Learn Fusion 360 or Die Trying LESSON 1: Introduction tutorial for Absolute Beginners

hello guys this is Tom quarter from tough tech boy comm and we are here today to learn fusion 360 or die trying' okay why am I giving this video such a provocative title well that's because probably I have been trying to learn AutoCAD for the last 20 years one version or another of AutoCAD and I've always just been a day at it hit a brick wall given up decided that I would just not be a mechanical designer and I would just go to Thingiverse and download things to print to the 3d printer but finally today is the day that we are going to not give up we are either going to learn how to use fusion 360 or we are going to die trying no more giving up okay so first of all why is fusion 360 so hard and if you've ended up here you're probably like me I mean some people just fly through it and it's like a guy up there a conductor conducting the orchestra they're just making a fusion 360 or AutoCAD sing and dance and it don't sing and it don't dance for you well I'm going to help you get past that so let's just start by kind of looking at the four reasons that I figured out that AutoCAD is hard or fusion 360 is hard or why you struggle or why it doesn't do what you want it to and the first thing is is that you're just really not mindful of the palette okay because we are used to let's say we are used to Microsoft products and in Microsoft products it infers what you want to do so if you just move the mouse around you can just draw and it knows that you want to draw or you can select something by clicking on it it knows you want to select it or if you go to the corner it knows that you want to resize where it knows that you want to move it around so you just sort of move your mouse around and click and Microsoft products do what you want them to do not so with AutoCAD or with fusion 360 because fusion 360 can do so many things you have to sort of tell it what to do and then do it so the first key to success in fusion 360 is the mindful of your ribbon it you want to select something come up and click on the select button then come down and click what you want to select so tell it what you're going to do and then do it so select you know choose select on the palette then click on what you want to select or choose move on the palette then show what you want to move or choose resize and then show what you're going to resize and so the first key to success in fusion 360 is to be very mindful and deliberate with the palette what you're going to do and then do it so things that might be a one step process in Microsoft product might be a three step process it's okay because it'll get good you'll be fast at it but you have to be mindful of that ok the second reason that we fail on fusion 360 is we jump into 3d objects before we have really mastered sketching so the second key to being successful in fusion 360 is to master the sketching if you can make things sing and dance at the two-dimensional level the three-dimensional part of it is really pretty easy but it's like we jump right in and start making 3d objects before we really are mindful of understanding how the sketches work master the sketching before you go to 3d objects the third reason that we struggle with ujin 360 and we give up and go somewhere else try to do something else is that we're not precise in our sketching with two things dimension and position so just like I say you're mindful of the pallet tell it what you're going to do and then do it same thing when you create an object set the dimensions and set the position mindfully deliberately don't just go out there and just kind of drag and draw a box if you're going to create a rectangle say okay it's going to start at a certain position that I'm going to specifically specify with numbers and then it's going to be a specific dimension okay those are three of the really big ones you're not mine we're not mindful of the palette we jump into 3d objects before we really understand sketching and then thirdly we're not precise with our dimensions in placement we just go in there like a wild man or a I'll roam and drawing things without being mindful of being very specific of where they need to be in what size they need to be and finally and this might be the biggest one because it's something that is just not at all in our Microsoft products like drawing something in PowerPoint or our various programs like that is is that in in fusion 360 we have to understand the concept of constraints okay now it first constraints are going to be a frustration because constraints mean that things don't do what you want them to do so at first you're just going to kind of be learning to live with constraints but then what you're going to learn is constraints or your friend constraints are what allow you to do really great things in on in fusion 360 so don't be afraid of constraints don't avoid constraints that really really early on in the early lessons we've got to learn about constraints because one of the frustrations with with Fusion 360 is you'll go in and draw a box and then you'll come back in a minute and you'll want to move the box in the box won't move well how does it say to move the box well you select it right-click tell it to move and you do it and it won't move well the reason is when you draw things a lot of times fusion 360 will put constraints on there in the constraints are good things but those constraints then prevent you from doing things later that you want to do so the simple thing the thing that will make your life so easy in fusion 360 is in a very early lesson we're going to learn about constraints if you will learn in the 2d in the sketch mode to do position and dimension and then understand constraints you're going to think that that fusion 360 is the greatest thing that ever happened you're going to love it you're going to make it sing and dance but you've got to do those types of things okay other thing you've got to think about is a lot of reasons people avoid fusion 360 is it's a very expensive program well Google fusion 360 for education or students or home hobbyist and what you'll find is there appears I'm not a lawyer but there appears to be great ASSA tea from autodesk in using fusion 360 for free for if you're a student or if you're a home hobbyist and you need to read the license and you need to understand that it seems to me to be saying that if you're just a guy working on things for raspberry pie box or your home projects you can download it and use it for free now if you were going to go start manufacturing those and start a Kickstarter campaign and you're going to start a little company you got