How I use Sketch Constraints and Dimensions — Fusion 360 Tutorial — #LarsLive 113

well welcome to livestream number 113 when he was last Christensen and today well as usual it's all about fusion 360 it is January the 4th 200 team looks and I got sunny was nice good that's killed that you myself absolutely awesome having you here today's topic is all about how I use sketch constraints and dimensioning now a few people have kind of asked me for best practices that's what I'm gonna share today if you are fairly experienced in CAD I would love if you just hang on for the next 15-20 minutes or so and then give your input in the comments area of the video share the knowledge right if you have anything to add to it anything you do different whatever um let's make sure that we share some knowledge that's what we're doing here all about adding a little bit more value to your fusion experience so see you already got a bunch of people in here kotomi to get David Edward Stephon Bob all you guys really appreciate it thank you so much for taking the time so enough of me talking let's talk a little bit about best practices when it goes with sketching working with sketches working with constraints inside of a fusion 360 now I set fusion 360 back to where it is when you first install it because I just want to kind of like you know if you are brand new just at least be aware of the things that I normally change not that you have to that's kind of two things I change one I go up here to the viewcube and I right-click on it and I change all the graphic to perspective with although faces on it small about how you're looking at your part when you are looking at the minute angle versus looking at the straight on so I don't wanna do that check so right-click and I move the check mark down to respect with all the faces the other thing I do is I go down here in the bottom I click on the grid and then I know what it turned the layout grid off uncheck that checkbox and snap to grid I will know where to turn off to but now somebody is like well wait a minute what is all this doing so layout grid you will see that it just keeps a constant grit here now if I turn it off I leave snap to grid on just for a second let's go up and start a sketch here and just got started on some kind of a face you will see that I do get a kind of grid showing up here when I'm sketching and I actually don't necessarily mind that what this setting does is it will snap to this so if I go up and click on a line you will see as I'm hovering over one of the intersections of the grid my cursor changes to a little square so you know square square no square square so snap to grid means that it's snapping to those intersections there's a trick that if you hold down control on a Windows a command on a Mac you don't have I mean this is just so you know if you hold that down then it will not snap see now I can move it around it will not step over hold no control because I'm gonna Windows machine if I was on a Mac then I would hold down command ok so some people like that they snap into this grid I find it kind of annoying as I'm going to show you why just in a second so I'm gonna go down and turn that off okay now we will not stand that okay so that is kind of like the based settings let's get into the best practices first of all you remember if you're brand new you can only and I mean only sketch on either a face all on a plane that's the to only places you really will start out sketching when when you're working inside a fusion 360 a face or plane now when you're starting out in the beginning and I just thought of sketched here let's get rid of that now when you're starting out in the beginning in here ooh video quality went bad make sure that you click that little gear icon right next to your in your video and make sure that you set it to a higher standard because this is streaming YouTube will automatically like constantly gauge things and try to make sure you have a good resolution alright when you're starting out in the beginning remember face on a plane well you don't have a face because we don't have anything on the screen right now it's all it's all you know blank so you will always start out the first sketch will always be on one on one of these planes okay so that's just kind of like do that now the next thing you have the origin right showing right here and if I turn the light bar on over here we kind of like also get the the planes showing up on on that argument make it a habit then when you start sketching out and I'm you know this is like for the 90% of the normal scenarios make yourself a habit to start your first sketch on that that point so if you're creating a line you know you should probably create your first line where you snap to to that origin that Alden is kind of like your place like the nail in space if you are doing a rectangle to fajn rectangle you might select that as your first area to create your right angle like that or if you are creating like a center rectangle s key and the center rectangle you know you can do that also but make it a good habit then whenever you start sketching make sure you snap your first gets kind of like into into the autumn now the title of this video how I use sketch and dimension so the sketch constraints are these over here that kinda like controls our sketches and then of course dimensions to kind of like lock it down my rule of thumb is to start out whenever I'm sketching something to first apply relations the first two constraints relations and then the dimensions second now not and I'm saying this with like one of these right but a general rule think of getting your sketch constraints in first and then the dimensions afterwards because if you start out with the dimensions first you have a tendency to throw a lot of dimensions on your part what really makes it a pain in the neck many times to edit and things like that so let's not sketching something up here and talk a little bit about some of these relationships over here some other ones that is important so first of all let me go I'm gonna click the line command and create the first line here so we get kinda like the night command now notice that when I go down and make some horizontal you would actually see that and I can't point at it but at littles constraint symbol in light blue will show up on the screen right when I'm sorry so fusion