How to Create Assemblies and Joints in Fusion 360 - Learn Autodesk Fusion 360 in 30 Days: Day #25

hey there it's Kevin Kennedy and welcome to day number 25 of the learn fusion 360 in 30 days by the end of this tutorial you'll be able to assemble components together to represent functional and moving products we'll take a look at how to set up joints and as built joints we'll talk about the difference and we'll also add some rigid sliding and some other motions to the joints for this tutorial I'm going to use one of the sample files located in the data panel open up your data panel by clicking on the grid icon scroll down until you see this sample section and then double click on the basic training folder then find folder number six which contains assembly practice files and we'll double click to open file number six which is a camera tripod once the camera tripod file is open you'll notice that it's a read-only file as stated at the top of the toolbar here so we'll have to click on file save as and then you can rename this file if you would like to as well as choose a new location for the copied file then clicking the blue Save button will copy the file for us so now we can play around with the file and actually make changes to it before we start adding joints and motion to the model let's take a look at a few things that you'll need to understand in order to understand assemblies in fusion 360 first off you'll notice that in the fusion 360 browser on the left hand side that all of these parts in the assembly file are made up of components now if you're not familiar with the difference between components and bodies then be sure to check out my other video in the video description below fusion 360 treats components as real-world manufactured parts and because of this you'll only be able to apply joints and motion to components and they won't work on bodies next let's head down to the timeline and click the red icon which represents a grounded component and hit the Delete key on your keyboard we'll talk more about grounding components in just a bit but for now let's go ahead and take a look at the model itself now the tripod appears to be pieced together but if I click and drag it apart you'll notice that I can drag each one of the components around freely so they're really not joined together and of course that's what I'm going to show you in this video lesson now the first tip for those of you new to assemblies is when you move something around but the side that you want it to go back to the original location you can select revert in the tool bar or in the position drop-down list and you'll notice that selecting revert moves the component back to its original position now in order to see the middle components of the tripod I'll zoom in and I'm going to click and drag on the red stand and I'll drag it over to the right and I'll also click and drag the camera mount over to the right you can now see some of the other key components of this tripod assembly in order to make sure these two pieces we just move don't get reverted back to the original position we'll want to click capture position in the tool bar or from the position drop-down list which will capture the current position of all the components the capture position feature is parametric meaning that it's part of the order of feature and can be used to create additional features later on you'll notice that the capture position icon is now located in the timeline below and if you roll back the design the parts move back to the previous position and if I roll the timeline forward the parts return back to their new position the next thing we're going to discuss is what grounding a component does I'm going to zoom in on the top of the tripod and if we look at the part of the stand you'll see that this piece has the leg joints and the joint for the camera mount so because we'll be applying a number of different joints to this specific component we'll want to ground this piece so we don't accidentally move it now this is the important part to ground a component you'll have to ground the lowest level component so for this example this piece is a sub assembly so I'll have to toggle open the stand sub assembly folder and then I can right click on the components 25 and select a ground which is located near the top of the list now if I try to select this component and move it you'll see that it is in fact grounded or frozen in place typically you'll find it helpful to ground at least one component in your assembly file although this is certainly not something that is required now that we have part of the stand grounded we'll want to add some joints to the legs of the tripod if I select the assemble drop-down list you'll notice that fusion 360 has two different types of joints we have joints and we have as built joints now both of these joints have seven different types of motion that can be created but it's important that you leverage the correct type of joint to help save you time and streamline your workflow put simply as built joints are used when the components are already in the correct position yet they need to be joined together as built joints are most commonly used when creating an assembly with imported geometry from the existing model such as our use case here or if you built your design with a top-down approach where the components were built in place either touching or relative to each other which means that they don't need to be moved into position contrary joints are used when fusion 360 components need to be assembled together but the parts are not in their current position later on when we use the joint command you'll notice that the first component selected moves to the second component that we selected which allows us to define position and a relative motion all at once if i zoom out a bit and we take a look at our model you'll notice that most of our tripod here is already in the correct position therefore we'll be using as built joints for these components on the other hand will need to use joints when we go to assemble these other pieces that we moved away from the main assembly let's go ahead and use an as-built joint to join the legs together I'll select as-built joint from the assemble drop-down menu or by hitting the keyboard shortcut shift + J then before I select any of the components I'll set the motion type if I open up the drop-down list you'll see that fusion 360 currently offers seven types of motion we want the pulls of the tripod to be able to slide within one another so we'll select slider from the list of options now I can select the two cylinders that make up the legs I'll select the lower gray to burst and then I'll select the white