Fusion Tutorial 0: The Fusion User Interface
Link to: CAD Main Page
Link to: Tutorial 1a (next)
Introduction
Autodesk Fusion is a useful CAD system, which is also to say that it can be very frustrating at times. This page summarizes some of the most important features of the user interface to help you learn to navigate through it.
As of this writing, there are only a few seats of Fusion in the Design Shop. You may need to hunt around for a computer with a working seat.
Loading Fusion
Double-click on the 
Fusion icon on the desktop. It takes a minute or so to load, and then it will display a dialog box like the one shown below.
Fusion projects are generally stores on "The Cloud" and so a collection of projects may accumulate in the Asylum account on your computer. The projects are listed in the first dialog box, along with buttons for "Open" and "New." If you are starting a new projects, click the "New" button.
Licenses around AA may be subject to change. It is important to backup your work to some local drive by using the "Export" feature that will be available later in the sequence.
If you wish to open an existing project, click on the "Open" button and the dialog box will give you the option to open a Cloud-based project or to navigate to a project saved on a local drive. Use the button at the bottom of the window to open a conventional file navigation box.
When you open a new design there are a few options, such as and assembly. This page only discusses the UI for part designs. The picture below shows all of the choices superimposed over an empty 3D graphic window, showing the toolbars.
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Tool Bars
Fusion doesn't use any standard Windows menu bars. There is a rather small custom menu bar with a few icons located in the upper left corner of the window. The most important ones are the "File" 
icon that opens an analog to the Windows "File" menu; and the "Save" 
icon the saves the project to the "Cloud." The "Save" function is also one of the menu items under the "File" menu.
Design tools are accessible with a tool bar visible along the top edge of the window. Descriptions of all of the toolbar items won't be done here. You can learn about the various tools in the tutorials that follow.
The toolbar for the "Design" workspace is shown above. It has two layers. The titles across the top of the toolbar function as Windows "Tabs" to switch between sets of available tools. Tool icons are grouped in the row below, with the most frequently used tools shown. The titles along the bottom edge of the toolbar open up menus that show the full collection of tools in a particular category.
History List
In a similar fashion to the "History" list with SolidWorks, Fusion provides a sequential rendering of all of the operations used to form a design. It is located along the bottom of the window. A sample from the electrical enclosure tutorial is shown below.
A bold bracket 
can be slid along the list to show the status of the design at each stage. You can open any operation to modify it by right-clicking on the icon in the list. A sample of the popup menu is shown below.
Components List
On the upper-left margin of the window the components comprising the design are listed. Different solid objects as well as sketches are different elements in the list. Right-click on an entry to open a popup menu to, e.g. select it for editing.
SolidWorks runs on PCs not Macs. You need to be handy with the standard three-button mouse on the PC. Further, you need a mouse in which the middle button is actually a wheel, not a button. This is shown below.
On the PC, the LEFT mouse button is used for selection.
The MIDDLE button (actually a wheel) is used to move the part rendering around in the graphical space. The wheel functions as BOTH a button and a track-wheel, so there is a lot you can do with it.
If you spin the wheel on the mouse, it causes the view to zoom in and out, centered on the location of the cursor.
If you click down on the wheel and drag the mouse, it rotates the part in the view.
An alternate toolbar can be found at the bottom edge of the window.
Click on one of these tools to access rotation, zoom, panning, etc. Selecting one of the tools changes the cursor to match the tool selected, and you can click and drag the mouse in the window to perform the operation. This is for people with laptops or one-button mice.
Tool Modes
When modeling a part in Fusion there are many different features that become active to perform the many different operations. These tend to be MODAL. This means that when one tool is active, it takes over the operation of the program so that the action is confined to the use of the tool.
Frequently you will find yourself trying to use some feature that doesn't seem to be working. Most likely it's because you are still within some active tool mode and you need to exit it before the application begins to cooperate again.
Here are a few methods:
- Hit the -ESC- button to back out of a mode and return to a higher level.
- You may have a sketch open and not know it. Fusion will display a button that says "Finish Sketch" in the upper right corner of the window.
Saving Files
The only thing the "Save" feature does is to save the project onto the "Cloud."
If you want to save the project to a local drive, you must use the "Export" feature from the "File" menu. This feature also allows you to save files in different formats.
You can "Export" individual sketches as DXF files. Right-click on the entry in the "Components" list and select the "Export" option from the popup menu that appears.
