Fusion 360

[Hood]

I have been contemplating upgrading BobCAD for a while and eventually decided to do it but I just couldn't get, what I consider, a reasonable upgrade deal from the UK agent.

I then thought I might as well try Fusion 360 and see what it was like.
I am not a fan of the cloud based storage and saving to your drive seems to be a bit more involved than I would like but I suppose after a while it would become second nature.

Ok, so onto Fusion 360, the drawing side of it seemed familiar and I picked it up fairly easily but assemblies were a bit more of a challenge but it seems I can more or less do an assembly in the one drawing instead of making lots of single drawings and then putting them into an assembly.

Here is the first thing I managed yesterday, I am sure I will get better at it with practice and find easier and quicker ways to do things but anyway here is the playback of the steps I took. Mind you it took me hours to do this but as said once I find my way around it should only be a five or ten minute task.

This evening I have been messing with the lathe CAM, it had been driving me daft until I discovered that I was picking the wrong part of the drawing to define the Z rotation axis.
It is quite a bit different from BobCAD but so far it seems fairly good.
Making your own tools up is quite easy once you understand how to do it, next step for me will be to see if I can make up a template like I have in BobCAD so that I only have to import a drawing and most settings such as tools, spindle speeds, feeds etc will be ready for me to just choose the geometry for each operation.

Video of the simulation.

 

[Brad93]

I like how you made that. Did you set up off set planes to make the different parts. Got to admit I’ve not done much with it, I really should do a few courses.

 

[Hood]

I used the copy feature, copied the sketch and offset the distance I wanted then extruded. I think I probably could have actually copied it as a body and done the same and thus missed out the extruding. I will no doubt find my way around things the more I mess with it, only been seriously trying things since yesterday.

 

[Tangledfeet]

I used the copy feature, copied the sketch and offset the distance I wanted then extruded

Does F360 have 'Project Feature'? Might do the same.

I'm very familiar with Inventor but not so much Fusion... there's a chance we might be changing over to it so perhaps I'd better start making myself more familiar with it!

 

[mtt.tr]

Does F360 have 'Project Feature'? Might do the same.

I'm very familiar with Inventor but not so much Fusion... there's a chance we might be changing over to it so perhaps I'd better start making myself more familiar with it!

It does yes

 

[Hood]

Does F360 have 'Project Feature'? Might do the same.

I'm very familiar with Inventor but not so much Fusion... there's a chance we might be changing over to it so perhaps I'd better start making myself more familiar with it!

The simple answer to that is F knows

 

[Hood]

Ah too late, looks like it does
Now I just have to find out what it means

 

[ukracer]

I like how you made that. Did you set up off set planes to make the different parts. Got to admit I’ve not done much with it, I really should do a few courses.

I tried to get my head round Lars channel but he always started way over my head.
I then found McWhorter on and www.Toptechboy.com although he seems like marmite and his "boom" every time he completes a task can get tedious BUT I really think I can follow his method of working........

 

[Hood]

Will give it a look. Not really done any video watching as I mostly like to search for specifics and the help files online seem to answer a lot of my questions which are mainly where the heck is this command

 

[ukracer]

One thing I find missing is a design request.

For example if there is task you wish to carry out it's often very hard to get a tutorial that you can follow.

I have need to create a block with a slot in it. I Have learnt that it's way better to use parametric design so editing the Fusion file is simple.

I have also learnt that it's fairly simple to follow a tutorial to create a box.

I have also learnt how to combine models and also create what is termed a tool to create a tube with a radius on the end that can effectively push a hole into a model.
What I am struggling with is creating a box with a slot in using parametric design and/or a "tool" I can push a slot in.

I am sure watching the videos it's not really that difficult but it's a far cry watching the videos in bed and actually carrying out what you have seen........if it deviates from what I need I find it hard to search for help.

 

[Hood]

Aye, that guy is definitely not one I could watch for long. Maybe if I watched ones further on in the series it would be better as the basics are pretty easy for me to pic up seeing as I have used other CAD for a long time.

 

[Hood]

Couldn't sleep so decided I would have a look at templates, did a google search and up pops a video from Lars and it is simple, 10 seconds of skimming through the video to cut all the initial chat and the info I needed was there
All I have to do now is actually make up a load of common lathe operations with the common tools etc and it will be done
I tested with the operations I did earlier and it worked a charm on a new part.

 

[Hood]

Been messing with post processors today, getting somewhere but very slowly.
Have I ever said
I HATE CODE and people who find it easy

 

[Tangledfeet]

I HATE CODE

Need moar..?

 

[Hood]

Need moar..?

View attachment 204602

Swallied een th'day

 

[galooph]

Have I ever said
I HATE CODE

I code for a living, and there are plenty of days I hate code too!

 

[Hood]

I seem to have it mostly working as I want now.
Still would like to get G76 threading done rather than G32 or the G92 cycle but attempts so far have failed.
It would help if I knew what I was doing I suppose Basically I am trying something, testing, getting errors, altering and repeating for 1000 times until it works

I am learning a bit though, managed to write some user defined properties such as the ones in blue in the pic below. They allow me to set tool change positions etc before posting the code.


BobCAD was much easier for me as it was more or less VB and there were manuals with syntax etc. I don't even know what language this is but it is not something I know

 

[Hood]

Got everything sorted with G76, one thing I was struggling with was the final cut depth was being output as 3 digits and according to my controls manual it needed to be a decimal. For example the manual said it should be output as R0.2 but the post processor was outputting R200.
Got talking to @eSCHEn and he showed me that is was Vars in the code that was affecting that value so I wrote a new var for that specific part and it worked perfectly. Then I looked in the Parameters manual of the control and it says it is in units of 10µm so I am now thinking the correct value should actually have been what it was

At least I learned a bit more about how the post processor works


Ok, a question for the Fusion users, do you know of a way to auto update the drawings/files from the cloud to my HDD?
I have been searching and there doesn't seem to be a way but you never know, so might as well ask.

 

[Hood]

Video showing a simple lathe part from start to finish using the operations template I made up.
I suppress operations that will not be used in the part such as internal operations and threading operations and then it is just a case of generating the toolpath.

 

[galooph]

You've certainly picked Fusion 360 up quickly, @Hood – impressive!