Fusion 360 Form Mastery - Part 6 - Connecting a Form Body to a Mesh, Sketch or Surface

[@kajpaget3180]

Excellent as usual ❤ it is a great honour to see and listen to these videos. I can now demonstrate my mind pictures onto my little 3-D printer. It’s really fantastic Fusion 360 education here.Thank you

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Wonderful! Thanks for the kind words!

[@donotcopydobetter1023]

wow what a deep dive into getting a Mesh onto a Surface shape. Thanks again a lot for sharing

[@sadhucat4476]

So many creative possibilities with these tools!

[@johannescremer5862]

At first I was a little disappointed, but then I worked on the shape further and achieved an acceptable result by deleting and scaling edges.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Johannes, one thing I didn't cover in this video that I do later on here (kzbin.info/www/bejne/h4DcnaGmqKxmh8U) is the use of Tolerance. So I tend to avoid using tolerance because it adds a lot of T-points to the body and generally makes the modeling workflow much harder. Depending on your goal it might be just the trick.

[@danballarin]

I'm a newbie regarding the Form functions, so I really appreciate your tutorials. Question though, why not Loft the 2 shapes together?

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Hi Danballarin. the topic of this specific video wasn't loft, but the main reason in this case is that the form body creation tool using loft is a bit different than it is in the Surface tools. You need 2 sketch profiles (minimum) and as far as I know Fusion does not let you select a form body edge as one of those profiles. So you can attach a form body to a sketch, to a mesh or the edge of a surface. It would be great if they would let you loft to a form edge though! Hopefully that helps, if not please let me know and I will try to expand.

[@danballarin]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign Thank you for the reply, I think I understand! I have really enjoyed this series so far, you are a great teacher.

[@leronin5755]

This is a really useful tutorial man. Thanks a lot

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Thanks LeRonin! I did an update on the Match tool because they added associativity to it. which means you can link it to a sketch or body and it will update the form with it. There were 2 recent videos on that tool looking at how to use it.

[@leronin5755]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign oh great! Thank you man. I will be looking a bunch of your videos to really get to know more about fusion so I can start my own designs. Your content is really really useful in deed 😁

[@richardjoochchang6449]

if the forms and the surfaces never exactly match, does it create problems when you try to turn the "matched" result into solids or thin walls? Or should designs created by forms just never match with sketched designs? Sorry if this is answered in later videos/other series, I'm crawling through your videos one by one on my spare time, I really appreciate the detail in your videos!

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Great question Richard! I did an update after this video on Associative Match. In the Match tool when using a surface or solid face edge you can turn on tolerance and Fusion will add T points to meet your tolerance desired. Similar to surfaces if you stitch them together you have a tolerance slider where it will "heal" a gap. I don't like this method and generally I find aligning a form to a surface exactly is very difficult! What I would generally say is rather than perfectly matching a surface edge(even if that is what you do) I would plan to loft between an existing surface and a form body converted to a surface IF things dont work out. Some shapes/instances are easier than others. If you are using a planar surface edge for example vs something extruded from a spline(very tough).

[@richardjoochchang6449]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign thank you for taking the time to answer!

[@markg1531]

Very useful. How about creating a loft between the bottom edge of the cylinder and the top edge of the “slot” body?

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

you can certainly do that after you finish the form. Connecting them as a form gives you control to still change the top shape, but if that is fixed and not to change then a surface loft is good too.

[@markg1531]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign Thanks!

[@vernonleeper]

Great video and thanks for sharing. I’m learning more and more about the surface tools although, I get to spend as much time as I would like to. This is part 6 and it’s 7 months old. Where can I find part 1 and start from there?

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Thanks for watching! The Mastery series is on a playlist you can find here kzbin.info/aero/PLBDfGh8A8kXWCgB3Q5DYiCDSCxCqw8tJ7 There are some videos in the series that are practice of tips and techniques while most are videos on individual tools or workflows.

[@vernonleeper]

Awesome, thanks much appreciated

[@Polyphonic-Ringtone]

Now that's a catchy jingle

[@onecarwood]

I know this is old but still a great series. I do have a question about if we added points to the straight line in the sketch to match the division in the form shape would that help to match?

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Thanks. yeah this series started a bit ago. I have a more condensed version on www.LearnEverythingAboutDesign.com As for your question, the sketch points don't really affect it. It is all tolerance based. So if you are using Match and trying to match an arc vs a complex spline it will have to adjust the number of divisions. When you use the tolerance it adds Tpoints at the edges which makes future changes tricky. My suggestion if you are trying to attach to a surface is to use Match early on, keep modeling, and when you think you are done use it again with the tolerance value. For using Pull to a mesh, that really just pulls the verts to the reference mesh. The more triangles on a mesh or rather the smoother the mesh generally the better the results but with everything there is a limit. If you use a ton of sub divisions on a form you are likely to get a less smooth result than if you have the least number you can get away with for your shape.

[@onecarwood]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesignwow thanks for replying to such an old video! What I’m trying to do and can’t seem to find a good example of is making a fan duct for a 3d printer. The kind with two tunnels or ducts coming off the fan. I think this tutorial get me mostly there if I just practice enough. Thanks again great videos.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

@@onecarwood I have a video designing one of those kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z4fWZZV7a9h4Z8k I used surfacing because that is what the user asked about doing but hopefully it helps.

[@onecarwood]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign just what I was looking for. Thank you!

[@seanflemming6288]

im having trouble combining my form copies. i want to stack 3 heads but they fall apart when trying to move them in my slicer. also some parts of the form and inside the others

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Hey Sean, not sure I follow exactly but you can send me an email with the file and im happy to take a look. [e-mail]

[@FinnBorgert]

I have made a frame of a ship, where each rib and the keel Are individual Bodies, but i Cannot seem to succeed in making the hull of the ship, what funktion Are im missing here, :)

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Do you mean with forms you can't? I did a video on a boat hull with forms. Depending on your intent though you may need more control with each rib/keel and use something like loft. kzbin.info/www/bejne/f3rXgIeOqNqrqNk Forms is great but boat hulls being produced often will be driven more by equations.

[@FinnBorgert]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign i have the frame of the hull of the ship, & each rib/frame of the hull is based upon a inserted dwf file from AutoCAD, so to make a sheet or surface or solid body, go from one frame/rib to another and "attach" to the next frame/rib.

[@FinnBorgert]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign hi some of it succeeded, tanks you wery much for the fast reply, life saver

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

@@FinnBorgert Glad you are making progress! In general the forms will give you more freedom for making changes. So you can use a freeform loft to start the shape, just know that it will not be exact. Since you already have the "bones" built, i would suggest using the surface tools and make a surface loft. I have a surfacing playlist going over some basics. kzbin.info/aero/PLBDfGh8A8kXV_uUJ5KemGgbYOHl69fIty What you would do is take each of your inserted cross sections and loft from them. You will need to do some sections individually depending on transitions, but start by trying it all and see what works and what doesn't. You might find that you need to need to make a lot of individual areas depending on your specific hull design.

[@FinnBorgert]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign i have tried loft from solid. I made the bones 0.1mm thick to make the loft better curved. But now i have some "shells" i Cannot add thickness to

[@kevinnolet4788]

I'm so lost! My form seems fine but wont convert. Error message says invalid form, delete it from the browser or T-spline error, fix the error but no clue what the error is and no help from the utilities tab. please help, Thanks

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

if you saved it when that happened you can send it to me. [e-mail] and ill take a look. Its hare for me to say whats going on without seeing it.

[@kevinnolet4788]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign Thanks so much for giving me a direction.