Fusion 360 – full, free 3D CAD and CAM

[David CambridgeParticipant @davidcambridge45658]

I’ve spent the last week trying out Fusion 360. Cloud and privacy issues aside I’m very impressed, and have decided to invest the time learning the package.

Yesterday I was playing with motion simulation, and specifically I was thinking about a camrocker arm assembly. I can get the cam to driver the rocker arm, but can’t find any mechanism to simulate a spring to push the rocker arm back – does anyone know if this is possible.

David

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

Try posting a query on the F360 forum. I've found them to be very active and helpful and if you post when the US is awake (our afternoon / evening), you'll often get a reply within hours. You can set an email alert to notify you when someone posts a reply.

I don't know if you can add gravity in F360 motion studies? That may be a workaround.

Let us know if / how you fix it. Now that you've asked, I'd love to know what the answer is!

Murray

[egaParticipant @ega]

I found the comments about autodesk policy interesting because I've been an intermittent user of their AutoSketch program since DOS days. Software development is limited to OS updates and pricing seems absurdly high.

AS is, of course, just a 2D CAD program and I am tempted to try Fusion. My last PC builds have used Intel integrated graphics as I don't game and I do like the sound of silence. Am I likely to need a separate graphics card and does anyone have a recommendation for a sensibly-priced card that is fan-free?

I saw a comment somewhere to the effect that the main difference between gaming cards and CAD-oriented devices was in the firmware and support, the price difference reflecting the smaller demand for the latter.

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

I'm hardly a fan of Autodesk's past products. I have to use Inventor at work (don't ask) and previous exposure to various versions of Autocad for mechanical and wiring drawings and Autosketch for wound component specs didn't endear me to them. They became old and fat and complacent in my view.

The Fusion 360 project seems to be a new and well-funded activity, with an active and well-resourced new team. They have clearly taken a bold "strategic" (sorry) view of the market and offer a fairly comprehensive CAD/CAM package at a very compelling price (free for small enterprise, educational and hobby use). This will win them a lot of market share, particularly of the valuable young users (educational, maker space, CNC etc).

If you see how the likes of Solidworks are charging top dollar for the initial purchase of their licenses (£5500) and then pretty much force-selling eye-watering "support" contracts as well (£1500pa), you can see that there is an opportunity for a different approach. This is a similar opportunity to the one Onshape is pursuing ($100/month, no purchase cost). The difference is that Autodesk now own a very capable top end CAM application (HSMWorks) and have chosen to throw that product in for free. This would normally cost thousands of £ for a professional user. Onshape doesn't have that option and instead can only offer (full price) add-ins from approved 3rd parties.

It's clear that some features in F360 will not appear for some months but that's the nature of a development program. However, they have promised to keep it free for the small user and new features are being added all the time.

To answer your last question, I have found it works perfectly well on a standard, low-spec laptop (i3 processor, 4GB, Intel HD5000 graphics) although obviously it is a bit slicker on a proper workstation. I don't think you'd need to bother with anything fancy.

CAD graphics are OpenGL-based, whereas games tend to use DirectX. Having said that, I believe Inventor (for one) is happy with DirectX cards. Cards designed for CAD use (eg the Nvidia Quadro family) seem to be very similar but the drivers (and possibly some aspects of the architecture) seem to be optimised for CAD. The entry level Quadros aren't very expensive – I bought a 2GB K620 model from scan.co.uk for £140 delivered.

Programs like Solidworks will still function with Intel integrated graphics but won't allow the graphics-intensive functions such as photorealistic rendering. These are enabled if a proper graphics card is found.

Murray

Edited By Muzzer on 19/01/2016 12:08:44

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Murray,

Seriously interested in whether you have had a play with lathe inside Fusion, both drawing and CAM?

[FatgadgiParticipant @fatgadgi]

Hi John

Sorry to butt in, but I have used Fusion in Lathe mode with Mach3 (already used it a lot with Milling/LinuxCNC). Only at trial level at the moment, but simple drawing and fairly complex turned shapes from STEP work nicely. No screw cutting yet though …..

