Designing a Lasercut Laptop Stand with Fusion 360

Fusion 360 Evangelist, Taylor Stein (@taylor_stein), takes you through the complete workflow of designing an lasercut laptop stand. In this un-edited video, you'll get a first-hand look at handling common mistakes we all make from time to time in Fusion 360!
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[@jimcatan703]

Thank you for such a clean, useful tutorial. no BS, no gimmicks; just useful information.

[@alishanmao]

just starting with laser cutting and looking for tutorials and thank you, you have the best, simplest and easy to follow tutorial that teaches not just how to make this but the most important concepts and tricks that we can use to create many more items. Thank you so much

[@ChrisSchraders]

This is without doubt one of the best F360 videos I've seen. Nice work Taylor! So many good tips and tricks. I haven't use Fusion for a while so I didn't know about user-defined parameters, but they look super useful. Thanks again!

[@magnusandersson2929]

having taught myself fusion 360, this is a very fresh look at how designing can be done, and makes my design method look primitive. Excellent video, love your voice and presentation style.

[@adskFusion]

You can learn so much watching someone else make something in your favorite CAD! Make sure to subscribe and keep learning!

[@richardnewell506]

I have taught myself Fusion 360 as well and I've been doing lots of tut's and getting some good learning in the bank. what I'd like to know is if I can spit these components out so I can cut them on my CNC? thanks again, Richard.

[@Darkvictorious]

amazing, I'm impressed. You make everything so fast and easy.

[@mrAmd54321]

Great tutorial. Covers so much in a short space of time. Thanks and subbed!

[@ronald44181000]

This video seriously highlights the abilities of Fusion 360. That being said, what we all need now for those of us beginning our first drawings in the program is a video of all of the nomenclature that you just used in the creation of this Laptop Stand. I will probably spend as much time creating a basic drawing as you've spent describing your actions.

[@marleyman101]

What a brilliant tutorial simple, but covering all the relevant items and even the setup for laser cutting.

[@Markevans36301]

This took me hours to watch working along with you. I could have done it in 20 min. in Sketchup but it would not have been parametric. I really appreciate the videos.

[@pendientedeq]

Hey, this is great! your videos have been really helpful, thanks a million

[@Iskelderon]

Thank you! This is probably the best primer on the topic I've seen so far. Most others always make things more complicated than necessary.

[@torhakh]

Absolutely brilliant. Thought this process would be a real hassle. You nailed it in 20 minutes with a sprinkle of F360 top tips, couldn't really ask for anything better.

[@josephlaverty4303]

Thank you for including shots of the product produced from the model!

[@mihailazar2487]

where ?

[@josephlaverty4303]

@@mihailazar2487 in the last few seconds of the video

[@MannheimBR]

What a terrific tutorial! Thanks so much for your clear descriptions. The tip about setting constraints is a very good one and something that really helps when thinking about the design process. I'm still a little unclear about the "color change" on the lines when the feature is constrained, but I will research this and figure it out. Looking forward to seeing more of your instructionals!

[@philippe5394]

For me, it's an excellent tutorial that I've just reviewed. This time I tried to well assimilate the functions used. I understood the method , which allowed me to detect a bug at 6'50" of the video. The top edge of the top is referenced at 12mm from the top edge of the leg. Later a fillet is applied on this same edge. As this little edge is replaced by a fillet, this changes the position of the top. I modified the sketch of the top, and it works now just fine even when i modify the fillets.

[@calvin4374]

I enjoy the flat pack design stuff. I am new to making parts that interlock. I sometimes I forget to use parametric until the part is fully modeled. I like that that you include the parametric as a critical step in the videos. Also, the tips and tricks you prove. Great videos!

[@BrianDressel]

I wish all tutorials were this good and straightforward with no extra noise. This taught more about Fusion 360 than some whole series that I've watched.

