Fusion Tutorial 1a: Design of a 3D Printed Electronic Box

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Introduction

Autodesk Fusion is a popular and widely-used CAD application, formerly known as Fusion360. Like SolidWorks, it is closed-source and available by subscription. A free version is available.

This tutorial is an analog to the SolidWorks series that begins with SW Tut 1a. We will design an electronic box (E-Box) following the sequence there as closely as possible. It assumes no previous experience with CAD, though you may want to review another page that discusses the tools for navigating the design space.

To get started, please visit the Fusion download site if you haven't already done so. You will be taken to a page that allows you to choose between a commercial and a noncommercial (personal-use) version of the application.

For this tutorial we use the noncommercial version that is available for free so long as the user agrees not to earn more than $1000 in its use. If revenue exceeds this limit, then users must subscribe to the commercial version.

Open a New Sketch

Like most CAD applications, Fusion allows you to design 3D components by first making a 2D sketch on a plane and then extruding profiles from the sketch into the third dimension. Accordingly, the first step is to create a new sketch.

After downloading and registering with Autodesk, open the Fusion application. First you will be shown a window that provides links to recent projects. If this is you first use of the program, there won't be any recent options.

Select the pull-down menu that says "New" and select "Design."

This will open a blank design page within the "Design" workspace. Across the top of the screen you will find a toolbar with several sections labeled "Create" "Modify" "Assemble" and so on. The first step is to create a new sketch. Hit the () sketch icon at the leftmost end of the tool-bar. Alternatively you can pull down the "Create" menu and select "Sketch" from there.

Notice that when you hover the cursor over the icon for a tool and description window pops up. Some are more wordy than others.

When you select this tool, the application opens window that allows you to select a plane on which to sketch. With nothing in the new design, the choices are the three cardinal planes: X-Y, X-Z, and Y-Z. The planes aren't labeled, so you may need to think a little bit about where to click. Select X-Y.