3 in 3D

Here are a few designs in Fusion 360 that I have been working on. After a brief discussion in Monday’s class about the thread feature in Fusion I knew I wanted to make something that had threads as a main component. I enjoyed the process and I found making parts with the correct thread pitches to be easier than I initially thought. RJ mentioned the thread function in Fusion and me being a car nut I knew I wanted to explore that element. Making parts that are sized correctly is important when they need to fit together with other components. The process led to a few pretty cool discoveries mainly that hardware is available in Fusion both as physical components that you can order directly from inside the software but also as downloadable cad files that you can manipulate in your design. I haven’t been this excited about using software since I first learned to dive deep into the higher functions in photoshop. I am finding the shortcuts and logic to be very similar in cad. There are some growing pains with new software particularly with orienting the objects in space but I found Fusion to be quite intuitive.

I started this first design after class on Monday. It’s a simple bolt. When you add threads to a component in Fusion the default setting is to just add an image of threads on the flat surface. But there is a toggle to have Fusion render the threads into your design and you can choose from many real world thread pitches and sizes.

Next I tried to build this conduit junction box from a Youtube tutorial because it had threads and uses hardware and seemed like the next step in complexity. This is where I discovered the ability to both order hardware directly in Fusion and to download a digital version of the hardware into your design.

Last I tried my hand at a spark plug tutorial because it was a much more complicated design than the previous designs. It also utilized threads so there was a bit of consistency across designs and I have spark plugs on hand that I can reference. What’s interesting to me is that the design uses the correct thread size and pitch from the spark plug so theoretically it could bolt right into a motor. The spark plugs I have on hand are a different style than the one in the tutorial but it was easy to make the changes from the example with a little bit of measuring and some guesswork.

I enjoyed this process a great deal. I would like to incorporate some of these elements into ideas I have for future projects.