Digging Deeper into Autodesk Fusion 360

Manipulating and creating Fusion 360 joints can be a challenge.  The more you know about the joint application workflow, the easier it is.  This video will try and show so of the finer points of joints.

Creating Component Joints on Workplanes and Random Face Points Using Sketches

Autodesk Fusion 360 uses joints to add degrees of freedom between two components.  I also use Autodesk Inventor which also uses assembly constraints to take away degrees of freedom between components.  Assembly constraints allow you to use work planes for the jointing of components, joints do not.  This is one feature I miss very much.

Recently I began to experiment with sketches on work planes as a method of allowing me to use Fusion 360 joints to joint components with work planes.  In this short video I show you a very simple example of my process.  I first of all show how to joint a components to a random point on the face of another component and then how to joint a component to a work plane all using a simple sketch.  I used a simple offset work plane but any work plane can be use with the process.

I believe this will open up an entirely new method of assembling my models in Autodesk Fusion 360 and I hope you will find uses for the process also.

Components and Their Applied Joints

I have heard many users of Autodesk Fusion 360 ask the question "How do I determine which components my assembly joints are applied to AFTER the assembly is finished?"  Face it, we are all a bit lazy and probably do not do a good job of identifying our assembly joints by name or description.  We find ourselves hunting around the joints folder trying to find the correct joint to edit or modify.

I have created a short video showing the process of determining what components are used by an assembly joint and vice versa determining the joint(s) applied to an assembly component.  I also talk about how to manipulate the graphic display to better show your results.

Adding and Manipulating Joints in Autodesk Fusion 360

Autodesk Fusion 360 uses Joints to constrain components together within an assembly.  There are a variety of joints for applying both fixed and movable constrains, each one having a variety of unique position and motion settings. 

I have created three videos on this subject and even then, I have barely scratched the surface of the possibilities available when using joints in your assembly.  The first video covers the basic process of placing joints and covering the most common types of joints.  I tried to cover joints that compare to the four basic types of constrains using in Inventor assemblies, Mate, Flush, Angle, Tangent and Insert.

The second video covers some of the methods and commands used to control the movement or motion of various joint types. The video also talks about the Motion Study command vs Animate Model, the two main commands used to animate your completed assembly.

The third video covers two other methods of applying joints.  One is to add Joint Origins to the components of the assembly that can be used to place joints in future assemblies.  These are great because they can be saved with the components and used over and over in other assemblies.  They can be compared to iMates in Autodesk Inventor.  They can be configured to carry assembly information that can be applied, by others, to an assembly joint who may not be familiar with the design.  Also in this video I use the "As-built Joint" command which can be applied to components that are already positioned in the correct relationship to each other in a matter of seconds.  If you watched my earlier video on the "Align" command you will see how quickly you can add joints to a temporary aligned assembly.