Change your designs quickly with user parameters | Fusion 360 Tutorial - Parametric Modeling Basics

Need to make changes quickly? In this video we go through the basics of Parametric Modeling in Fusion 360 and how you can apply it to your designs. With just a little preparation and knowledge of how to user parameters work, making changes to your models is easy!
If you like this video and want more content like this, please like, comment, and subscribe!
#Fusion360 #ParametricModeling #Tutorial

[@falconlover5053]

I've been a hobbyist Fusion user for 2-3 years now, just for designing simple things for 3D printing, and I can't believe I've never tried parametric modelling, it's truly the power play to making better fusion models and saving time and effort long term! You've got me hooked, and now I'm addicted. I'm going to struggle attempt the Fusion Guitar build guide to ultimately become better and making even more awesome thing's in Fusion. Thank you for showing me the smarter side of modelling.

[@seanlennon5044]

Nice video, well explained with minimal guff and maximal useful content. Keep these coming.

[@jnrmrtn]

This looked like witchcraft to me at first. Then I understood it. So, there's no need to verify if you float or not. Great explanation on something I've struggled with. Thank you!

[@photelegy]

Nice video 😊 ❓ How to make parameters bound to individual components? E.g. a component with 3 defining parameters. And when I import it into an other file multiple times I want to adjust those 3 parameters for each "copy" of the component individually without loosing the link to the main component. (Because of when I want to add features or bodies to it.) I really hope there would be something like "properties" for a component to change those parameters.

[@Patrick-en2rv]

Great, Helpful, Understandable video! Thanks! 🏆

[@LeeRobertsMe]

Fantastic tutorial, who would have known Tom Cruise was into using F360 AND willing to post videos about it on KZbin...😅😊 ...subscribed...

[@austinshaner]

Clean shaven I look like Edward Norton :)

[@leosarsam]

Thank you for a very good tutorial. I was aware of parametric design but never actually used it in my designs. Just like Falcon Lover in the previous post, I use fusion 360 for designing 3D printed parts. A problem when printing accurately dimensioned parts using FDM method is that external and internal dimensions change when printed parts cool down and shrink. You end up with ill-fitting parts, holes that are too small or in the wrong place ...etc. My solution has, up to now been to scale the models up by some 0.5% in the slicer to compensate for shrinkage. That works in many cases but not always, scaling changes some geometry relationships, also amount of shrinkage is different depending on the dimensions of a feature. I now use parametric design and include scaling when dimensioning critical features. Works like a dream. What an amazingly capable platform Fusion 360 is.

[@leosarsam]

The cumulative effect of knowledge is in my view key. Happy I managed to contribute by adding my brick to the wall. Thank you.

[@EC-gy9pv]

Thank you so much, Austin! Followed your every step and now I have a clear understanding how to create this kind of design. Well done! ❤

[@PaulColeVFX]

how would you dynamically pattern this so you can use a list of hole sizes ( think socket sets with diffrent socket sizes in a list) to build the model to keep even spacing btwn diff holes and then change the list and have it stay built ( and label the holes to the matching dimension metric or imperial )

[@GeoffTV2]

Thanks for this excellent video. It's still helping people in 2024.

[@MaxGoddur]

While watching your video (really enjoyed it) was motivated to ask you a question about using a multiplier. Let's say you have a hinged box (yup I am a 3D printer hobbyist) could you just add a parametric multiplier into the into the parameters. Then you could take all dimensions of the hinged box and just say for example apply a, multiplier = 2 and increase that multiplier = 4. Would that work?

[@timothymusson5040]

Yes, just add a parameter ScaleFactor and multiply all other parameters by ScaleFactor. It might be best to scale things like that in the slicer though.

[@PlasterMouldings]

For some reason this doesnt ework for me, i have to add an additional - hole diamager..as shown in my formula here. Cant see what im doing differently? ( Border * 2 ) + ( Hole_diamater * NumberHolesHor ) + ( HoleSpacing * NumberHolesHor - HoleSpacing - Hole_diamater )

[@RoyalArthurio]

Your setup must be different by 1 hole diameter. This could happen if you constrain your "border" from the center of the first hole instead of from the edge like in the video. This difference times two is one hole diameter.

[@ToluFunnel]

I'm a bit confused with the formular

[@darkshadowsx5949]

parameters isn't an option under modify. are you using a paid version?

[@s6p6]

Austin Shaner, more like Awesome Shaner. Great videos! Learned more about patching from you than the rest of YT. Much appreciated!