will by default help you by applying constraints so here you would actually make sure that it gets a horizontal constraint on it you will also see it if we just do it a standard rectangle and I'm just sketching a standard rectangle you will see that we get the horizontal horizontal vertical vertical constraint so be aware of the future we'll put these on now whenever we talking about sketches some of you guys know 500 estate make sure you get them fully defined you need to make them completely black so we cannot drag them like that but you should be aware of that fusion by default put constraints in so kind of like help you on your way undo is up here by the way so let's create a line back to the line I'm just going to place it here now as soon as it goes out here you will see that is ready to create another line there is actually a little trick if you want to get into two arcs but you can create a tangent arc by I'm still in the line command by moving back to that original endpoint and then hold down your left mouse button and drag out and it will actually create a tangent are from here so that's a little trick where you can switch in the line command you can create your line and then you don't exit out of it you go back to it again hold down your left mouse button and you can actually create a in line like this now you will see that when I did that I get this simple over here what is in my opinion probably the most important constraint in the world that is tangency okay now let me show you what if something looks like if it don't have tangency if we click on it we can actually delete it so what happens is many times when we are sketching things up is that if we create some lines like this and then maybe we go up here and we create a three-point arc something that goes over to here and give that an arc there and let's just continue with another arc that goes to here to there if you not watch out there is no tangency here that is this tendency constraint here delete that and what makes make happens is that the scared starts you see how the arc is kind of like snapping on its like look at this mess right because there's no tangency on on this so what I do as a rule is whenever I am I'm working with sketching something of if there's any arcs involved and there is no tangency on them make sure that's the first related constraint you're putting in there so click tangency select this line and this arc and they will now be tangent and now I can go over I can make this line and this arc and this arc tangent I still have a little bit of a in weird selection up here but make sure that these are in here so I will actually make a an effort whenever I sketch something up if I know that that was arcs in there I would exit going to make sure that all of these have a tendency on it and if they don't and they should have I will go over here to the constraints and apply it first so that is maybe if because if you do and so you guys tried this if you don't then you added I mention some one of these sketches and they just completely blow up and you're like and it can be a nightmare to fix it so that's you know I think one of the better tips I can share with you is I will actually make an effort going in there and make sure that all arcs have a tangency before I do really anything anything else okay um now another thing that you will see let me just get rid of this because this is kind of like a mess another thing that I you will see many times do if you're watching the live streams is that I just gets things kind of close to what I want without spending too much time of kind of get it right in the beginning so just get something somewhat close to what you want just consider your drawing this thing here because the wonderful thing getting close is that you have these constraints over here so I know people who spend a lot of time trying to get everything right and then you know you're putting these constraint on anyways and dimensions so just get me somewhere close and then going to start using these different constraints so what I want us to show you if you're going again look a little bit is the choice on vertical simple a little bit confusion from a couple of people who's like what do you mean why you know shouldn't there be one that is noise Solomon that is vertical well it actually looks out for 45 degrees what I mean by that is that if I create well if you're looking at this line right up here this line right up here on the top let's get out of the command here this line here is closer to zero that it's passed I guess 46 degrees if I apply a constraint to this one house on this last vertical it will become horizontal where this line is closer to 90 degrees then 45 so that will become vertical let me show you if I click on this one here that becomes vertical same command I'm not changing anything that will become horizontal so that's just one of these things if you're fairly new there's a little confusing why the hag doesn't work like that but this one here will literally look at if you have below or over 45 degrees and make it appropriate after that so I'll add that one there now this one here I actually want that one to be horizontal too I could do that and click on that and make that horizontal you see we get the we get the sign there I'm just gonna do a quick undo of course we could also go in and say we wanted to be parallel with something that is already horizontal so that would be same result right just to different kind of like rules if we decided to change the angle on this one that one will follow right because it's parallel to this one versus a standard horizontal so these things too to think about another one I like to use is the collinear collinear I think that's how you say it two lines on top of each other really that's how I think of it so if I take this line and I make it : here however you pronounce it it's not my language just trying to use it if I select that and I make it that and I clicked this line down here whoops this line down here they are now like right on top of each other or at least kind of like following each other's path I should say so : here's another one I use quite a bit alright now we still have a couple of things we got a control on this area right here so another one you could go in and use for this one here is there's an equal length so if we go in here and say I