[@cnckitsplus1]

Nice Job. Adjusting the material thickness is very helpful especially for plexiglass. It typically runs less than .25 and the entire drawing would have to be updated. This workflow is awesome! Thanks

[@DavidJohnk]

Awesome video, getting me up to speed on Fusion 360 quickly. Great explanation of parametric drawing and good practices. I'm trying to get ready for a Shaper Origin I ordered, which should arrive sometime beginning September!!

[@Snagglepuss1952]

I too am self taught and have picked up a few good tips, very clear, thanks

[@britzwickit]

Really great tutorial, you showed me everything I wanted to learn and some more!

[@adskFusion]

Love to hear that!

[@jbgeller]

What a phenomenal tutorial. I had a little bit of trouble since the interface has changed between when this was created and now, but it's still a very clear, concise, thorough guide that holds up extremely well.

[@cbyrd4423]

Great Video ! Learned something new again ! Thanks Chris

[@best49erfan]

I just started learning F360. Awesome video. I really like this software. It is so easy to make a sketch and make it into a real 3d object and then do the CAM!

[@sachinjoshi5509]

Great work! my confidence increased by working on u r video

[@jeffkeen6943]

You do the best tutorials Taylor - and no mistakes on this one... :-)

[@macsurfer1]

Hi Taylor Great Tutorial. I am only a beginner, so good to see your thought processes and how easy it is to create some fairly complicated joints. (Well for me anyway). Please keep your informative videos coming! Big Thumbs UP!

[@patrickmaartense7772]

great workflow, gave me a fresh look. great piece of work.

[@natedj30]

I think I learned more in this 20 minutes than I did in 4 years of high school

[@BUILDwithMAULIK]

And it’s free

[@billyguildford]

Great tutorial, thank you very much!

[@farfadet46]

Big thanks for this video !

[@MeneerSouabi]

I use Inventor for design, and Fution 360 for CAM, but after this tutorial, my mind have changed. good work!!!

[@storyboarddave5860]

Lots of great info. Thanks

[@aftereight991]

This tutorial is awsome show me so much usefull tipp about the simple sketching:)

[@jonathanconway7256]

After using F360 for two years I learned so much. Thank you

[@dorandan100]

Thanks for your excellent work on this vid. As a beginner I had to repeat it an embarrassing number of times to get my model to match. Problems included sketch colors not activated by default in my install (buried in preferences), so they wouldn't turn black when fully constrained. Dimensioning existing features or changing existing dimensions is often problematic, in that the dimension line I seek is often not selectable for reasons I'm still trying to decipher. One design element I might suggest changing is the selection of lines & angles you chose to fully constrain your initial leg sketch. I made all of those changeable parameters in my design, but found changing the tilt degree (fixed 22 degrees in your design) really messed up the design due to the fixed back height (155 mm?) in your initial constrained sketch. If you constrained the leg sketch front lip dimensions and left the back height as the unfixed, moveable dimension, lowering the tilt angle would produce a more consistent look as it moved. Thanks again for the fine tutorial. Dan D.

[@levelupwithlouie]

Great tutorial. This tutorial is convincing me to use Fusion over Blender. Thank you for measuring this quantum state.

[@JustinEltoft]

WOW. Just wow. What a great tutorial.

[@CoolshrimpModz]

Thank! Learned a bunch from this video.

[@hamzaqadoumi955]

Hi Taylor! Great video. Not just this one, but all of them! Quick questions. How do you do about the clearance? Did you add any or was the result okay after production?

[@brucehamren9089]

This was an excellent tutorial!

[@RyanScottForReal]

So useful thanks.

[@GroovBird]

Excellent video for what I'm trying to accomplish. Question though: do I need to remake those DXF sketches when the parameters change?

[@kevinroskam9090]

Great video Taylor! Keep them coming. Can this be converted to a CNC Machine rather than a Laser Cutter?

[@richardsugarsmith]

This is awesome thanks, would really love it if you could update it sometime to the new Fusion layout to show my students.

