Fusion 360 Tutorial— What you need to know about importing into Fusion

pretty quickly we're new to fusion 360 you get to a point where you need to import a model into the software in this video we will dig into what you need to know about importing into Fusion hi everybody my name is last Christensen I thank you so much for taking the time to watch this video so today we're going to talk about importing into fusion and we're gonna take the essential steps on how you can take a solid model from another system bringing it inside of fusion but then also some of these cool functions that fusion has on how you can manipulate that model then we're going to talk a little bit about mass data specifically STL files now with all these 3d printers out there STL's are very common so in this video I want to show you a couple of the things that Fusion has on how you can work with the mass data and then we exhale we're going to take that STL file and turn it into a solid body then in the end I'm gonna try to get out and she has some information with you they will let you totally dominate any conversation you have with your boss or your co-workers when it comes to importing data into software let's get going alright so let's start here by importing a model into Fusion the way I do it is I always use the data panel over to the left here so you click the little cloud and then you can upload your file now in this case I'm going to bring in a SolidWorks file into fusions and just going to click on that Salvage file and hit open and then go down here and click upload that's me that all I have to do now this song works model is being uploaded to the cloud and goes through all the translations so I'm just going to hit close here and then I can just double-click to open up the model so there's our model now let's talk about some cool functions that Fusion have when it comes to working with imported models first thing I always like to address is if you look up here on the right we have the view cube and if I just click top here I have to admit that this is not what I think is top on this part and there is no rules follow this but I think we all have kind of like our preferences of what we like I think what I like is I think that what is back on the viewcube is actually what I think I would like to be tough well it's extremely easy to change that inside of fusion all you're going to do is you're going to place it to the view where you want the model so in this case I want this to be top go up and right click and then go now to set set current view as top and just like that that you can see up there now this is the top that I want it so really all we did was we changed kind of like the camera position of the way we look at the model super handy now the next thing I want to talk about is being in direct mode versus parametric mode so we have these two toggles we can do inside of fusion one being direct and one be parametric now in parametric we are capturing all the history of working on sorts of sketches and extrude and all those things but there's actually a couple of neat functions you can do before you get into that mode so if you've watched any other videos on importing into Fusion it might suggest that the first thing you do is you go up here and you right-click and you capture the design history now I'm not against capturing design history but I want to show you a couple of the functions you can do before you get into capturing design history so let me show you now the first thing I want to show is that you have a move command in here so the way you can do that is if I select that inside of that hole and I right-click and I hit move you will see that I actually get notified with arrows in it I can actually move this whole so we just had to do a couple of quick adjustments to a hole for example that will be a new function I actually have on this pod a scenario we can we can look at so if I go to the bottom of this part you will see that there is a rectangular slot down here that was put in in the native format in this case SolidWorks but as you can see this pocket is not where well it's not centered between the holes either in the y-axis or the x-axis so let's go in and do that in this direct mode before we stop capturing so the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go up and I'm going to inspect to find out how much I'm gonna move and I'm first going to move the Y direction so I'm going to go down here and I'm going to snap over to get that midpoint of that line and it's going to select the edge and it will show me down here that I have a center position of point six zero three two who can remember well look right underneath my cursor says click to cover to clean keyboard all clipboard sorry all I'm going to do is I'm going to double click and now it just remembered that non-performance I just double click right on that number to put it to the clipboard now what I can do is if I go up here and I am just going to multi select um the different limit get out of the measuring tool I'm just going to multi select these faces inside of the pocket here alright just like that okay now I select it by holding down the control on selected all those faces I'm going to right click and hit move and now you will see again we get like the Triads here and I can now move things back and forth so what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a control C control V to paste that number in there see that that was the number one happy false I don't have to remember it and then I can hit enter or two to put that in there and now we have just moved that pocket up in the in the y-direction we can do the same thing in the x-direction so I'm going to do the same thing I'm going to my inspection tool I'm going to find the midpoint