want equal I want this line and this line should be equal these two lines will now be be equal now but that means they will always stay equal maybe they will you know but they will go away from each other what might not be your intent by the way remember you can always go ahead and click on a relationship here in the sketch environment hit delete and it's gone so you can delete them again so here you might also say you know what I'm gonna use the parallel again according so like that and now it's parallel so now with parallel they can't go away from each other right now will they will always stay stay parallel like that so think a little bit about the different relationships that you kind of have in here and if we just quickly run over the relationships we will see this relationship here is a horizontal then if you click on it it will actually highlight the other one and this was a parallel between this line and this line this one is a cold linear between these two lines these two are parallel we just added those and then this one is another horizontal line so by looking at your sketches and then this one over here what is that one a little crooked T or hockey stick or whatever it is well if you look over here you can see the simple that line is perpendicular okay so that was one of the constraints the fusion could in okay so so I hope that that kind of makes sense that you can actually look and these constraints and figure out kind of how how the work now you can't do you can't do everything with just constraints at some point you've got to go to dimensions but if you put as many constraints in in the beginning your sketch is gonna be a lot less crowded what's gonna make it easier to change them later on all if you gotta hand them off to somebody that this list I mentioned so let's finish this one up let's put in some dimensions on it so I'm gonna default I mention the Dennis four dimensions and we get a little sketch icon and now we can kind of like stop applying some of the different dimensions so I'm going first constraints then dimensions so we can click on these two lines and we can apply some kind of an angle here let's make that sixty what means this one is sixty-two right because we we kind of like running this with a with an angle so these two are kind of like following along right here now the other one up here we can go from the top up here and we can go down and place that to the origin right so that would be now we're tying this into so the audio might be benign so I'm just going to make it 45 right there um use the audience to kind of like tell you that made sense too if you're making sure you're placing them just right so I'm gonna place another one to the end here and let's just make this one 200 and as I'm doing this you will see things starts turning black but some of it still is blue what means that if it's still blue that it's not fully defined now if you're not sure what that is the easiest thing is to I'm just gonna hit escape to get out of the dimensioning tool to go and grab a corner hold down your left mouse button and start moving the corners and you can kind of like get an idea about what maybe is missing here so this one we never place the a with so this is d for that and we can place a width of this a 45 now that turned out but it's still blue well do you know what's what's wrong oh the whole thing can still move right here so let's just place another dimension from the organ to so this point right and we can make that 90 and now you will see that that turns black so make sure you tie things down now again this one is still blue up here because we didn't give it that height so make sure you do that so first off is to add pi well always make sure that you do your first sketch to the origin second make sure that if you have any tagging C's that you use to make sure you have attending constraint on them and then put in as many constraints as you can that make sense and then use that mentions in the end so you can kinda like tie tie it down to whatever you want now to do a couple of more I think kind of important things in here let's go in and add a couple of circles so we see four circles I'm just gonna place two circles and again many times right now I could I could type in right now the diameter of the circle actually honestly and I this is not best practices I have a tendency if I know I need to place two circles in here I place the two circles first and then I hit D for dimension and go in and apply whatever diameter I want that circle to be another tool I use another constraint to use a lot specially with circles is the equal amount down here so an ego constraint between these two will now make sure that they both are 25 right you change this to 50 and the other circle goes with it now these are still blue both of them because they're kind of like just floating around in space so here I might use a horizontal environment between this center point and this center point and now at least I made sure that the two circles are traveling on kind of like the same the same line here then when we have done that we might start dimensioning them now we could go in here and hit D for dimension so like this Center Point and this Center Point and let's make the 125 from Center to Center right now a new work option that was applied inside of fusion recently is if you right-click I mean the dimension tool look at the icon it's important right-click you can choose for the dimension not to be as an arc Center but I said are tangent so if it's just by right-clicking I can switch to tangency and now you will see that it actually finds tangency on this charcoal to this circle and it will place a 10 in the tangent between the two so this is the inside what is all great but what is let's go back into the dimension tool oops deeper dimension what if I want the outside well then you just got a pic on the outside and fusion is smart enough to know that if you're picking on the outside it becomes the outside if you if you click on the inside of one and on the outside of the other or that it's gonna be tangency that so it has some intelligence to it now when I click to place the sketch something's gonna happen that some of you guys are going to be all too familiar with because I already placed a 125 up here and when I place the 125 here something's gonna happen I'm gonna get a notification