Once I worked out that the General Fanuc post processor was compatible with Mach3 I was away.

Works great so far.

Cheers – Will

[egaParticipant @ega]

Muzzer:

Many thanks for your helpful reply.

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

JS – no, nothing lathe related (yet?). I've used it to model some reasonably complex assemblies (CAD) now but in terms of CAM, my current garageless armchair existence denies me the opportunity to actually make any swarf. It's not a pretty place to be. Managed to get some parts to emerge from the CAM section as g-code and simulate (a virtual air cut??) and my LinuxCNC controller is spinning shafts but without access to an actual machine tool to bolt it to that's as far as I can get for now.

David Cambridge – I seem to have found the answer to your question. You can set a "rest position" for the sliding joint. It will then always try to return to that position. I asked the question on the forum yesterday.

Also a rather longer tutorial on joints that I must watch later:

Murray

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

The second video is actually for Inventor, so not much relevance for Fusion users – senior moment! But as I use Inventor at work I'll probably watch it anyway. Sorry for any confusion…

[Another JohnSParticipant @anotherjohns]

Posted by Muzzer on 19/01/2016 12:05:49:

CAD graphics are OpenGL-based, whereas games tend to use DirectX. …

Programs like Solidworks will still function with Intel integrated graphics but won't allow the graphics-intensive functions such as photorealistic rendering. These are enabled if a proper graphics card is found.

Probably more detail than you wish, but one fairly recent version of DirectX removed the canned material properties and replaced them with user-supplied programs.

OpenGL (Khronos consortium) followed suit, and while desktop systems can use the old "canned" library calls, all mobile devices require the use of programs (called "shaders&quot for -ahem- shading 3D graphics.

Old-style, each vertex of a triangle (face, facet, whatever you want to call it) was given a colour, and that was interpolated across the face. Now, you write a program that manipulates each pixel, giving you lots of control over the viewed object.

I think that DirectX has had its' day. WebGL is quite tied to OpenGL, which is the HTML5 standard for browser-based graphics, is placed just at a technology level where OpenGL shines and DirectX doesn't. I'd say that my time on the W3C HTML5 committee outlined why WebGL was chosen over competing proposals, but that's one story for the pub, not an on-line forum.

I really enjoy writing shader code (and general compute code) on graphics cards, but that's another story. (just finishing up my Longley Rice massively parallel radio propagation calculations on the graphics processor hopefully today!)

Oh – the Intel on-board graphics – these things were abysmal for shader-based rendering; my "millions of downloads, and was distributed by Apple" graphics code had hard-coded checks for some of these Intel chips and would disable some functionality.

John.

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

Well I'm certainly not an expert on these matters. Remind me not to mention graphics with you over a beer . Of course, Canada doesn't really have any pubs anyway, so little danger of it coming to pass!

My HP laptop has an AMD graphics card as well as an Intel HD5500(?) and I've learned more about the problems arising when they coexist than I'd hoped to. Seems that even though you may be using the proper graphics card, the graphics is still being controlled by and passed through the Intel thing. Apparently that is thought to be why CAD programs crash every 5-10 minutes on it. I probably won't be getting an HP laptop next time because laptops can't all be as cr4p with CAD as this one.

Merry

[David CambridgeParticipant @davidcambridge45658]

Thanks Muzzer – and sorry for the late response. You suggested solution works a treat!

David

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

Glad to have helped. I also benefited in the process, so it wasn't 100% altruistic! I'm gradually getting there with F360…

Murray

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

Being an engineer, I've tended to get excited about the 3D modelling and 3D CAM features of F360 but there's other stuff too, such as the surface / sculpting tools. If you have an hour free, this is quite interesting. The footage is actually speeded up 2-3 times and the commentary added afterwards but pretty impressive. I doubt a professional footware designer would actually use F360 but it gives you a feel for what can be done all the same.