a really sharpen the pencil and make sure that you're using it legally but for us home makers and home enthusiasts and and people in you know like students there appears to be a very very generous ability to use this full feature program for free okay enough said so you need to go download you know search on student if you're a student a you know student download download of fusion 360 for students and kind of get that set up by this point you know enough I don't have to step you through that okay so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to get out of your way this is actually in the background here one of my first one of my very first AutoCAD our fusion 360 designs and it has been successful because if you look back here I am actually printing it out on the 3d printer and it is printing out beautifully now this is the thing that actually drove me this is the structure that drove me out of Sketchup and made me realize that we needed to move to more sophisticated software and that was trying to make these manifolds where you had curves intersecting curves and in Sketchup that just would not work and particularly if you look at this little feature here what this is is this is an mm shaped cutout in a cylinder and what that would just not I could not make that work and Sketch up I could draw it but I could not get a solid object that could be printed on a 3d printer and so that is when I gave up alright so let's get started go away download the program pause this come back and we are going to learn fusion 360 or we are going to die trying okay when you open up three-sixty you should see something that's just a blank sheet of paper and what you should do is you should come up I'm going to go slowly you see this little sheet of paper you need to come up and you need to say new design so you come up here select new design and boom I have a new design now the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to learn to sketch and in this first lesson we're going to sketch some simple things and then next week we're going to come back and you know in the next lesson we're going to come back and sketch and then extrude but we're not going to extrude extrude today why because we fail because we don't really understand things at the sketch level so we're going to sketch today then in the next lesson we're going to sketch and extrude and then we're going to come back and sketch some more and then we're going to sketch and extrude and then we're going to sketch some more and so we'll sort of be learning about sketching then extrude then learning more about sketching and extrude and if you'll just go through these projects with me man you'll be making this thing sing and dance in no time at all ok so what's the first thing that we're going to do we're going to sketch which means we need to work with these tools here that under that are under sketch so I'm going to click on that and you know just click on it and let up and then I'm going to come down I want a rectangle and then I want a two point rectangle that's going to be from one corner to another the first thing that it pops up here is it wants to know what plane do I want to work on okay what plane do I want to work on because it's going to take me to that flat plane for sketching so you see right now we've got a 3d view well what I want is you can see up here that the the red blue axis is the x z axis I'm kind of I like to go all the way back sort of old-school right I like to sketch on the XY plane okay I like to sketch on the XY plane and that would be the red-green plane so that would be this plane right here red green and boom now it's getting this flat sheet of graph paper okay what I am going to give you and I will start you through this and it will be your assignment to complete it I would like to create a 3x3 array of rectangles those rectangles need to be 50 millimeters by 25 millimeters okay 50 millimeters by 25 millimeters and then there needs to be there needs to be a 25 millimeter spacing between them okay so let's just jump in and do that so I have what's selected I have the rectangle tool selected I need to show it where I want to start so I come down close to the origin I let it snap I click once and then bring it out and I just click anywhere don't try to get it perfect just click anywhere okay now I have a rectangle that is in the right position because I started at the origin but it's the wrong size now how do I make it the right size I just click on D I can click on D or I can come up here and come down to sketch dimension because I'm doing so much dimensioning I just like to click D so I'm going to click D and now I bring my cursor to this line you see how when I point it the line it lights up I just click on it now I scoot away from it and you see what this is is this just just showing me a dimension and I can see that I drew it at 56 but I want to just get the dimension out of the way and you see I can put that number where you want to kind of make it neat and I click now I can enter the dimension 5 0 enter boom what have I done I've drawn a rectangle it's in the right position and one dimension is right how do I get the other dimension well I hit D again I come down I click on this I pull out I click again and what does it want me to enter the dimension 25 enter boom I have created a rectangle in sketch the rectangle is deliberate it is the right dimension and it is in the right position now I need to do the next one what do I want I want to give my point myself a point to build from guys do this this is the key this is one of the keys to being successful in fusion 360 always give yourself a deliberate point to draw from how do I do that like click old four-line l4 line I guess I could come up to sketch and I could come down to line as well or you can just click the L key for line I come to the origin and then I come out some distance with that line and I click again okay now what do I do i dimension that line so I click D for dimension I click on it I come down now what was the gap that I wanted the gap was 25 so if it's 50 the box 25 the gap how long should this line be 75 okay boom that's saying I should start right here okay and I'm going to move this over and make it a little neater so this is the point that I should start from now one other thing there's two types of lines there's lines that are part of your drawing and their lines that are just guidance lines or alignment lines not physical options just measurements I want this to be a measurement line so I come out here I write let's see I come here and let me escape so you see I had a tool I still had that dimension tool so I click escape to get out of that