Assignment:
For the second week of the project, we had two tasks, create a Dice in fusion 360 as quickly as possible, then produce a version Fusion 360 model of the tile design I developed over the course of the first university project, making any suitable changes to the shape or the detail.
Fusion 360 is a parametric modelling software package which is freely available to all students and to any small business that makes less than £100,000 a year, It shares a lot of functionality with solid works but is considered friendlier and easier to use.
A parametric software package is a type of software where everything you do can be tied to a “parameter” a measurement basically, I’ll be using this later in the projects and this basically allows you to define sketches to set parameters. (For example a hole size) If you do this, editing the parameter will retro-actively change any part of the sketch that’s tied to that parameter. This allows you to make edits very quickly where needed and saves a lot of time.
Using Fusion 360
As with any 3D software, it can look very daunting to learn the ins and outs of. That’s largely because it is! Thankfully, there’s plenty of external resources available across the internet!
My personal favourite it this guide from Honypoint3D – Presented by Nick Kloski
This guide covers everything you need to learn about Fusion 360 and will help you understand the steps and processes I’ll use in a lot of these tasks over the coming weeks.
The Dice Project
My first task of this week was to use Fusion to produce a standard 6 sided dice. This is a simple exercise that’s meant to show off an efficient use of the software, with multiple ways to create each of the six faces. Exactly how we completed this task was left up to us.
My first attempt at making this dice took me around 18 minutes. I then attempted to add appearances to the faces, but encountered an unexpected issue with one of the Extrude Cut faces.
After some practice though, I managed to make this dice in just over 8 minutes, including the time taken to add the appearances to the faces.
Methodology:
Fusion 360 Dice Project Folder – Downloadable
Create a 10mm by 10mm square sketch and extrude it 10mm upwards.
Fillet each of the sides by highlighting the whole body.
Add another Sketch on one of the faces, drawing a 2mm circle in the middle and dimension both sides as 5mm. This locks the circle in the centre and fully defines the sketch.
Extrude the Circle by -0.5mm
Trials of Tiles!
The second half of this weeks assignment was to produce a tile model. The tile I designed back in the first year of University is a fairly simple design based on a repeatable flower pattern.
Details on the design process for this tile can be found under the “Beautiful Project: Sketching” menu on the home page.
As part of that project, I had already used a software called Rhino to create a 3D model of both the tile and its iteration. Fusion 360 works very differently to Rhino.
Here is the original Tile, built on the Rhino software, compared to the Fusion 360 version. The design is overall the same, but the Fusion 360 version has been given a more slender form and an additional layer.
Methodology
For this methodology section, I’ll be producing a second version of the Fusion Tile and
Fusion 360 Tile Project folder – Download
Moulding Miracles!
The final part of this weeks assignment was to use the Tile model to create a male and female mould tool to use with a casting process.
Methodology
Fusion 360 Tile Mould Project Folder: Downloadable
Project Downloads
Fusion 360 Tile Project folder: Downloadable
Fusion 360 Tile Mould Project Folder: Downloadable
Further Reading/Refrencing:
Assignment Documentation – Fusion 360 – Derek Covill
Fusion 360 Essential Training – HoneyPoint3D
