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

In this video we will look at the pros and cons of connecting a form body to a mesh body, a sketch and a surface extrude. Learn which one is best for most applications and how to control them.

[@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!

[@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!

[@Jack-vl3mu]

Now that's a catchy jingle

[@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 😁

[@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.

[@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

[@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!

[@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!

[@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]

[@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.