[@markmccall9027]

I know this is old, but it is gold. I'm early on my Fusion journey and embarrassed to say that I've been relying on cut and paste, and good old drag-and-drop to try and design all the symmetry.

[@PawelAjs]

Nice project :) thanks for explaining

[@Lasercuttinglk]

Amazing Tutorial :D thankyou

[@_cytosine]

Great Tutorial! It seems like a good first project for beginners.

[@adskFusion]

Thanks! We agree!

[@MrEngineer_]

I am going to do it with rectangular hole in legs so that i can grab it and take it around my room.... your tutorials are engaging to watch...helped a lot...thanks!!

[@GESTEVESMARTINS]

Hello . Great job ! I would take out a doubt , how do I generate a DXF scaled to a prototype before cutting the final piece ? tks

[@tigertechcomua]

Awesome video tut! Is there a way to make some nest operation like in RhinoNest, when you can get all your parts placed over sheets of plywood, so you dont't have to spent some more time placing them by your hands?

[@TinyBasementWorkshop]

Hey, thanks for your tutorial! That helped a LOT! One more thing, that I could use some help with: how do you cut out all pieces in one pass on the cnc? When I want to set up the CAM process, fusion always wants to create the "assembled" laptop stand out of one solid piece - just the way it is shown in the CAD part. Did I make my problem clear :D ??

[@SkyfishArt]

Very nice and easy to follow tutorial. I completed it without problems. Although I don't understand what the projection was for and what it did, and it left some strange patterns in my version, but they don't show up in the final sketches to be lazered so I guess i'm ok.

[@adskFusion]

+Christina Lewis Hi Christina, the Projection allows you to reference geometry that isn't in the plane you're sketching on. Hope that clears it up!

[@RobDuarte]

Excellent! One of the best Fusion 360 tutorials I've seen. I like how you use components to structure things from the start (like in your CNC router stool video). Lots of good tips in here. I didn't know about interference checking. I also haven't been using Project Intersection. I wonder if it isn't worth mentioning that the color coding of fully constrained lines is an option that has to be turned on explicitly (or has it finally become the default?). Also - although it's outside the scope of this tutorial - it's worth your viewers noting that Adobe Illustrator (a common next step) requires you to explicitly set the scale of the DXF when importing. eg: 1 unit = 1 mm

[@adskFusion]

+Rob Duarte Thanks, Rob! All excellent points! We'll add some of these to the video description

[@andrewrobb633]

Excellent. More tutorials like this please.

[@samanthabetts3595]

Solid video. Demonstrates good modeling practices at a good tempo. Thanks.

[@airman6937]

I love the features in fusion360 but the company I intern for, and my school use solid works. And I’ve grown so fond of solid works that it’s all natural at this point.

[@adskFusion]

This might be the case today, but that'll change as Fusion adoption accelerates. I left school having learned ProE, but never used it in industry.

[@christophervargasschebesta3752]

Hello very nice proyect!, can you tell how i can put a joint with the exterior distance of lenght like a parameter? I see that the distance you use is the interior distance like lenght

[@colemanbecker1392]

Is there a way to design for dovetails in a project?

[@maxpenfold8699]

Great Video

[@nowayandnohowx]

Great tutorial, but tell me what the "activate" action does, what's the difference between activated and inactivated?

[@NerdMusician]

Amazing! I was using Inkscape for drawing my enclosures for my MIDI controllers. I'm definitely going to Fusion 360. Thanks for the great explanation!

[@scientist100]

For laser cutting, I know some people don't mind it but the cutout where you subtract from a part is a useful resource to save time, however, during assembly, they don't usually fit tight, there is a kerf on the laser itself and the models won't fit tight to hold themselves together. Like I said, a lot of people won't mind using glue but in my future designs, I will add at least 0.005" overlap for the laser cutting.

[@trungcoder]

My laser fits tight, I do not need to add overlap. Please check the focal focus to ensure the light is smallest.

