How to use the Voronoi Sketch Generator App

In this video we are going to cover a free app from the Autodesk App store. This app was created by an Autodesk employee for fun but he was nice enough to publish this way back in 2015. I think the app shows real promise, but there are some things we need to know going in.
You can download the app from the app store here : apps.autodesk.com/FUSION/en/D...

[@mastersmithgroup9225]

You are one of the best educators I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. Don't ever stop doing what you are doing now. We appreciate you and the concise way you teach

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Wow thank you for the kind words!

[@MrJdorrington]

Thanks. (Worth it just for reminding me about inverting selection). Your efforts are much appreciated. And kudos to the add-in developer, too.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

You're very welcome!

[@ZetecinsideMotorsport]

Brilliant demo, thanks for publishing this :D

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Glad you like it!

[@MartinJacobsonInstruments]

Nice stuff on this channel, Matt. I think what will really make this tool useful is if there is the ability to allow filling the region between two shapes. Right now AFAIK it can only pull in one shape and fill that one enclosed region. And while things like the volumetric lattice and topology optimization tools give other options for textures and deweighting, if I'm looking for voronoi appearances I have found that I often need it to fill in the area between two profiles.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Hey Martin! Yeah I agree it has promise. You could still use it to make a pretty unique Guitar ;) I know the 3d voronoi generator works off a solid body so you could create that transition region between shapes as a solid. I think really what we need is a generative design tool that grows this between shapes. Something like Blenders Geometry Nodes.

[@davidstonier-gibson5852]

Nice. Just watching I learned several things about Fusion I wasn't aware of. And nice choice of background music 🙂

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Glad to hear!

[@user-sp7oz1ct8p]

Very nicely done!

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Thanks for the visit

[@Technipode]

Thanks for the useful stuff. Invert selection didn't work for me but I had the same result selecting the outside area and changing the operation to "Intersection" in the extrude tool.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Glad it helped! This being a free tool doesn't see a lot of attention which is sad, it could be super userful!

[@ricardoalexanderfloresmond4401]

thank you very much for the knowledge shared

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

My pleasure

[@JohnSmith-ld1pw]

Nice video thanks, especially the warning about where the sketch was going to be created. Even with the warning I couldn't find the sketches until the third time because I activated it while I was in a component.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

yeah it likes to play with you a bit :)

[@patrickfreitas8458]

Awesome tutorial, i was having trouble with centralizing the voronoi on the position i wanted because everytime i moved it some of the shapes became just lines and i couldn't emboss it on the body. Solution I found was to generate the voronoi to the exact size you want and export it to DXF and then import back and align it, worked like a charm. Thank you!

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Nice work! and thanks for sharing!

[@alex.thedeadite]

You can invert your selection quickly by selecting what you don't want then box selecting it and what you want.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Great tip thanks for sharing! I am not sure if I am missing something in your method but if I select a profile, then box select it and the other stuff it stays in the selection. Are you saying for you it is then omitted from the selection?

[@aungmyat7242]

Thank You Very Much.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

You are welcome!

[@hellbilly_fpv6692]

Really loving these videos super helpful thank you! I recently modeled some fender flares for my RC crawler, and I’m trying to 3D print them but I need to figure out how to make the outter rim perfectly flat so it can sit on the print bed nicely. What function should I use? Thanks again !

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Awesome to hear! To flatten the outside there are a few things you can do. If the vertices are on the edge of the body you can use Flatten. This will average the height based on the selected vertices, or you can select a plane or offset plane. You can also use Scale if you have all the bottom verts selected. Just scale them in the Z direction. in your case i would probably use Flatten. Let me know if that doesn't work!

[@hellbilly_fpv6692]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign Thanks for responding! The problem is I’ve already converted to a body, and added hardware holes. Idealy I’d like to just cut into the body vertically and come toward the vehicle until the outter rim of the flare is cut flat

[@hellbilly_fpv6692]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign I did it! I was able to create a surface in the shape of a disc, move it inward where I wanted to cut the body, then I used Replace Face 🤟🏼🤟🏼🤟🏼

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Nice work and good problem solving!

[@oldmancolin]

Thanks for the tutorial! I find that lower cell counts fail to fill the space, even a simple square. Trying 9-15 cells in a 150mm square yields all the cells in one small area of the square or all to one side or corner.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Great tip!