there and then just gonna select that edge and the distance there is this distance up here right to point 85 so I'm just going to double click to remember that and let me open up my calculator and control V to paste that number in and that's going to be - what that's going to be - whatever this value is from here to here that is this number double click open up a calculator control need to paste that in tender and then we're just going to divide that by two right so that's the number we got to move it in X so I'm just going to do here at control C to copy that number now I don't need my calculator anymore and then I'm just going to go ahead and do the same thing with it before so holding down control just going to select it out of the measuring tool just like all these walls that I want to move like that all of them I'm going to right click and hit move and then again I'm moving the direction here and I can just paste that number in that we need to move it hit OK and now we just may move that pocket over we moved it up in the Y and moved it over in the ax so keep this tip in mind this is really great if you do have a CAD model from a customer or some other software where you just need to make a couple of adjustments in this case here moving the slot in the right location now the next thing I want to show you I think is almost magic and that is we educate delete things in here but have the software figuring out what needs to then patch up afterwards if I for example go in and select this X that goes around or this round edge that goes around the pot here and all I'm going to do is hit the Delete key on my keyboard and you will see the fusions smart enough to delete that but also patch it up and make it a shop edge takes a pretty cool algorithm check this out if I go over to this edge over here and I just select all these faces here let's zoom in a little bit select these edges on here that one and that one again if I hit just the Delete key on my keyboard you will see the delete of that now you will see that it came up with a solution right here of adding kind of like two things to this but now I can do the same thing again I can just select these two hit delete again and now I got a shock corn I think that those two functions the move function and delete function can be extremely helpful again think about that you get a call from the customer that they need to delete some holes that don't need to be in the model anymore you can just go ahead highlight that hole in this direct mode and hit the Delete key and the hole is passed up like it was never there now when you get to this point where you have done these couple functions then I will definitely recommend that you go up and you right-click and you now decide to capture the design history so from this point on now if we go ahead and rewrite click here we can now go ahead and create a sketch you will see the sketch happens down in the feature tree and we can now go ahead and and do all the things in this model if you want to go ahead and sketch something it's a whole year and we can now do our cuts and whatever we will know I'm going to do to the model and how to capture down here so just a couple of handy tools when it comes to bringing a model into Fusion and what you can do with it like right off the bat now the next thing I want to talk to you about is STL files and this is like one of these interesting topics because STL files is really used a lot in 3d printing so a lot of people have to deal with STL files what is important to understand about an STL file is that it is not a solid so a solid model the computer knows there's something there it's like a watertight model but an STL file is almost like think about taking a triangle of fishing net and throw it over the 3d model and that is what a STL file is so an STL file is really just a thin shell made up triangles some of the things to keep in mind about STL's is that depending on how fine or how cause these triangles are that can really change the shape of your model so if you make a very fine triangle image but you could be you know thinking is always a great idea then you of course you would get a more accurate model but it's also costing a lot of data right it's gonna be a lot a big file and a lot of software I have like limits so they can only import like 20,000 triangles before the cat's office as I can't deal with this the other of course problem is if you go to pores it can really change the shape of your model let's take a look at it inside of fusion so let me just close out of this solid model here I'm not gonna save I'm just going to leave it and go out to our data panel so we have that model there now let me important STL file so we can take a look at that click the upload button here and say select file and I have here a STL file let me go ahead and open up that file and you will see here that you can see on this model here that it is made out of made up of these triangles so again like I said before think of like throwing a triangle of fishing net over a solid model and then that is what you kind of like ending up with so in the past that have actually not been many tools you could use to manipulate STL files just because it is this triangular mess but we actually have some new tools inside of fusion that I want you to know about so if I go up to the tab up here the model tab you would like to see that I have a new mesh tab now this is in preview mode right now as I'm recording this video so to be able to see this mess tab you actually need to the hypno to turn it on so let me show you you go over to your preferences right up here in the upper right and then you go into preview mode and in here you have all these different things you can turn on and down on the bottom you have mess workspace