Dabbling in Fusion 360

Rob, yep cracked it not only is it bob on it will have a lot of time - thanks

 

yup fixed - ta

 

Any Good Ideas?

I'm trying to sketch the P2 hopper (see photo below), which has both curved sides and ends. It's easy enough to create a curved surface using the 3 point arc function, but Fusion wont let you create a sketch on a curved surface so I created 6 flat surfaces to represent the 6 plank end and then added the end strapping to each in turn. What a &^%$^&, it's possible but frankly tedious and doesn't look accurate when even partially done, so has anyone got any good ideas how to tackle the problem.

Mossy

 

Rob

Oh dear, I am a plonker, I'm going to plead Insanity due to being a &^%**$£ or Insanity dur to Fusion 360. When I finally deciphered your reply (which took a few goes) I knew what I had done wrong. I have got obsessed with sketching on a face rather than a plane, which is what I have been trying to do with the P2, Fusion hated it. When finally I reverted to drawing the curved end then sketching on the YX plane and extruding from the curved body everything worked without problems. . Ian nothing clever just plain old fashioned stupidity.

 

It isn't rocket science Paul, in Fusion you can sketch on any of the 3 primary planes, lets call them front, side and bottom, what you can also do is sketch onto an existing surface unless it's curved, I was trying to sketch onto a curved surface looking to extrude from it, once I switched to the sketching on the end plane and extrude on to the curved end all worked fine, I bet 123 has similar capabilities, Rob's mumbled explanation didn't help .

Mossy

 

Now where did I put my pencil and drawing board.

 

Paul,

Since it was nice and quite earlier today I though I would have a dabble with components. After rewatching that video link you posted remarkably most of the Fusion help text actually makes sense (that's a 1st in it's own right), so I decided to have a play by copying an existing small project and hacking it about, there were 3 things I really wanted to explore, internal components or external components from the Create Dropdown and the 'Create component from bodies' function from right clicking a body.

Mixed results:
Internal components seem to work fine.
External components - nope it wouldn't let me specify a location pretty much everything was greyed out, then tried to activate it that brings up a subscribe to full version message pops up, so I strongly suspect not available in the free version.
Create ... from Bodies, clears off to do something but when it comes back nothings happened. I think this bit needs more digging.

Conclusions:
The plan both you and I had to stash common usage parts as external components is a dead duck, a) they are store in cloud and free version only holds 10 and b) needs full license. Internal would be good for holding all the details of say a body panel in one place as you suggested. 'Make from' just needs more digging, and I have logically written off external components.

Mossy

Been back to have another bash at externals - problems could be linked to Fusion being off-line, but still see the limitation of 10 being a stopper

 

I have been looking at using Fusion 360 for applying textures by height mapping with Paul so I am just about to start learning enough about Fusion 360 from scratch to do that.

With the free SketchUp Make 2017 I can import, drag & drop or copy & paste other SketchUp files of parts into models I am building, even though it has a component library facility, would those simple options be possible in Fusion 360.

Using components in libraries is a streamlined way of building models in a commercial environment but is it the only way?

So is it possible that you could use drag & drop or copy & paste to include parts you have in your folders on your PC.

If not that would mean using the free Fusion 360 on its own would also not be viable for me.

Jim

 

Jim

Paul and or Rob are the most experienced Fusion users so they are probably the best people to answer your question. The way I have been importing a body from a different project is to import the body as a mesh. It can be left and used as a mesh or there is an option to convert a mesh into a body. The problems come if you want to modify the imported body, a converted mesh is a mass of triangles pretty much impossible to fiddle with. If what I have been reading is correct the advantage of importing a component is if there are no changes to be made, any changes to the external body will automatically be reflected on the import. There is an option to break this link which then allows the import to be modified without affecting it's master, or so the theory goes. I need to dig more just to find out what is and isn't possible. Paul - Rob anything to add, or simply shoot my logic down in flames if I'm wrong.

Mossy

 

The advantage of using a component in SketchUp is also reflecting changes on one instance across many, that is the way I generate a brick pattern on my Arkitex panel fascias, I have not found a need to use components otherwise, just grouping details of parts so they do not stick to another is adequate.

The import you are referring to sounds like importing an STL file into SketchUp which generally results in a virtually uneditable mesh of triangles, which SketchUp takes a horrendous time to create, this was a problem I had when importing from a scanner earlier this year.

What I was referring to was importing a SketchUp format file as would be created when designing a part and wether similar was possible in Fusion 360.

Paul or Rob, help!

It is so tantilising that the cut-off between freebie and £££ is a features bar set just too low for us creating models for 3D printing.

Jim

 

I have spent the last 2 hours having another thrash with components, the last set of test I was inadvertently working off-line and I wondered if being on-line would make a difference so some basic observations.

Internal Components
These would be good for organising sketches, history, bodies etc and are pretty easy to use once you have the processing sequence correct. As an example looking at my low arc coaches, I currently have 3 projects one for each of the coaches, but actually they all use common components and even common bodies, I am sure with proper organisation (which I'm not good at) using components they could be one project. To explain, each body side is made up of the basic body, 3 hinges, 1 or more ventilators, lower partitions and 2 bump stops, everything except the basic body is identical, these I would model sat under what Fusion refers to as the master component i.e. the top level. Each different body would then be a separate component with its own sketches, bodies etc. If I was building say a basic 3rd class component, I would need to copy the basic body, 1 set of hinges, a ventilator, bump stops and lower partition all of which would then be combined into a "final" body and duplicated as necessary. The Dgm 53 brake compo would need 3 components, the brake end, a middle third and a right end third (the panelling is different from a middle third) these could then be modelled into a full body side (brake, 3 middle 3rds and a right end third) The dgm 104 brake compo would need a different brake body, but the same middle and right end thirds, this time brake, 4 middle 3rds and an end 3rd.

One project with the bits under the master component, and 4 components, Dgm 53 Brake, Dgm 104 Brake, Middle Third and a Right End Third, each with it's own sketches, bodies, time lines etc. I have to admit the Dgm 52A would be more complicate as it's third class compartments are wider, i.e. need new components and another component for the First Class body, but again all do-able, it's just 4 more components.

External Components
I have been struggling with these, Fusion creates a new project for each external component and as yet I haven't found a way of storing them locally, they sit in the cloud. Given the free version only allows 10 editable projects that restricts their usage. What needs testing is to try toggle them to non-editable and see if they still make up the group of 10. What might be possible is if an external component is modified, it's usage has to be manually updated in each project, if a project needs the older version, would it all still work without applying the update. What I do know cos it's happened to me, is that if the yellow triangle with an exclamation mark appears on say an imported mesh, you can't use the Save as a Mesh option when creating a print body you have to use the export as option and produce a lower grade body. To learn more about External Components there's a lot more testing to get through which I might try set up another time. For the moment and assuming the rule of 10 applies, I can't see any way forward.

Apologies for this all being a bit wordy but it's difficult to be succinct when dealing with complicated functions like these.

Mossy