[@austinshaner]

Lol when I used to answer phones at work, I would occasionally mumble my name and people misheard it as "awesome shaner". 😉

[@ShopTherapy623]

quick question. I want to sweep a sketch around another sketch (a rectangle). I want the size of that rectangle to be parametric. However when I change the size of the rectangle, the sweeping profile doesnt come with it. Hope that makes sense. Trying to figure it out

[@ShopTherapy623]

Really great video! I'm new-ish to Fusion360, and have been wanting to do my own variation of Gridfinity. This video helped a lot

[@swamihuman9395]

- Nice vid. Thx. - Quick question: 'Type': 'Faces' vs. 'Features': When/Why? - BTW, I typically use 'Features', because it's only 'Type' that support 'Compute Option: Optimized'. - So, I'm interested to get your thinking/insight. - TIA...

[@MoshOrDie]

I’m about to do some woodworking projects around my workshop, couple of cabinets and so. Started to learn fusion 360 as a hobby, but now i can link it to woodworking. I can digitally build my workshop cabinets, wich is really useful. I really want to build a cabinet with parametric modelling, so i could change the number of drawers and so…if i have to build another cabinet, i can easily modify the parameters instead of a whole new project. it’s still gonna be tricky, but your video helped a lot, thank you!

[@deejflat]

Wow that is really cool. I think I should duplicate this on my own. I’m only a month in on using fusion and having a ton of foundational fundamental problems.

[@Resoult-]

I really like these videos where you explaine these design approaches and ways to design something wery efficient. I mean mostly of specific content in this video where already in my portfolio, but strong video anyway. Thanks for your well and understandable designt videos.

[@talkingcprogramming6236]

Thanks for the video. I'm modelling portholes from a long established company that built the Titanic portholes in Liverpool. This is a great video, if you want to model several scaled models at once. Bring on the CAM for all the hole drilling. Keep up the great content!

[@MoodyKay79]

I am using fusion for a model as my masters thesis. Thanks to your videos I have to redo everything, because I realized how shitty I designed everything. But in the long run the parametric designs will save me a lot of time. Great tutorial, thanks!

[@anilyasasvi4197]

Thank you for the video...Is there any possibility to load all the user parameters to a xml file and run it through command line

[@samsara2024]

Nice video, how it works when you want a copy of the object in the same scene with different values?

[@objvst]

New to Fusion360, INCREDIBLE!

[@alexanderkartsonakis]

Kudos man! You are a natural when it comes to doing that kind of videos!

[@austinshaner]

Thanks for the convo that sparked this idea! I really appreciate your input on my channel!

[@L1MiTLeSS_7x]

Thanks for this video👍🏻, very good!! Ñ

[@cathyomalley2772]

Thanks mate this was a very helpful video.

[@illustratedlefty213]

I’ve been using fusion for a while now and use it at work and have tried parametric modeling before and make a right mess of it. This is clear and concise. Thanks for the tutorial.

[@MartinStoschMusic]

Great!!

[@blayson100]

Thanks, This is best yet fo my understanding

[@averelldupond1461]

Really great 👍 Thank you so much

[@XS400Seca]

Hi Austin, Excellent video! clear and to the point. From now on I will absolutely try to make any model parametric. I am too frustrated about broken models!

[@ned_mograph5957]

very helpful! Thanks so much!

[@orange_district]

Unfortunately this only works while the project remains in the cloud. Exporting it destroys the relationships between sketches and bodies which makes this feature useless.

[@austinshaner]

That is only the case if you export it to a filetype that doesn't support parameters (like STL, STEP, IGES etc). If you export it as a native Fusion 360 file type f3d or f3z, then those parameters remain in tact. You do not need the cloud, or even the internet to run f3d or f3z files. But yes, this makes it exclusive to F360 users. This is the same, however for Solidworks, Inventor, NX etc. Their parameters, design tables etc do not carry over to non-native file formats.

[@orange_district]

@@austinshaner I guess you are right. I cannot reproduce the issue I had once in a while.

[@austinshaner]

@Mario were you trying to import a f3d file into another fusion file? If so, the parameters remain inside the original file, and can't be edited within the assembly unless you break the link to the original file.

[@orange_district]

@@austinshaner no I imported it as a new project. But as I said, I cannot reproduce the issue anymore. Either it was a former bug by Fusion or the exported file was corrupt. I have no other explanation for that.

