Organizing Your Fusion 360 Assembly By Dragging Components

 After you have finished your Autodesk Fusion 360 assembly model, often you may realize that your components need to be organized into sub-assemblies.  This may seem like a task you should have done as your were creating your assembly and may seem impossible to re-organize now.  This video will show you have to perform this task with ease and also present some other benefits of using this method.

 

Milestones - Capturing Design History in a Fusion Team Environment

When working on designs, in a team environment, it is important to have the ability to lock a design at a certain revision level to prevent change but also to have to ability to move forward with the design for other uses or other customers.  This is where Fusion 360 Milestones becomes such a very valuable tool.  In this video I will illustrate how Milestones are used to lock down a Fusion 360 design for shipment but give the ability to move forward with assembly design changes.  At any time the Milestone can be opened in a read-only state for proof of shipment design.

Arranging Sheet Metal Flat Patterns in the Autodesk Fusion 360 Manufacturing Environment

Many Fusion 360 assembly contain multiple sheet metal components and their flat patterns.  In this video I will show a workflow to place all of these flat patterns into a single assembly, then use the new Fusion 360 Arrange command to position them on a single sheet in the manufacturing environment.  Once arranged, applying cutting toolpaths is a quick process.  I want to point out that the Arrange command is not available to users of a Fusion 360 Personal License.

Creating a Functional Linear Slide Bearing in Autodesk Fusion 360

When creating an assembly which requires linear slide bearings you would like to know how to quickly add joints, to a download bearing, to make it fully functional.  This video will show your how.

 

Creating a Slider Joint Between a V-Groove Wheel and V-Track in Autodesk Fusion 360

 A popular type of guided track used in assemblies is a V-Groove Wheel and a V-Track.  If you have tried to add a Slider joint in Fusion 360, you find yourself wondering where the joint origins will be placed.  In this video, I go through my process of defining these points and then applying the Slider joint.

Creating a "Dumb" Solid of Your Detail Assembly in Fusion 360

There will be times when you need to share a representation of an Autodesk Fusion 360 assembly to a client or another party.  You want to give them a very accurate representation of the assembly but you want to strip out all the internal detail and also take away the ability to "reverse" engineer your hard work.  If this is the case, the process outlined in this short video is for you.  One note, this process will only work with assemblies that have been created with Capture Design or in other words you have a timeline.

 

 

Creating Broken View Drawings in Autodesk Fusion 360

 Autodesk Fusion 360 currently does not have the ability to create broken views in 2D drawings.  In my video I would like to show my "workaround" method for creating broken views in your drawings.  Please note in the video the step that may be included if you desire to have a complete assembly view as well as the broken views in your drawing.

I would like to give a big thank you to Maksims Jakovlevs for the use of his cylinder model.

Add a Master Parameter List to an Assembly and Linked Components

Many users create Autodesk Fusion assemblies using linked components and they wish to control the parameters of each component and the assembly from a master parameter list. This video will step through the process of accomplishing this task.

Autodesk Fusion 360 - Edit in Place Update

The Autodesk Fusion 360 Edit in Place function has been updated.  It is now a mainstream operation and has been removed from Preview.  In this video I cover the basic use of this function and the processes related to it.  If you develop assemblies using linked components, this tool is for you.

Creating an Assembly Drawing with Multiple Component Sheets in Autodesk Fusion 360

After you have finished your Fusion 360 assembly you may want to create the assembly drawing.  You also may wish to create a sheet for each component of the assembly under the same drawing for detailing.  Knowing the correct process to accomplish this makes this a fast and easy task which is outlined in this video.

An Application of Tangent Joints in Autodesk Fusion 360

In an earlier article I created a video on how to create tangent joints in Autodesk Fusion 360.  I have created another video showing a practical use for this technique to help you realize how valuable this process can be to your assembly process.

Creating an Accurate Template Title Block the Easy Way

If you have ever tried to sketch an accurate title block in a new Autodesk Fusion 360 template, this blog is for you.  The title block sketching environment only shows positional dimensions without the ability to specify them directly.  This short video presents a method of creating a dimensional layout, in the Fusion 360 model sketch environment, and then transferring it into the template title block creation environment.  This method works in all versions of Fusion 360.

Creating Tangent Joints in Fusion 360

How many times have you wished for a tangent joint in Fusion 360? If so, this video is for you.  I also demonstrate my method of using simple assembly sketches to add joints easily.  At the end of the video I show how to move these assembly sketch points between assemblies to achieve different joint motions.

Usng the Web Command in Autodesk Fusion 360

The Web command is not used everyday but when it is needed, it makes quick and easy work to create complex features.  Using a simple sketch or sketch pattern the command is easy to set-up and use.  In my video, I show you five examples where the command can be used effectively.

 

Edit in Place for Linked Components

In a recent Fusion 360 update, a new function called Edit in Place was included. This function gives you the ability to edit linked components from within the assembly environment without having to open the linked component. This not only makes editing quicker, but adds some unique design possibilities. In this video I will show two unique cross component design procedures. Of course, editing a linked component directly is also supported. 

Creating Top-Down Design Linked Components in Assemblies

In my last video I talked about the Save As and Replace function that can be used on linked components in an assembly. I got a little push back as some said you could not create top-down designed components and still have linked components. This video will show you a method of overcoming this.  It entails a few more clicks but it preserves the use of linked components as well as allows you to use top-down design to create them.

Save As and Replace Command in Autodesk Fusion 360

If your use "Linked" components in your Fusion 360 assembly models, this tip and video are for you.  After a design is finish, sometimes you would like to create a new component, from an existing component, modify it and then substituted it back into the assembly.  This would be cool in itself but not only is this possible but the new component automatically inherits all of the existing assembly joints.  Talk about a productivity tool!  Take a look at this short video to see the process.

Creating Auxiliary and Special Sectional Views in Fusion 360

There will be times when you need an Auxiliary View or a Special Sectional View in a Fusion 360 drawing.  They both use the Section View command but the technique for placing them is not always straight forward.  In this short video I show how to create these two types of views and also show how to break their drawing alignment in order to place them in another part of the drawing.

 

 

Adding and Dimenioning the Center of Gravity (COG) to the 2D Drawing

In an earlier post and video, I showed how you can place a sketch point on the Center of Gravity (COG) of a model.  I had some questions about how to include the COG in the model 2D drawing so I will cover that process in this article and video.  In the video, I review the process of placing a sketch point on the COG of the model then show you how to add it to your 2D drawing and dimension its location.  Also I show you two methods of labeling the COG.

 

Breaking Projected Sketch Links

While sketching in Autodesk Fusion 360, you may want to "Project" sketch entities from one sketch, body or component into the current sketch.  This is done with the Project command.  If you want to form a "link" between the current sketch and the projected geometry, make sure there is a check in the indicated box.

But what if you checked the box, projected your sketch and finished your body or component, and then you realize you want to break the projection link, how do you do this?  In my short video, I will show you the method for breaking the projection link on a per sketch entity basis.  I have not found a way to do this for the whole sketch at once in Fusion 360.

 

Autodesk Fusion 360 Silhouette Split

The Silhouette Split tool is probably one of the most misunderstood in Autodesk Fusion 360.  The main feature of this tool is its ability to find the widest point of a model without the creation of a cutting plane.  The tool has three forms, split solid body, split faces only and split shelled body.  If you are splitting bodies, you can either turn off or remove the new body.  If you are splitting faces only, you can use the split line to create unique sketches and surfaces for mold building.  Take a look at my short video and see how this command may work for you.