because I'm not dimensioning and then I right mouse right left mouse click left mouse click on it no that's a right mouse click man that's a right mouse click sorry for that confusion okay I route right mouse click on it and I say that I want it to be nominal construction so what that did is that made that a dotted line which means that it's just for the purpose of alignment or giving me a place to build from now I want to do my next rank rectangle what do I do I click R for rectangle I come and snap to this point I come out I draw one now what do I do i dimension so I click D all right and I come here come up how big should that be it should be 50 ok whoops now look I'm getting out of the way so now we're getting to another thing that you've got to know how to do in sketchup you've got to know how to move around you've got to know how to gate and my drawing is going off the board there is all types of fancy clickety clickety ways to do it but we're going to do it old-school so it always works we'll get fancier later what do I want to do I want to move this over I come down here and I get the hand and I move it over now the other thing use the mouse scroll wheel and you can zoom in and you can zoom out by turning the scroll wheel if you want to move you get the hand if you want to scroll in from anywhere you just use this now you can also orbit you can get the orbit tool and you see how I can move around a little bit with the orbit now you want to be flat on right you really want to be flat on when you're designing in 3d oh man how do I get back to flat on I've moved things up well you come over here and you just click top or you might be on another plane you see how I'm just flipping that view around now I'm looking up from the bottom and I come back from the top so lesson learned here right in sketching we're learning how to be experts one of the frustrations is how to navigate how do we navigate we zoom in and out with the scroll wheel we move with the hand okay we move with the hand and then we orbit with we orbit with the orbit tool and then if we ever get lost we can come back to our little cube the cube is our friend and we can get where we want to be oh look this is not the right orientation well I can say flip it around like that okay I'm back let me show you another trick like let's say that we're over here if you're good with the zoom you can actually move it by zooming so I come over here and it's going to zoom around this point so you see it pulls the stuff in and then I zoom in over here okay so you see by choosing where I zoom in and out you can actually use the zoom tool and not have to go down and deliberately get the hand tool okay so now what was the dimension that we wanted we wanted another one okay so this time what we're going to do is we are going to come instead of from the origin out 200 or whatever it would be 50 50 25 plus 25 a hundred or so 200 or so what we're going to do is we're just going to come 25 over from this point so I'm going to say line l4 line I click here make sure that you're staying you see how it wants to kind of snap to the grid make sure that your snapped here and then I click again and now what do i do dimension so d4 dimension I click this I come down this dimension I want to be what 25 okay now this is a physical line I don't want a physical line what kind of line do I want I want I want a construction line now if I come up here and right mouse click on it it's not giving me construction line why because I am still in dimension mode I am still in dimension mode so I click escape to get out of dimension mode how else could I get out of dimension mode well I can come up here and I could say select now I'm in select mode okay so you one of the frustrations as you try to do something and it doesn't do what you want it to because you're not being mindful of the palette okay look at this I want to make this a different type of line I mouse right now click it's not there why because I need to first tell it select then I come until it's select then I right mouse click and then I come down and say it's a construction line okay so remember mindful of the palate if you're having trouble you're probably stuck in a palette like let me also show you like if I come here with this tool and I rotate and then I come down here and right mouse click it's not there why because I'm in the orbit mode how can I get out of that well probably I can hit escape that's one way another way I could route right mouse click and just click OK and I'm out of it or if I'm in orbit mode I can come up here and say so what so there's a lot of ways to get out of a tool that you're sort of still in but you got to do it ok so we're going to come back to the top alright and now we are going to we're going to give ourselves room to draw here so for all I want our for rectangle I'm going to click here I'm going to come here now what do I do D for dimension I come here how big do we want this we want it 50 enter this how big do we want it we want it 25 okay so now we have drawn three rectangles no we didn't make a bicycle gear chain no we didn't do that but we're learning how to be deliberate in the sketching and what have we learned so far in our sketching we've learned about how to do dimensions and we have learned how to do we have learned how to do dimensions and we have learned how to do position for some reason this dimension isn't here I don't know why that did not stay there but let me go in and put it you guys might have caught that I'm not sure what I did wrong as I was going through it okay so we're deliberate about using our palette we are deliberate about both position and dimension and now we've got things that are going to be very very useful we've got things that we could actually come in and do something with and we've got control of it because we know exactly where it is and we know exactly what size it is okay your assignment is to go ahead and finish and make this a 3x3 okay should take you about another five minutes and then what we will do we will come back in lesson number two and we're going to design our first little 3d object okay what we're going to make in the next lesson is a very handy glasses holder and then we're going to 3d we're going to 3d print it okay guys this is polemic order from top tech boy comm and we are going to learn fusion 360 or we are going to die trying Paul McWhorter top tech boy comm I will talk to you guys later

Channel: Paul McWhorter

Views: 271,233

Keywords: Autocad, Autodesk, Fusion 360, CAD Design, Tutorial, Lessons, 3d Printing

Id: y5tp4QXciK4

Length: 21min 53sec (1313 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 16 2017