[@scientist100]

@@trungcoder it depends on wood but I measured this value; that's how much it burns off the material once cut. To get your number; just do square cut with defined target value and then measure the actual value and divide that by 2 to get the half for each laser cut.

[@tonylorentzen]

What would your approach be to get a good snug fit with laser cut materials like wood since the cutters take away a bit of material - typically between 0.1mm to 0.25mm. I know you mention wood glue, but what if that's not an option. Would there be an easy way to make small 2-3mm long and 0.2mm tall 2-point arcs where the parts are touching, maybe?

[@jackflash6377]

Great video for a newbie such as myself. Question.. Why not use the CAM of Fusion360 to generate the G-code to send to the laser?

[@RoseKindred]

Is there any compensation needed to allow for the kerf created by the laser to ensure the stand is secure and stable?

[@123kkambiz]

Excellent and awesome

[@lounge_squirrel]

As always a really well presented video from Taylor with useful insights into Fusion best practices. I did not realise that planes could be resized or that there was a function to check for clashes (interference checking) both of which were really useful tips.Also until now, I did not see the benefit of managing your model through activating individual components but can definitely see the reasons for it....particularly on more complex models. It just takes a different mindset to remember to activate each component as and when. Can you give a brief overview of Project Intersection's use versus Project? I have just been using Project in all use cases and had a really quick play just then in Fusion to see the difference but think I am doing something wrong as it didn't generate anything for me... One thing I was wondering was whether you would see the benefit of releasing/sharing your model files with each tutorial as a link in the description so that inquisitive minds can explore them in more detail. In this case, I know it would benefit me to see how the timelines are captured against each component. I think that this would also be a good suggestion for any other Fusion 360 tutorials.

[@mickhourigan1180]

Got a question Taylor, at around the 13:45 mark, where you are creating the braces, I'm following your steps for learning, and for some reason I can't seem to get the overlap parts to select for extrusion. Not sure what I'm doing/have done wrong. Any tricky parts here you make look easy I should know about?

[@ymm424]

would you have the final templates/layers/slices available to share? Again, I don't have Fusion

[@wilburgoltermann3239]

I tried using the doggone filet F360 add in to prepare this project for cutting on a CNC. I could not get the add in to work when selecting an entire body, but was finally able to get it to work when selecting vertical inside edges singly. Any ideas why this is so?

[@axelmansson5281]

Hey, great video! covers many topics. I do have a problem with the 8 mm on each side. i would want them to always be similar. can you apply equal constrain to dimensions, use mirror or how would you solve it?

[@EricBrennan]

Two very easy ways. First way: Add the first dimension. Then add an equal constraint to what would be the 8mm line on the opposite side. Second: Add the first dimension. Then start adding the second dimension, but instead of typing the "8mm" again, just click the first dimension and hit enter.

[@reedwindmiller7490]

I'm wondering is there a way to offset the legs from a fixed center point? That way when you change legwidth both move an equal distance from that fixed center point.

[@SuyePhoto]

Do you not have to worry about the kerf for the connecting parts?

[@erikhuaynateg9681]

What king of wood have you used? how do you get nominal dimensions and don't have problems with the tolerances of the laser cut machine?

[@hbrow05]

G'day mate, I am pretty new to all this, I was wondering if you could help me out? I have made an odd geometric design that I want to cut out on the CNC but my problem is I dont know how to nest all the faces onto one plane? I have tried a nesting script but it comes up with errors. I also thought of just converting it to a drawing and then recreating the face shapes in the CNC program but when I convert it to a drawing all the measurements are off because of the whole perspective thing... Any advice??

[@s541263]

How to place these components in one plane for CAM development? Automatically or manual. I mean i'd like to put them down in one plywood sheet stock, choose tools, make toolpath etc

[@mmolinai]

Hi! Thank you for the video! very useful! My only problem is that I have 60 target bodies and 1 tool body when combine/cut the slats. Is there a way to select more than 1 target body?

