Power of Top-Down Design with Fusion 360

[@JamesMooreSeattle]

This would have been much more useful if you had started by creating that initial drawing - how do you set up all those functions you talked about? (Or did I just miss a video?)

[@brenttanner9889]

If you click on the Modify Tab you will see a cursive "Fx" that says "Change Parameters" towards the bottom of the drop down. Click on that and it opens a dialog where you can pre-establish your desired parameters. For instance if you want to pre-define the Height Width and Depth of an object you are designing you will click the + (Plus) button of the dialogue where it says "User Parameters". Then in the dialogue box that opens you will type "HEIGHT", select your desired unit in the drop down, then enter the height you want in the "Expression" field. It will then tell you the resultant value in the "Value" field. And if you need to leave a comment for later reference you can do that in the "Comment" field. Try this; Add the following parameters as I mentioned above; Name: HEIGHT Unit: in Expression: 2 Name: WIDTH Unit: in Expression: 4 Name: DEPTH Unit: in Expression: WIDTH*2 [Notice that the Value field will now display 8.00] Now that you have those 3 User Parameters lets play with it a little. Click ok on the Parameters dialogue and open a sketch. Create a simple rectangle and in the dimension dialogues type in HEIGHT and WIDTH in the proper dialogue boxes. [Notice that you can just type the first letter and it already pulls up the dimension, then hit enter. Keep this in mind when you are deciding how to name your dimensions on bigger design projects so you can find the right dimension with just a few key presses.] Now close your sketch. Select Extrude Command and type DEPTH into the distance field (be sure to erase the "in" units in the field or it won't let you press ok). Then press OK and the parameters create the box you pre-defined. Now you can go back to the Modify tab and select "Change Parameters" again and change the values of any of the parameters and your widget will adjust to meet those parameters. If you are creating a product line with many different versions of the same base product you can create your base design and save that one as a template (there is no template option that I am aware of, I just mean label it something like "widget_template" in the file name) with all the parameters in it. Then when you go to design the other versions you simply Save As "your new version name here"so you have a whole new version of the original widget with all of the parameters you established. Then you can just go to the "Change Parameters" dialogue and alter those numbers to get the new version instead of having to rebuild an entirely new model with different dimensions. Save yourself hours of work! Now you will notice with the way I did it you are probably not seeing the "fx" in the sketch like he has in this video. That's because we only did the Height and Width in the Sketch. The Depth dimension we did will display as an "fx" but it is not in a sketch because it is just an extrusion. If you want to see this then modify the Height parameter value to be something like "WIDTH/2", or whatever you want. Now when you look at the sketch you will see the "fx" in the dimension. Sorry this is 5 years after you asked it, but I didn't even know FUSION 360 existed back then. Hopefully this helps some people.

[@William3DP]

I found this extremely helpful. I have been trying to wrap my head around Fusion's implementation of 'top-down design' for some time, and this really clears a lot up for me. I was particularly glad to see how you could go back to the original sketch and update all of the parts in the assembly.

[@adskFusion]

Always great to hear these videos are helping!

[@Steve_Just_Steve]

I wish I understood how you made the slot dependent on the pin location. Does the combine command always auto update the object it was employed on? Good vid.

[@brenttanner9889]

If I am not mistaken the combine action is dependent on the components, so that as Fusion rebuilds the design (for instance after you change the dimensions of the sketch to move things around) it then re-executes the combine command with those same components in their new locations.

[@JuanAdam12]

Not mentioned here--but crucial--is that each part of this "machine" is a separate component.

[@numb7860]

I want to Know About ''Components" and the "Time Line" at bottom.

[@cu3845]

you can also make a motion study from your joint and re-render an image with your motion study in the render environment :)

[@cjao67]

Would it be possible to get a share to this file? Having trouble recreating this due to the functioned parameters.

[@justinn8419]

Did they ever share it?

