topic Re: Has anyone taught Fusion 360 to themselves? in Fusion Design, Validate & Document Forum

Has anyone taught Fusion 360 to themselves?

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 20:54:47 GMT

Hi,

I'm looking into buying Fusion 360, but I was wondering if anyone had used tutorials & youtube videos to teach themselves the program? I have minimal experiences in 3D modeling (I did some very routamentary objects in Blender). I was just wondering if anyone thinks this is a relatively simple program to use. I'm a designer who is very good in both illustrator & photoshop. I know 3D is a whole different animal but I just thought I'd add that info in.

Thanks!

Re: Has anyone taught Fusion 360 to themselves?

JonathanMLanderos — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 10:28:23 GMT

I've started using Fusion 360 pretty heavily within the last week or so, although I've dabbled in it before that.

I come from a background of nearly 20 years of 3D CAD (Inventor and Mechanical Desktop). At least in my opinion, Fusion is pretty easy to get started with. I'd definitely say watch those tutorials! And practice!

Granted, I've got a 3D background to build off of, but sometimes that just creates the extra baggage of the "old ways".

I'd also suggest building a few simple parts first, just to get the hang of the tools.

If you can find a user group, that can be a big help too, not to mention the discussion group here.

Most of all, keep an open mind, and keep trying!

Good luck!

Re: Has anyone taught Fusion 360 to themselves?

andreotti60 — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 16:53:10 GMT

I am a paralegal with zero experience in CAD design. I had a hobby project in mind and some 2D drawings of parts that I wanted to recreate in 3D and print. I started with Fusion and after watching a bunch of videos online I started designing and I was astonished at what I was able to accomplish. Highly sophisticated and complex geometry turned out beautiful. I am still learning of course, but it took literally hours, not days, for me to feel comfortable using the program. I think Fusion 360 hits the sweet spot between power, sophistication and ease of use. Even a complete novice like me can design complex geometry right away. I am now trying to become more acquainted with the t-spline objects creation module.

It helps to have a specific project in mind. I arrive at my goals in my own way. I am able to achieve superb results in probably unorthodox ways, but who cares. Later I will learn the best practices. It probably takes me longer to get to where I'm going, but hey, I eventually get there. That's what important - to me at least.

Just my two cents.

Gianluca

Re: Has anyone taught Fusion 360 to themselves?

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Apr 2016 19:47:38 GMT

Fusion 360 is a unique program that is a great all around product to learn. Market share wise it is behind Solidworks, AutoCad and Autodesk Inventor. It benefits from being a rare CAD, CAE and CAM all in one product with the full commitment of the Autodesk team behind it.

There is a lot of product subsidization going on so be sure to look at the various licensing models so you can play with Fusion 360 before committing to it.

Tutorials are available, but the frequent updates to the product and the open endness means that it really helps to have a specific goal in mind.

I'm teaching myself Fusion 360 to use the 3D printers (plastic), Shopbot (wood) and Tormach (metal) machines at the Techshop (a chain of makerspaces). The CAD modeling is a lot of fun and I would recommend a good PC mouse (especially if you are on a Mac trying to use the trackpad) and 3D Connexion's navigator to help you with moving in and around your model.

The organic sculpting tools will blow you away. It is what makes Fusion 360 shine. I've barely touched this part yet.

The CAE ability to engineer stress test models is really cool, but beyond anything I use the product for.

The ability to ouput to an additive manufacturing machine like a 3D printer was super easy. Just export a STL file and take it Cura, Makerware, or use a 3D printer plugin right from Fusion 360. Makes prototyping a design a lot of fun.

I'm now focused on subtractive manufacturing (taking a solid block of material and using CAM to remove the extra material). There is nothing like that in the Adobe world, so the concept of free form shapes or moving images around like you would in Illustrator of photoshop is completely lost and frustrating. It has taken me several months and I've had to go beyond Fusion 360 and watch tutorials on CAM from other products to figure it out. Defining your tools (drills, bits, router bits, mills, end mills, etc) is time consuming and it helps if you have a specific project on a specific CNC machine that you want to use to muddle your way through it.

Look to see if there is a Fusion 360 meet up group in your area and use the forums to meet others struggling to do what you are doing. I'm amazed at people like Hughes that so readily share their knowledge with others. It's a lot of work, but great fun as well. Good luck on your journey!

Stephen Inoue

Re: Has anyone taught Fusion 360 to themselves?

daniel_lyall — Sat, 23 Apr 2016 10:34:30 GMT

yep went from using 2D only to now 3D only in a few weeks, fusion 360 vids and fusion staff vids

Re: Has anyone taught Fusion 360 to themselves?

TrippyLighting — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 22:50:05 GMT

I did. I am not even sure there are "professional" training courses available. The videos,
Training materials and particularly the forum are great learning resources.

I do have the advantage of having 25 years of CAD experience in 2D and 3D

Re: Has anyone taught Fusion 360 to themselves?

Anonymous — Sun, 08 May 2016 02:49:22 GMT

I taught myself Fusion360 with ZERO CAD experience. I had built myself a CNC router and was trying to find a CAM solution. Fusion 360 solved my CAM problems and opened up a whole world of design. Learning along the way, particularly learning the Parametric paradigm helped me to understand the relationships and versioning between objects. This is helping me understand software design as well. It's not just about scratching away on a drawing, its about learning a process of designing.

Re: Has anyone taught Fusion 360 to themselves?

Anonymous — Wed, 11 May 2016 06:35:35 GMT

You can definitely teach yourself using tutorials and youtube videos. I had experience in Pro Engineer, but I ma nearly 80 so not as sharp as you youngsters, but I found it very easy and powerful to use.

