Fusion 360 advice

[Screwdriver]

Can F360 easily animate linkages?

I'm pretty sure it can but how realistic is it for a relative newbie to create linkages with over centre toggle mechanisms, rotation stops etc? Does F360 have gravity?

Had a devil of a job in Sketchup drawing up one of those gravity powered grab buckets. Thinking of porting it over to F360 because if it doesn't work first time, will be hilariously difficult to edit all of the constrained items.

Here's literally where I got it from (I copied this design.

Fabulous isn't it? I know a certain five year old will be delighted to play with one of those on his hilariously accurate scale model toy crane.

Has anyone here made a fully articulating linkage and happy to share a model? I'm not talking door open and shut here but similar to say, a door with a pneumatic closer that slides, pivots and articulates as you manipulate the model.

 

[Misterg]

If you're competent / confident at creating components and assemblies with it, then it's a small step to making those move.

It doesn't have "gravity" as such - you have to 'drive' a joint that takes the mechanism through it's full range of motion.

Not sure if this will work...

 

[Screwdriver]

I see it thanks. How many parameters and settings are there for that type of motion?
How long have you been using Fusion and how long did that take to create?

looks amazing…

 

[Misterg]

How many parameters and settings are there for that type of motion?

Very few - you can see pretty much everything in the tree on the left.

You just draw the components as normal, assemble them using joints that have the appropriate degrees of freedom, and the mechanism will basically work.
The only thing beyond that in the engine model is that there is a declared 'motion link' between the cam gears to give the gear ratio (you could draw gear teeth and make them drive each other if you really wanted to, but life (& computing time) is too short!)

You can limit the travel of a key joint (or joints) to ensure that the motion operates within the bounds that you want.

I tried to add another animation of a cam and follower to the first post, but it didn't want to upload - It looks like it has uploaded to this reply, so will try and add it below. The only thing different about this one is that there is contact between the cam and follower, and the follower and rod which is dealt with by 'contact sets' rather than joints. Zipped F360 model (hopefully) attached - NB this was just something quick and dirty that I did to play with contact sets.

I've been using F360 (hobby level) for about 3 years, but used Creo / Wildfire at work before that (didn't do anything interesting with it, though!)

ETA: I'm no expert, but happy to try and talk you through it if you can get the components drawn up (i.e. modelled)

 

[Screwdriver]

Ok that's awesome thanks again. I will probably dedicate next week getting to grips with it. A rare day out for me today so I will be visiting the real world later, catch up with my old pals from uni. I may go dark for a while but now is the time to dip my toe back into this unfathomable interface.

The plan is to use Sketchup as god intended to sketch out a design from a blank sheet and a vague idea, then port over to Fusion once you know what you want. My understanding is that Fusion would be great, easy even if you're given a list of parts/dimensions etc. but for "thinking out loud", you don't get to visualise the physicality of a thing until after you've committed to a design and drawn it out.

I have sketched out a design and it appears to work. I can even animate it crudely but the big issue is editing and tweaking, Change one linkage and the entire model needs to be redrawn! That is despite each part being a "component", you cannot create a relationship between them.

One of the complications in this mechanism is it operates via a pulley system rather than direct linkages but so long as I can articulate each part, I should be able make any adjustments and see how that ripples though to all of the other critical dimensions.

<edit> my first thought looking at that cam is how it might work in a real world application where the lobe isn't a perfect matching radius and the follower would be a variable radius pushing on a flat (or curved) surface, not a point! Clearly an engine cam would therefore have a travelling contact patch which changes the "link ratio" in some fearsomely complicated geometry!

 

[Misterg]

My understanding is that Fusion would be great, easy even if you're given a list of parts/dimensions etc. but for "thinking out loud", you don't get to visualise the physicality of a thing until after you've committed to a design and drawn it out.

I find the opposite, but YMMV - I use it mostly for visualising things before making them. (Sketchup annoyed the hell out of me! )

Change one linkage and the entire model needs to be redrawn! That is despite each part being a "component", you cannot create a relationship between them.

I presume you're talking about the Sketchup model? (It's the whole point of something like F360.)

Yes, the contact point between the follower and the pin travels, and wouldn't work well in reality - I used the model to verify that the cam profile I had come up with for my little hit-and-miss engine would work with a curved follower, rather than a flat tappet (I plotted out the position of the rod for various rotation angles of the cam). You can model whatever cam / follower profile you want - the model doesn't care.

The follower ended up like this, with a floating pushrod in the recess at the top:

Enjoy your day out!

 

[Screwdriver]

Oh yeah, I need to learn Fusion for the benefits of parametric design. Sketchup is really an architectural tool!