Murray

[David Brown 9Participant @davidbrown9]

I have just signed up and downloaded the program. I tried logging in using the password I set up, it says the password is wrong. When I try to change the password using my e-mail address or user name it says'The e-mail address or user name is not associated with an Autodesk account'.' When I try to downlload the program again I am told I already have it. Should I have received a confirmation e-mail-I have not been sent one?

Not sure what I have done wrong or how to solve the problem!

David

[Neil LickfoldParticipant @neillickfold44316]

My son downloaded Fusion360 last weekend and during the week has been drawing up a single blade propeller to be made on our router. I was very impressed as to how well this program works.It has not been polished at all,These pics are as is, except for the pencil marks where it's been checked for pitch angle.

Her's a couple of pics.

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

Hi David

Sorry I don't know the solution but can you post on the Fusion 360 forum? I've found that they respond very quickly, particularly if you post during US daytime.

IIRC, they use an online system to store the work and it logs into that automatically each time you run Fusion. It's possible to use Fusion offline with a local copy of the work but the default requires the password to be set up. I didn't have any problem as far as I recall but of course once it's done you don't need to do it again.

FYI, Autodesk are also developing a fully online version (rather like Onshape) where the processing etc is done in the cloud and can be operated from any device, not just a PC – called Project Leopard.

Murray

[egaParticipant @ega]

Neil Lickfold:

Is that prop sycamore?

[David Brown 9Participant @davidbrown9]

So I signed up again and it now works. Now I need to watch some videos to figure out how to use it!

David

[MM57Participant @mm57]

@Muzzer – also being an "engineer" interested in 3D modelling and CAM I looked forward to watching your video.

It's incredibly impressive, well worth posting and a great advert for F360. As you say, it's not a step by step guide on "how to".

I lasted for the first 6 minutes and then dipped into later parts. I did think I might learn a bit of "how to" but came away with absolutely nothing I'm afraid – I was completely lost by 0m:53s.  Must stay in more and learn this tool

Edited By MM57 on 06/03/2016 11:58:25

[Neil LickfoldParticipant @neillickfold44316]

Posted by ega on 06/03/2016 10:41:16:

Neil Lickfold:

Is that prop sycamore?

It is just some hard maple for a test. We are intending to recut just the blade area on single sided carbon fibre prop for F2A speed. It was to made a model so we could compare the cad model to an actual blade to see if we got the sections correct and enough to enable the carbon blank to clean up at the pitch angle we are wanting to make.

Neil

[EmgeeParticipant @emgee]

Neil, not telling you how to suck eggs I hope but if you machine away any part of the blade you could possibly weaken it by cutting supporting tows, this may lead to the blade disintergrating at the speeds you are turning.

Great job though to get a handle on the program and then get the code work done for the machining, why not go full hog and produce your own mould, or are you doing that already ?

Emgee

[egaParticipant @ega]

Neil Lickfold:

Thank you – wood has its uses!

[Neil LickfoldParticipant @neillickfold44316]

Posted by Emgee on 07/03/2016 00:52:21:

Neil, not telling you how to suck eggs I hope but if you machine away any part of the blade you could possibly weaken it by cutting supporting tows, this may lead to the blade disintergrating at the speeds you are turning.

Great job though to get a handle on the program and then get the code work done for the machining, why not go full hog and produce your own mould, or are you doing that already ?

Emgee

The blades are laminated in such a way that we can cut the 0.2mm off the top and bottom surface without interfering with the structural part of the blade. The area that is not cut though, will be hand blended to the prop hub, that area is running the slowest and is the most forgiving of the air foil sections. At a latter stage we will be producing our own moulds, but have to start somewhere. I am just absolutely impressed with how well a job HSMworks in the Fusion360 creates cutter paths etc. And the software is free for home users and students. It has been a lot of learning how to create reference planes and all of that , that is for sure, but the help files are really good with Fusion. The default settings in HSM works are really good for most things, they have been for what we are doing.

Neil

[Neil LickfoldParticipant @neillickfold44316]

Here is the Carbon prop we recut from a blank. Very happy with it. Measure the blank to ensure it will clean up.

Prop cnc cut on under side.

We flew this prop and are happy with it so far.

Neil

[Author]

Posts