so make sure that one is checked what this really is is a preview to what they're working on on the fusion team so with all the software they have like these secret beta forums that you kind of like have to do all kinds of things to be part of for the fusion they make it available for you right here you just need to know it's in preview but mean that they're still developing on it they're still working on it and polishing it up so with them mess workspace set you will now see that you get this mess button so let me click on that and you will see it as a lot of different options in there and I definitely recommend that you go in and you play around with some of them the one I'm going to show you is called the race and fill so this is actually a pretty neat tool now if I go in here and I look at this pocket we have default maybe I want to actually delete this pocket there's a pretty cool selection tool in here called paint selection so we are used to using windows inside a CAD but we can Excel to use a paint tool what it does is whatever I'm kind of like hovering the mouse over you will actually how I go ahead and highlight so this is actually a pretty neat tool I think that I'm going to be using a lot a lot so kind of like selecting things so if I go in here like just kind of like select these different areas and then go up to modify in race and fill now you will see that we just completely tied up that pocket and that pocket is now gone so pretty neat tool now from this point on you can do other things of course within this mess data but to the end of it you can actually go up and you can go in here and now this file you could say is ready to be 3d printed from here you can go you can choose whatever print utility you want to use I always use mesh mixer in here and just like that your part is now ready to be to be printed so I definitely think that these new mesh tools in here is going to be extremely handy so be aware of that if you do get STL files now the last thing I want to show you before we get out with some really cool information about importing data is taking an STL file and turn it into a solid because it is actually possible now we have to do this outside of fusion though we have to use a program that for Windows is called remake and for Apple is called memento so the easiest way to do that is going to out of this website and download either trial of course if you're using it quite a bit then you can go ahead and purchase a subscription for it so let's check that out so I'm not going to my trusted Google here and I'm just going to type in Autodesk and I'm on a Windows machine so I'm going to type in remake and hit enter let's go ahead and take a look at the remade website so remake is definitely a program that I think I'm gonna have to create some videos about because this is really awesome you can do some really really great things in here but what I want to take you to is the try button here and what you can do is you can either download the trial for Windows or for mac and as you will see here actually the price for this if you're working with this a lot it's actually not two months $30 and like I said you can do some great things with remake in here and of course if you are a student or in education it is free but if you are just going to play around with this just to test it out go ahead and go for the trial the thing is that we cannot turn the SCL file with is triangular mass into a solid but we need to do is we need to convert it into what is called a cloth mass when it becomes a quad mass then we can actually apply the t-spline technology to it that is already inside of fusion and that way converted into a solid that's why we're using remade now inside of remade we can go ahead and can load the model here and I'm just going to load that same STL file abroad into fusion before and again inside of remake you can actually do a lot of cool things all I am going to do is I'm going to go down and I'm gonna export it out and then I'm just going to say down on the bottom here I'm going to export out as a fusion 360 cause that's all I'm gonna do I'm going to export it back out to on our desktop that's really all I need remake for so pretty easy now inside of fusion I can now bring in this quad and you already get a hang of how we importing into fusion so I'm just gonna go ahead and hit upload and then I'm going to select that obj quartz file that that come into the software and then we can go ahead and open that one up another thing that I think is really important to take a look at this model is that there has exit been some changes done to the model this is one of the problems when you are translating data around because every time you're translating data is really like taking German and try to translate it into jet Japanese or Chinese or whatever something can be lost in the translation so when you look at this model I want to point out that you will see that around the holes and around but really any sharp edges on this model before have now got a little bit of rounded edge to it so be aware of that but of course if you're bringing in and turning into a solid we can fix a lot of these issues inside a fusion it's just one of those things to be aware of so we now have this STL file that has now been turned into a koala file and now we're going to turn into a solid by first turning it into a t-splines the way we're going to do that is we are actually going to go up and capture the design history so now we will see down at the bottom we now have that tree down there then I'm going to go up and say I want to create a form that is going to tell me that I'm entering what is called the sculpt environment inside of fusion I'm cool that I love sculpting or say okay to that then all of those right-click