[@3DNordic]

Hi! How do you add this pattern for example on a hollow tube ? Basically to make like a tube, with the voronoi pattern. I tried like 3 days and couldn't get it to work. Thanks!

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Hi Ali, so this seems to be pretty picky based on what shape vornoi you are using. With the curved elements it should work but I found that you have to rotate it inside the Emboss tool. The emboss tool has its own restrictions about shapes it will work with but the main idea is that if you know the diameter you can calculate the circumference and that is the width you want to use for the voronoi. Take a look at this dataset. a360.co/353Mo2l

[@thorstenoeltjen6618]

cool - first that i found this cheaper voronoi-creater than the pay per month version (as i am just a nerd who uses it just once or twice a year ...). Thanks for this explantaion - helps me with the first steps - BUT I would like to print a simple lamp (tube) - I think I will make a surface whose length corresponds to the circumference of the cylinder. The height should be identical, right? How do I create the Voronoi sketch so that the left and right edges merge after embossing/projecting the rectangle onto the cylinder and there is no straight cut? Or am I just thinking nice - but it needs to be created completely differently? I'm relatively clumsy with CAD thinking ... - Ich möchte mir gerne eine simple Lampe drucken (Röhre) - ich denke ich mache eine Fläche deren Länge dem Umfang des Zylinders entspricht. Die Höhe sollte identisch sein, oder? Wie erstelle ich den Voronoi-Sketch so, dass der linke und rechte Rand nach dem Prägen/Projizieren des Rechtecks auf den Zylinder ineinander übergehen und es keinen geraden Schnitt gibt? Oder denke ich nur nett - aber es muss komplett anders erstellt werden? Ich bin relativ unbeholfen mit dem CAD Denken ...

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

As long as the lamp is a true cylinder you should be able to emboss/wrap the voronoi sketch, but with the way a vornoi is generated you won't ever get the pattern on the left/right to match. You should make a rectangle sketch that is the border you need, but you might consider making it a little smaller. This means you will be left with a solid section that you would need to manually model the voronoi shape to finish off the feature. The 3d one would likely take care of this easier but as you said you have to pay for it and for a one or two time use it likely isn't worth it.

[@theosette8632]

Thanks a lot for that.I downloaded the app , But I can't find It to install it under Fusion 360 ... Any idea to solve it. Many thanks in advance

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Hey Theo, it generally will go where the other applications add ins are. If you are on a windows machine try something like this but replace YOUR NAME with whatever yours is on your machine for things like USERS. C:\Users\YOUR NAME\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins

[@robrimell9684]

I"m afraid this doesn't work at all for me and my iMac. When I downloaded Random Pattern Generator a few months ago, the installation was all completely automatic, but this hasn't happened with Voronoi. I'm wondering if Voronoi has been made so it will not work with the free version of Fusion360?

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Of that I don't know since I wasn't the author. My guess would be a windows vs mac thing. A few other comments on it not working seemed to all be on Mac as well. maybe some update to the API isn't supporting mac with this add-in. This might be a silly question but did you select Mac OS when you did the download? I think it defaults to windows. apps.autodesk.com/FUSION/en/Detail/Index?id=1006119760063675415&os=Mac&appLang=en

[@quetzacoatlx]

Thank you for the tutorial! On my computer there is no "publish to fusion 360", only "download SVG". Is there any work around?

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

hmm, I haven't seen that before. Are you using a Mac by chance?

[@quetzacoatlx]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign Yes

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

@@quetzacoatlx I don't use a mac but I assume that it is a mac vs pc issue unfortunately. I know the app was free and developed as a side project by one of the autodesk developers so I don't think it has much support. I wish I had an answer better than that. The SVG download and insert SVG should work even though less than ideal. It is probably still faster than manually sketching.

[@quetzacoatlx]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign Thank you for the reply. I am OK since the SVG works I just need to import it. I will try to email the developer.

[@timault8209]

This app has genuine value. But its lack of refinement (I hesitate to use the term "buggy" knowing how developers hate that word.) makes it a kludgy tool in its current iteration.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

100% agree. From what I understand it was developed by an Autodesk employee for themselves years ago and they decided to just put it online for free. There is a 3d voronoi generator that you have to pay for which i believe is more robust.

[@Tbs2018.]

Hi there, can you help me. When i click Voronoi Editor it doesn't do anything. Any thoughts?