it's not a warning nothing nothing's gonna blow up like only if fusion starts counting down from 10 run away if it you know this is just a notification that adding this dimension will over constrain the sketch choose ok choose ok to create a driven dimension how many people here panic is like what's wrong what means is when I hit ok is that it's just saying that you already placed the 125 from senator center that's gonna drive that with by placing the second dimension you're just it's more of a reference dimension okay and you will see that it's in brackets but means that it's not really you can't really drive it but you can use it many times as a reference um if you watched yesterday's furniture built that could be a perfect example where you use something like this maybe you know because if I go in here D for dimension and right click tangency and let's go back to that inside tangency right there right that's the 25 and say okay it's okay it's just a a driven dimension I have the 125 and you're saying well why would you ever need the 75 well maybe I have some I need to put some piece of electronic in here or something and I need to keep an eye that this one doesn't exceed or becomes too small because if I change these time diameters to a V that will change that so it's more of a reference dimension then it is a what is called a driving dimension however you can absolutely right click on it and you can toggle it to be driving now if you do that you will see we get an error down here because it says I can't do that because the other one is still there it's still overwritten so if we took this one and right within that one and say titled ribbing now none of them are driving right click this one total driving now suddenly this is the dimension that controls these circles so I hope that this kind of helps some of you guys with this I'm gonna wrap it up with kind of like the last thing I wanted to show another constraint I used quite a bit and that is the symmetry here now to use the symmetry I will create a helping line and I will just gonna place it right on the midpoint of this line and I know the midpoint because I get a triangle so it is like who came up with a triangle well if you go over and look over here in the constraints dialogue midpoint infusion is a triangle so far huh ball over here when I see the triangle I know I'm at the midpoint so I draw the line down to no specific length and place it ok so this line here right now it's just a reference now in the past many times you will see that I will turn this into a construction geometry right up here you can turn something into construction geometry what I do recommend you do especially if you've got to share this model with somebody else because construction geometry just sells you that it's kind of reference so to use the symmetry I'm gonna select symmetry and the trick of symmetry is two points and then align so this point this point and then our helping line right here and that is now symmetrical what means that if we're changing this new driven value they will always be symmetrical to this line here it is important though that I say that in fusion you don't have to create this don't have to be a construction line we could actually turn it into a a standard line like a solid line like we normally use gets lines and it would like to still work inside a fusion so if you're just modeling for yourself then you don't always have to to make it into a construction but if you were sharing it with somebody I'll probably do it just to not kind of confuse them last thing we need here is a vertical dimension so we're gonna be four dimension and I'm gonna select our origin and up to here and just place this whatever now because I left this as a solid line here when I go into press Q 4 press pull it will divide it up but you know I can just select those two sections right there and then we can we can create that here all right that was the 30 30 minutes how I use sketch constraints and dimension one last thing that I sometimes get asked is would I prefer or in and edit our original sketch to add fill it's in the sketch environments architects go in here and say I want to add a fill it in here like this let's leave it at end all let's get out of the sketch or do I prefer to go up to modify and use the fill a command outside in here and could make that 10 really same result just two different ways one is hidden inside the sketch right there the other one is sitting as its own feature my rule of thumb is that if I know that nobody should ever go in and mess around with a radius I prefer to put it in the sketch you know if I'm on something on but I know that that radius has to be this nobody's gonna have eyes with it I would leave it inside of the sketch but many times when you're out as a customer the customer is like could we make that filleth you know how about if you made a little bit bigger and then it's a lot easier to have it as a feature out here then you have to go back in the sketch and every time you had its cats I feel it's a little dangerous when you go in here you know it's easier in here to make mistakes then I feel like it is out here with with features 166 people in the live stream today Wow I cannot tell you how much I appreciate that really awesome you guys are awesome that was what about plan to show today tomorrow Friday same time same Channel it is cam we're gonna talk about when your cam is flashing red edges so that's tomorrow what else did I tell you man hope you hope you are finding a good new way into the new year hope you had an awesome couple of days and thank you so much we'll do what I normally do in the broadcast if you're watching the recording thank you so much really appreciate it don't forget if you have any comments to the sketching put it down in the comments area and if you like this thumbs up if you don't be honest thumbs down and if you haven't already subscribed to the channel all right shut down that's it um hope to see you tomorrow and for you guys we're in the live stream or going down say hi to you guys take care folks

Channel: Lars Christensen

Views: 160,946

Keywords: Autodesk, Autodesk Fusion 360, Fusion 360, Design, CAD, Modeling, Manufacturing, Tip, Beginner, Lars Christensen, akn_include

Id: pqd_wlz9gpQ

Length: 32min 38sec (1958 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 04 2018