[@lukaszarts]

Sooo great tutorial! That what i wanted.

[@per-ingelarsson8169]

Great Video! Very well explained.

[@michaelbartmann7957]

Nice Video. Can you explain, why the pattern is not done inside the scetch?

[@DominusFeles]

If you pattern inside the sketch you can’t include the chamfers in the same pattern. A question of personal preference and what you want to accomplish with your model I’d say 🙂

[@seanburke997]

This is great, thank you

[@leapnlarry]

I have watched a ton of 360 videos and this one was done very well. Thanks Larry

[@RyanLeung-m8x]

8:03

[@steveh8724]

Very nice tutorial! I really like the short clear explanations with no skipped steps. I'm a new subscriber and will be going through your catalog as I try to come up to speed on Fusion 360 which I just bought a couple of days ago... Nit Picking: I had to grit my teeth to not say outloud: "Use (Internal_Spacing*(Rows-1)) instead of what you have. The way you wrote it relies on the order of operations (multiplication happens before subtraction) so it does, of course, work. But for those whose math skills are a little rusty, that may puzzle them a little. And I try to always use parentheses and don't rely on order of operations, both for total clarity and because you never know when there will be bugs in proper order of operations. Also, it seems more natural to me to think of Rows as being parallel to the x-axis and Columns parallel to the y-axis. I think when I model this exercise I'll use something like 'x_holes' and 'y_holes' to make clear the direction and entirely avoid the somewhat arbitrary assignment of rows vs. columns. [Good thing that so far I have nothing with an a-axis...]

[@qck57594]

Great explanation

[@PM.al.whatmough]

Excellent video!

[@Rockingoodman]

That was very cool

[@neilpike6758]

excellent

[@deonholt]

Excellent!

[@allenciesliga8673]

Very well done

[@bobsagget823]

Okay, but there is no parameters window? There is no "fx" button on the toolbar, not sure why you would not mention that it is not the default to have it there

[@austinshaner]

Everyone customizes their toolbars overtime, I probably forgot because I'm so used to it. However it's available in the drop down right below it. I just use it often enough that I pinned it at the top.

[@leosarsam]

you can add an item to the toolbar by going down the relevant menu, hover over the item you would like to add to the toolbar, click the three dots on the right and tick Pin to Toolbar.

[@steveh8724]

@@leosarsam Thanks! As a Fusion 360 noob, it's little tips like this that make reading the comments a worthwhile exercise!

[@Raven-Creations]

Despite you saying to think like an engineer, you're clearly not an engineer. An engineer wouldn't have had internal spacing or external spacing. A machinist is only interested in where the centres of the holes are. They only want the offset from the edge to the centre of the first hole, and the spacing between hole centres. They will use edge detection to find the stock's edge, then measure from that point to the centre of the first hole, and then use the hole spacing to offset to the next. This also makes the calculations easier: Shell_Y = 2 * Edge_Distance + Hole_Spacing * (Rows - 1). This is why patterns are specified in terms of the distance between centres, so your pattern spacing would just be Hole_Spacing. For design purposes, you might want to define Edge_Distance = External_Spacing + Hole_Diameter / 2, but more likely you'd define it in terms of the hole diameter, e.g. Hole_Diameter * 1.5, so the margin is always a hole diameter, whatever the size of hole, guaranteeing a well-proportioned piece. You don't need parentheses around things multiplied together. It's called operator precedence, and you should have learned it in basic algebra at elementary school (I was 8 when our school first taught algebra). You don't say (2*a) + (3*b), you say 2*a + 3*b. But if you wanted three lots of a + b, you'd say 3 * (a + b) because + and - apply after multiplication and division. You can of course use extra parentheses, but unnecessary parentheses usually make the expression harder to read. Why are you defining the pieces using dimensions first, and then converting them? The whole point of parametric modelling is that you have conceived the model parametrically. The dimensions are the parameters - from the start. If you find yourself converting dimensions to parameters, you've not thought about your model parametrically, and you're liable to introduce errors because of it. If you'd patterned the holes as a feature instead of a face, your chamfering would automatically have repeated, without having to go back in the timeline to add in the chamfer. All that being said, I appreciate anyone taking the effort to introduce people to the benefits of parametric modelling. It forces you to think clearly, and logically about the design, and helps avoid many of the pitfalls of ad hoc modelling, where they break and/or look ugly as soon as you try to change anything. It also means you're considering the possibility of your model being flexible from the start.