[@adskFusion]

Yeah, that is something we've heard before (see: forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-ideastation/select-more-than-one-target-body-combine-cut/idi-p/6552582). I don't know why --or if-- it can be implemented. Maybe a selection set will help?

[@androjesus]

Is there a way to un-mirror and keep the mirrored component?, I want to start a design like this one but after all the similar features are added I want for example add a fan on one side and electrical components on the other side, so both components will become different, how can I do this?. Thank you in advance, I am only 3 days using a CAD Software.

[@thomasbr83]

You explaining is very good but is there also the same explanation for the current version of fusion?

[@RatherFlyRC]

Great video.... how do u install a laser cutting machine on fusion 360? Thank you

[@Deitchtam]

I'm only able to export a .dxf from the sketch itself. How are you exporting the sides after the combine operation to cut on a laser cutter?

[@mariolopez1023]

One of the Best tutorial , thank you so much for your help

[@iaincampbell4422]

As a 3D printing aficionado I was a little surprised you didn't offset adjoining faces for tolerance figure perhaps laser cut wood is more forgiving? Anyways nice workflow enjoyed that (if anyone is tempted to do similar with an FDM printer rather than laser cutting I'd try offseting the adjoining sdgss by circa 0.1mm each side (to create about 0.2mm tolerance) but will depend upon how dialed in your printer is.

[@om3981]

Hey Titans Great video We are using a Mac and SketchUp creating dxf files and manually exporting and assigning tools to the file to be. Cut on a Biesse Robert B CNC I wonder if this software may how be able to make this process more strait forward. Any advise would be great Thanks

[@adskFusion]

We're a little biased, but either way I would recommend you give it a whirl. Free trials & easy to install.

[@AMKpolka5]

Great Tutorial from a drawing to a finished laser cut product !

[@ticmaticic]

Nice sketching ! One question tho,what does Activate on 4:15 does ? I didn't fully understand it.

[@DrSkunk]

How would you compensate for the laser kerf?

[@ivangutowski]

Hello, Thank you so much for making this video and going through your design steps. It is so interesting seeing you work out the rough design first and then setting the correct dimensions afterwards. I have a basic laser cutter and use some really simple 2d software, this means in my head I need to visualize and measure how each part fits together, taking into account material thickness and how each section lines up. I was soooo looking for software like this that allows me to design thing in 3 dimensions and then go from there. Thank you ! Just need to do some tests and get it to export to a file that my system recognises

[@j4nch]

I'm curious, how do you manage kerf? Because on some joint both pieces are subject to kerf, and sometime only one of the two pieces(when the other is perpendicular and has its thickness that doesn't change).

[@Keitsch77]

Awesome! Thank you so much for this!

[@adskFusion]

Spread the good word!

[@EdwinFairchild]

what is a good free or open source piece of software to use for laser cut?

[@mattw8155]

I think this is the best video I've seen for a basic getting started with Fusion 360. Thanks.

[@louier9033]

Thanks

[@stoikgramadanski7401]

This video is crasy goood !!!!!

[@RichM1967]

I want to lay all the parts out on one flat plane so that I can arrange and cut them all at the same time. I've followed some tutorials and they don't seem to work for this design. How do we use the built in CAM functions so I can generate GCode with Fusion360? Any help here?

[@FridayNightRacer]

The waterjet/laser/plasma CAM operation in Fusion can take into account the laser kerf.

[@lertchaisornchalerm2305]

thanks

[@foliwe]

nice tutorial. i wish to know how was it possible for the top to inherit the legwidth parameters. When you changed the legwidth , the top also adjust . i was expecting only the legwidth distance to change and not the top.

[@Bubblegoose]

At around 7:00 he sets the edges of the top to be 8mm from the outside face of the legs. So when the distance between the legs changes, the top still stays 8mm from the outside face.