on the model and I can now go down and say convert and what I'm getting if you look over to the right is I'm taking a standard mesh body and I'm turning into a t-spline body so let me go ahead and hit here okay and now you will like to see that it has become a different type of mask what this is the very very powerful t-spline mask that is was with insider fusion if you ever had to do wacky shape then sculpting is definitely your tool and t-splines is your tool now from this point on all we really have to do is now convert t-splines into a solid we can do that by just hit finish form except in my case you would like to see that I get an error haha isn't that awesome it would have been easy if there was no errors but of course I chose a model where there was some Arizona it's easy enough to fix though let me show you so let me just hit return to get out of this and we can close the arrow because one to my luck of course there is a repair body inside of the t-spline infusion so all I'm going to do is select our model and say auto repair and then I'm really just going to sit back and take a sip of my coffee and the software will go ahead and solve this so after a few seconds of wheel spinning it comes back and says that it had finished the repair so now let's try to hit the finish form and just like that the magic have happened we have actually taken an STL file and converted it into a solid now some of you guys will agree with me that this maybe is not as pretty as it was when I brought in the subtle hooks file in the beginning and that is of course again because we have taken triangular mass like this fishing net over the model and we have really just stretched in and gone through some different conversions but this is a solid we can work with this just like you would with a normal solid inside of fusion now if you are interested in playing around a little bit with this yourself I'm more than happy to share these files with you so send me an email and laughs at camp stuff calm and I'll be more than happy to add you to this project I did add my email address down in the description of this video so just go ahead and send that all right so let's get got a little here so what to know about solids so one of the first question many people ask is what format should I ask for so you need to get a file for somebody and they ask you what kind of format do you want and when you look in the drop-down of what you can import into Fusion there's a lot of things in there right that is Katia that is pro e there's rhino on the case that we use solidworks fine so if you already know what format the auto-fire was created in ask for that so the ask for the native file but then there's also two other formats neutral formats that is worth to mentioning and that is ideas and step these two formats was created as neutral formats so it'd be easier to share files between different CAD manufacturers so ideas was created back in 1980 by the US Air Force now they'd ranked in a bunch of other companies such as Xerox GE and other companies to come in and help them create this neutral format and is exit developed on the old punch card format so you should actually be able to open up and I just file in Notepad and if you have a pen and a pencil you can actually trace around the coordinates and you should throw up your model now stab is xci so it's 10303 and was developed in 1984 exits to replace edges but when they got in there the exit found because of the complexity that they had to kind of like break it up into different AP kind of format so that's why when you open up a CAD system sometimes you will see that there's different levels of step files you can bring in the exit the latest update to step was in December 2014 and it was version 242 now from us CAD users it doesn't really matter what version we really are using now if you open up a step file is in a text editor you will see that it's a lot more like an HTML type file like almost like a web page and there's actually some interesting things in there you can capture a lot of metadata also something like color in there but most CAD systems don't really use take advantage of these enhancements that are inside of step files now ideas is definitely the most used of the two formats now a fun fact is that they have not developed an ID since 1994 that's a long time ago so what format is best native ideas a step well it really kind of did look at each format is kind of like its own language so if you have to translate something from German to Chinese for example you will get some some problems in the translation and it can be the same thing when you're working with a CAD file so what I actually prefer to do is I prefer to send all three files send the native file that I've worked in and also save out an IDE assistant step two reasons now to give the other guy an opportunity to bring in and see what comes in best but another thing I've found is that everybody kind of seemed to have their favorites definitely between step and iTunes so it's just much easier to just hand them one of each and then they can kind of decide what they want to do so I really hope that you found this video helpful as always I love your comments and suggestions down in the comment area I know a lot of people read them and I can assure you that I read them all and also if you liked the video if you don't mind hit that like button and if you haven't already I would really appreciate if you hit that subscribe button until the next time have an awesome day

Channel: Lars Christensen

Views: 129,307

Keywords: Autodesk, Fusion 360, Tip, Tutorial, Beginner, CAD, CAM, CNC, Lars Christensen, SolidWorks, STL, Importing

Id: l7ViMKZPGKk

Length: 25min 47sec (1547 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 01 2016