[@brenttanner9889]

If you click on the Modify Tab you will see a cursive "Fx" that says "Change Parameters" towards the bottom of the drop down. Click on that and it opens a dialog where you can pre-establish your desired parameters. For instance if you want to pre-define the Height Width and Depth of an object you are designing you will click the + (Plus) button of the dialogue where it says "User Parameters". Then in the dialogue box that opens you will type "HEIGHT", select your desired unit in the drop down, then enter the height you want in the "Expression" field. It will then tell you the resultant value in the "Value" field. And if you need to leave a comment for later reference you can do that in the "Comment" field. Try this; Add the following parameters as I mentioned above; Name: HEIGHT Unit: in Expression: 2 Name: WIDTH Unit: in Expression: 4 Name: DEPTH Unit: in Expression: WIDTH*2 [Notice that the Value field will now display 8.00] Now that you have those 3 User Parameters lets play with it a little. Click ok on the Parameters dialogue and open a sketch. Create a simple rectangle and in the dimension dialogues type in HEIGHT and WIDTH in the proper dialogue boxes. [Notice that you can just type the first letter and it already pulls up the dimension, then hit enter. Keep this in mind when you are deciding how to name your dimensions on bigger design projects so you can find the right dimension with just a few key presses.] Now close your sketch. Select Extrude Command and type DEPTH into the distance field (be sure to erase the "in" units in the field or it won't let you press ok). Then press OK and the parameters create the box you pre-defined. Now you can go back to the Modify tab and select "Change Parameters" again and change the values of any of the parameters and your widget will adjust to meet those parameters. If you are creating a product line with many different versions of the same base product you can create your base design and save that one as a template (there is no template option that I am aware of, I just mean label it something like "widget_template" in the file name) with all the parameters in it. Then when you go to design the other versions you simply Save As "your new version name here"so you have a whole new version of the original widget with all of the parameters you established. Then you can just go to the "Change Parameters" dialogue and alter those numbers to get the new version instead of having to rebuild an entirely new model with different dimensions. Save yourself hours of work! Now you will notice with the way I did it you are probably not seeing the "fx" in the sketch like he has in this video. Thats because we only did the Height and Width in the Sketch. The Depth dimension we did will display as an "fx" but it is not in a sketch because it is just an extrusion. If you want to see this then modify the Height parameter value to be something like "WIDTH/2", or whatever you want. Now when you look at the sketch you will see the "fx" in the dimension. Sorry this is 5 years after you asked it, but I didn't even know FUSION 360 existed back then. Hopefully this helps some people.

[@micahtapia418]

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[@The_Unobtainium]

Ok, but this method is inaccurate...

[@gusbisbal9803]

The issue I see here is what happens when you want to add a tolerance to that slot. If that wheel is going round at high speed it will hit that pin at the outer edges for sure. Or even if you are adding tolerance to the slot itself. Zero tolerance will give that slot massive friction and it won't move. Kind of defeats the purpose of the technique of the snap shot. The slide capability is still usable for the design fr the sketch that allows you to play with the tolerance however. Thank you for this video.

[@xTreme.Power.]

for add tolerance, just Offset the hole for 0.something mm and extrtude that little space : Tadammm tolerance :)

[@brenttanner9889]

you can also do what he did to obtain the two extreme holes with the combine command but then in your sketch use the actual center to center slot command to draw the slot instead of just doing the 2 tangent lines. You can then tolerance the slot slightly larger and as long as you used the center of the two combine holes as the center points of your slot ends it should update exactly the same. Then just create a parameter for the width of the slot to be the diameter of the peg + your desired tolerance so that if you need to change the peg size your tolerance will adjust as well.

[@Tallslimchris]

Cool instructional video, but chamfer is pronounced kamfer, the ch makes a k sound

[@davelee47]

+chris goebel Not in the UK it dont. CH sounds like shh so its (shamfer}

[@Tallslimchris]

+David Lee , yes that was my mistake, apologies

[@davelee47]

no need to apologise mate. different languages from different cultures LOL

[@gusbisbal9803]

In Australia we say CHamfer like CHurch. Just like the US. Why are you telling other parts of the world how they should speak? Honestly?

[@Tallslimchris]

gus bisbal if you look at the rest of the responses instead of just reading the first one and jumping to conclusions you will see I already apologized, and I was wrong in my original comment,

[@las2993]

I honestly think this is a bad tutorial for persons who have no idea what they are doing like myself. Using the timeline to build to demonstrate how to build this is particularly a bad idea and I think a step by step method showing how to construct these things would be much better than what was done here

[@davelee47]

Yeah but at least he took the time to show you SOMETHING didn't he? He didn't have to do this

[@donvittoriodimaggio7973]

this tutorial is terrible, you said I did this and this without showing how you did this and this.