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

are you using the free 2d one i used in the video? or are you using the paid 3d one? When you run the vornoi add in, the button should appear on your tool bar. is that happening?

[@Tbs2018.]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign im useing the free version. Yes it appears.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

@@Tbs2018. Can you try one of the other scripts or add-ins that are preloaded. There is a command sample add-in. My guess is that it might be a python version issue. I do know the app is a little glitchy(it is free). Sometimes I have had to stop and restart the add-in.

[@laurentscheid3785]

Hi, impossible to generate a Voronoï sketch because the button "Publish to Fusion 360" does not appear. How to do? Thanks for all your work. Sorry for my English. I'm in Belgium and it's translated in Google Lo

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Laurent, I haven't experienced that problem. I am running it on WIndows 10. I have noticed before that the "Download SVG" opens first followed by the publish to Fusion 360 option. This may seems silly but try resizing the window. You can also "Download SVG" and see if that works. Then from the Insert menu you can insert an svg into a sketch. extra step unfortunately. This script was developed for free by an Autodesk Employee and I don't know if there is ongoing support for say Windows 11 or anything else that might affect it. It does still work on my end.

[@laurentscheid3785]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign Hello, everything is blocked, I'm going to install the extension. I use Windows 10 Thank you Laurent

[@BGV2024]

great video but when i do the "Publish To Fusion 360" the Voronoi Sketch does not show within the sketch area but it's offset/partially outside of the sketch reference. Any idea why?

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

I am not sure. I have heard of others having issues like this. For me when its shifted its usually just rotated 180degrees. Can you move the entire sketch using Move/copy and point to point? My guess is that in the back end it is using the origin and coordinate system reference rather than the orientation of any selected faces.

[@BGV2024]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign thank you for the response. i noticed it is putting the voronoi sketch at the 0,0,0 axis corner even if the sketch in reference is not ... moving it around is possible but not as accurate as having it properly placed in the sketch

[@quasimongo410]

but what do I do if my face is so complex, that emboss does not work? any alternative solution? I tried selecting any individual profile created by the generator and split the face with it but it is very time consuming. unfortunately I couldn't find a multiselect for splitting faces

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Unfortunately you may have hit the limit of the emboss tool. There is a 3d voronoi generator in the app store but it isn't free. You may need to use that

[@quasimongo410]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign I another issue I ran into is that embroidering does not protrude to the edges. If you want to cut the face until the edge, you need to split face anyway . At least that's how it was for me. But my surface was ultracomplex

[@noisefekt]

I don't like how this works. I get better results from a web based generator that exports a jpeg/png and then I just sketch on top of it and make offsets which makes every cell to have exactly the same thickness borders. But yeah great idea, just needs more developing.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

True it isn't perfect :) I think there are big room for improvement but hey it is free :) There is a 3d voronoi generator that is for sale and i believe is a bit more robust than this one.

[@noisefekt]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign yeah good thing it's free! It can be used for some things for sure.. But I've found out that I actually enjoy making these in autocad and then import into inventor or fusion 360 :D

[@afrykanerPL]

Autodesk is trying to take some piece of cake from Rhino's grasshopper :) But this free version of voronoi work not good enough.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

There was a Fusion Dynamo add-in for awhile but its support was dropped. It had a similar workflow to what you see with Grasshopper. Dynamo is still available but not directly ported into Fusion 360 for some reason sadly. dynamobim.org/

[@afrykanerPL]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign Im new in Fusion 360, but I see two another voronois plug-ins for this soft. I didnt try how they work. One looks quite interesting "Voronoi Studio".

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

@@afrykanerPL To the best of my knowledge there is a free 2d voronoi generator and a paid version for the 3d one. There is a combination of the two in the "studio" but I don't think they are different.

[@bradnelson3595]

Wow. That generator is so buggy that it's useless.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

I was hopeful that it would get updates but it doesn't seem it has. The creator is/was an autodesk employee that just made it for themselves and put it online for free. I think the 3d voronoi generator has a bit more development into it but it isn't free.

[@bradnelson3595]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesignGot it. It's hit and miss. I did have some success. But it goes blank every time I try to increase the cell count. If I don't touch that, I can at lest get a result. But I did learn something from watching your fine video. I hope they can develop this a bit more. Thanks for the feedback.