tube after selecting both tubes you'll notice that we now have the position option in the dialog box to set the position of the slider motion I'll select the bottom circular edge of the white tube and you'll notice that it gives us a nice preview of the motion to help ensure that we're setting it up correctly now looking at the preview everything looks good so I'll click OK in the dialogue box one thing to note before we move on is that you'll notice that the as-built joint we just created was also automatically applied to these other two legs and this is because they were copied from the original in other words all three legs are instances of the same sub assembly so fortunately for us fusion 360 is smart enough to apply joins to all instances that are the same next we'll want to add an as-built joint to the end caps so they can't be moved around I'll hit shift + J on the keyboard to call the as-built joint and then I will change the motion type to rigid you can think of the rigid motion type as gluing two pieces together so they're not able to be moved and you'll notice that the rigid is first on the list because this joint type is used most often in fusion 360 and the engineers have went ahead and organized this motion list based on the frequency that the motion types are used now I'll need to select the end cap and then the gray leg and I'll click OK you'll also see that the end caps were also part of a sub assembly with the same instances so this rigid joint that we just applied was automatically applied to the other two instances now we'll want to add a joint to the top of the lake I'll zoom in a bit so it's easier to see then I'll right-click and select repeat as built joint you'll see that rigid is still selected because we use that last so all we have to do is select the top end cap and the white cylinder and click OK I'll now right-click once again and select repeat as built joint and we're going to repeat the same steps to connect the arched connector that's kind of hidden here to the top of the cap and after selecting each I'll click OK in the dialogue box the next joint we'll want to add is the revolute motion that will allow this top connector to move along the stand piece here I'll right click and select repeat as built joint and this time I'll change the motion type two revolute because revolute will allow this to revolve around a single axis then I'll select the connector that we use previously and I'll select the stand bracket for the position we'll want to select the hole here where a pin or bolts will go and you'll notice that it immediately gave us a preview which looks correct so I'll go ahead and click OK now because this damn piece is just one component this asbill joint was not automatically applied to the other two legs so we'll have to complete the same steps for the other two legs you at this point we'll want to test that our joints were applied properly I'll simply click and drag on one of the legs and you'll see that I can move the leg around the revolute and I can also slide the bottom tube inside the upper tube and to move everything back in place I'll select revert in the toolbar now we'll once a complete assembly by attaching the camera mount first we'll want to select as built joint from the assembled drop-down list I'll change the motion type back to rigid and then I'll select the panhead and the stand connector and click OK now this should finish up everything with the components that we already had in place as we discussed earlier will now need to use the joint command for the remaining components because we'll want to move them in place and add a motion at the same time to call the joint command I'll simply hit the keyboard shortcut letter J so no Shift key for the joint command I'll make sure the type is set to rigid and then as we discussed earlier we'll first select the component that we want to move so I'll look at the model from the bottom and select the bottom of the red stand and I'll want to select it where the flat surface is and the glyph icon appears over the center hole I'll reposition the model so we can look at the top of the stand and I'm going to want to select the center circle but you'll notice that it's hard to see because it's technically hidden by this other component so we'll need to hold down command on Mac or ctrl on Windows to lock this face in place and then you'll see that I can select the center hole and the component will automatically move over and we can click OK the last joint we'll want to apply is a ball joint for the camera mount I'll right click and select repeat joint and then set the motion to ball I'll select the ball of the camera mount because we want this component to be moved and then I'll look at the mount from the top making it a bit easier to select the inside ball now you'll notice with this preview that fusion 360 does not detect the material interference that is going on and you'll have to set up contact sets in order for it to not run through this red component which is something that will have to be covered in another video I'll click OK and I'll just move the camera mount around to make sure that the ball joint does move correctly hopefully this gives you guys a very beginner overview to joints in motion in fusion 360 if you're coming from a different cab program such as inventor or SolidWorks then you need to come into this with an open mind I understand it can be frustrating at first but once you grasp the concept I think you'll find that fusion 360 joints and motion are much more efficient when creating assembly models thanks for watching if you have any questions at all about this tutorial for fusion 360 questions in general then be sure to comment them below hit that thumbs up icon if you learn something in this video and click Subscribe followed by that little bell icon to be notified of more fusion 360 tutorials

Channel: Product Design Online

Views: 79,245

Keywords: fusion 360, autodesk fusion 360, kevin kennedy fusion 360, product design online, fusion 360 tutorials, fusion tutorials, fusion 360 30 days, learn fusion 360 in 30 days, lars christensen fusion 360, fusion 360 beginners, fusion 360 kevin kennedy, autodesk fusion 30 days, #larslive, learn fusion 360 or die trying, fusion 360 assembly tutorial, fusion 360 assembly, fusion 360 assembling parts, fusion 360 assembly joints, fusion 360 assembly components, fusion 360 assembly mate

Id: t41QmQszcbE

Length: 14min 48sec (888 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 17 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/productdesignonline]

A beginner lesson on Assemblies and Joints! I hope this helps for those of you that are new to Fusion 360 :)