade into any unique shape you desire. Select any face, edge, or vertex and use the edit form manipulator to perform any of the following operations: translation (linear, or planar), scale (linear, planar, or universal), and rotation.

When you’re done sculpting your lampshade, simply click Finish Form to return to the solid modeling environment and transform your T-spline into a solid or a surface (depending on if you’re T-spline is water-tight or if it has zero thickness).

Upon finishing your T-spline body, you’ll see that it’s shown in the Browser with a different icon, specifically an orange surface icon. This is because our T-spline had no thickness, so it was converted to a surface body. We can turn this surface body into a solid body by using the Thicken command.

Activate the Thicken command (Create > Thicken). Select the lampshade surface – either in the Browser or in the 3D environment. We can now define the thickness and direction we would like to apply to our surface either

by using the direct manipulator or by entering in the value. Add roughly 3 mm of thickness inward.

The last step is to convert our three Bodies to Components. These components will have the ability to be assembled together, and serve as separate parts in our assembly.

For each solid body in the browser (the ones with the silver cylinder icons), right-click on their name and select Create Components from Bodies.

For best practice, we will name each of our components. To do this, double-click on the component name and type in the desired name!

That wraps up the modeling portion of our workshop! Next we will add materials, setup some joints, and finish with a beautiful rendering.

3. Add Details Apply Materials With our 3D modeling complete, the next step is adding some custom materials to our design. Let’s get started making our lamp look more realistic!

Open the Appearance dialog window (Modify > Appearance). You’ll see a list of sorted visual materials that you can apply to your components. Go ahead

and drag-and-drop any materials you’d like as shown in the above image. (note: for the lampshade, I applied the Clear Polycarbonate plastic material).

Setup Assembly Using Joints With our materials applied, the last step in refining our 3D model is applying joints to our components. Joints specify how components interact and assemble with each other and set the framework for the motion of your design.

The first step when assigning joints to components is often grounding a single component. By grounding a component, you provide a reference point for the other joints and essentially anchor down your 3D model to some point.

In our lamp model it makes sense to ground our base component. Right-click on the Base component in your browser and select Ground. With our base

grounded, it cannot move!

The next step is to apply two joints between our three components. Under the Assemble dropdown, you’ll see two very similar tools: Joint and As-built Joint. Being that our components are already in the proper location, and we just need to add relationships to the design, as it is already built, we will use As-built Joints. If the components were scattered and in incorrect locations, we would apply regular Joints.

Create an As-built Joint (Assemble > As-built Joint) and select the lamp arm and the base. We’ll keep this joint type as Rigid to specify that we don’t want them to move relative to each other.

Next, we’ll apply our final joint between the lampshade and the lamp arm. Create an As-built Joint and select the lampshade followed by the lamp arm (the order

matters). Next, specify a Revolute joint from the dropdown menu. Lastly, we need to specify what our lampshade is revolving about, in this case the center of

our lamp arm’s arc. Select this center point (shown above) as the Position, and the animation will show our lampshade rotating about this point!

Holding down the alt or option key, we can click and drag on components to move them with their specified joints. In our case, we can do this to our lampshade to rotate it freely! (note: to return to it’s initial position, we can simply undo the move).

4. Render The final step in our workshop is to create a realistic rendering of our design, and we will do this using the rendering tools built into Fusion 360!

Create the Rendering

To create renderings within Fusion 360, we need to first navigate to the Render mode. To do this, hover your mouse over the Model icon in the upper-left corner and select Render. The top ribbon will change to accommodate the new mode, giving us all of the rendering tools within Fusion 360.

Working left to right, we see that the first icon is Appearance. We’ve already applied materials to our design, so need to use this unless you’d like to change your materials. Next up is the Environment command that lets us specify the lighting environment we’d like for our rendering.

Select the Environment command to open the Environment dialog. In this window, we can first specify the lighting style we would like. These styles result in slightly different renderings, and have certain applications. For our example, we’ll choose Rim Highlights to ensure we end up with a sharp, bright rendering. Next up, we can adjust the exposure (amount of light in our rendering), and also the rotation.

Adjust the rotation slider to adjust the light source’s position and highlight different ares of your design. When the light source is in the desired location, setup your show by viewing your design from the desired angle. The only step left is to click the blue Enable Ray Tracing command in the top ribbon.

While the Ray Tracing operation is being performed, we can specify the quality that we

would like: Quick, Normal, or Advanced. Each of these settings will require increasing time, but the results will look nicer with the higher quality setting.

Select either the Normal or Advanced rendering quality and let Fusion 360 render your design for a few minutes. You can see the elapsed time and the number of iterations performed. After every iteration the image quality is improved – up to a certain point.

When the rendering looks great and you’re ready to save an image, simply click Pause. This will pause the rendering and allow you to save an image.

Select the Capture Image command in the top ribbon to save the rendering to your computer!