Re: Has anyone taught Fusion 360 to themselves?

cekuhnen — Tue, 24 May 2016 01:32:16 GMT

@AnonymousHey Blender friend.

I teach Fusion 360 and Blender and taught both myself. Fusion 360 was also the first parametric modeler I learned.

Some inventor videos helped a little bit.

It is actually a very straight forward process.

If you want check out my youtube videos (furniture design) or ping me on Skype if you have questions.

Fusion is pretty much the most easy to learn 3D CAD app

Re: Has anyone taught Fusion 360 to themselves?

Anonymous — Mon, 30 May 2016 20:19:37 GMT

I tried several other programs like solidworks, sketchup, solidedge, and Fusion 360. I am disabled so I do not have money to take training. I have tried to learn them all on my own. Fusion 360 really relite my fire and is one of the esaier ones to learn. Ask a couple questions in the forums and things will ,ake since pretty quick. Good luck.

Re: Has anyone taught Fusion 360 to themselves?

cekuhnen — Mon, 30 May 2016 21:16:40 GMT

@Anonymous Fusion 360 for sure is easy on the eyes and more logical to learn than some of the competition while they al use the same tools

I think Fusion's UI is just more efficient for new users.

Re: Has anyone taught Fusion 360 to themselves?

williamfsg — Sun, 05 Jun 2016 11:02:56 GMT

Hello,

I studied from a video tutorials on a CD I purchased from www.cadlearning.com.

http://www.cadlearning.com/category/fusion-360/

Contact support@cadlearning.com or phone at +1-603-641-3900

Checkout all the available tutorial on YouTube. Now then next thing I need to know is how to use CAM which did not come with the tutorial.

I come from Singapore and shockingly the schools I checked have not heard much of Fusion 360. Wish I could be Fusion 360 certified.

Hope the information helps.

Cheers/William

Re: Has anyone taught Fusion 360 to themselves?

Ronthomp — Thu, 21 Jul 2016 15:57:49 GMT

Absolutely! I have been using it for a while, now. My background is in Solidworks and PT Creo. I'll never go back.

Why not use the free download and the 30 day trial?

Re: Has anyone taught Fusion 360 to themselves?

Anonymous — Fri, 29 Jul 2016 15:27:59 GMT

I'm working on teaching myself Fusion 360 after working with SketchUp for a few months.

Just purchased this book from Amazon: Autodesk Fusion 360 Introduction to Parametric Modeling

Also doing the free Fusion 360 course at Udemy.

I'm very new to Fusion 360 yet and even though I worked with SketchUp on a daily bases during the free 30 day trial I have to say Fusion 360 seems really easy compared to SketchUp.

I seem to be able to get to the point I want with a 3d model with a lot fewer steps using Fusion 360 then with SketchUp.

A big thanks to Autodesk Fusion team for the free software, very much appreciated.

Re: Has anyone taught Fusion 360 to themselves?

Dave.Sohlstrom — Fri, 29 Jul 2016 19:02:35 GMT

I went to a local Meet Up thinking that I could learn more about F360. Boy was I wrong. They spent the first half of the meeting talking about Sketch Up Pro. This is a program I do not have and have no plans to ever use.

The last half was a F360 expert showing how to convert the sketch Up drawing to F360. He moved way to fast and spent no time explaining the F360 tools he was using. The screen in the front of the room was so big that you could not read the text on the F360 menus. At times he mumbled and you could not hear or understand what he was saying.

I will not waste any more of my time with that group.

I have learned more from the You Tube videos that I have found online, so that is how I will have to learn.

Re: Has anyone taught Fusion 360 to themselves?

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Aug 2016 15:11:21 GMT

Sounds like your an excellent candidate for Fusion. I have a similar background in design. Only had a bit of experience with Sketchup and some 3D classes in school that I didn't take very seriously as my focus was web development.

I'm about 50 hours in and feel like I'm over the hump. Initially I struggled with the separate workspaces, the sketch / body / component relationship was confusing, and things like moving and scaling felt clumsy. Now I am happily cycling through workspaces and can process a sketch to model to toolpath easily for simple things. It's incredibly rewarding and the things I didn't like initially I've learned to really appreciate.

Fusion was what I settled on after a bunch of research on what to use with my CNC Router. Hard to imagine not having the integrated CAM.

These forums are an excellent resource and of course Youtube. Seems like it's still pretty early in the programs development so people are active and responsive.

Have fun!

Re: Has anyone taught Fusion 360 to themselves?

Anonymous — Thu, 11 Aug 2016 07:13:37 GMT

I have thought myself to use Fusion out of necessity. And this was basically my roadmap summed up:

Let me first start by saying that learning an app or a piece of software, any software, is not that hard. You've all probably learned how to use your PC/MAC, word, Chrome, excel, etc.

The thing that would be new, is how to actually go about designing something. That's where it becomes tough and where experience trumps anything. Ok, so having said that:

Have a real project in mind or a thing that you want to make. I have dabbled with Fusion and other CAD ware before, but when lacking a real goal, you will not stick with it. Especially if you're new to CAD like me.
Watch a million Youtube Videos. (ok not a million but as many as you can). There's nothing better than seeing other people tackle design problems. This will teach you different approaches to different design problems.
Don't just watch Fusion videos, but also Inventor, Solidworks, Rhino etc. for the same reason as #2.
Fortunately, Fusion doesn't have many menu commands (compared to other apps out there), so explore each one and see what it does.
Learn to use all the sketch commands, especially those under the "Project/Include". These are powerful commands that let you do amazing things in 3D.
Learn to use how to make planes under the "Construct" menu. This will allow you to sketch anywhere you want. Which you will need eventually.
Ok, Sketching. If you're after engineering parts and models etc, then you must know how to sketch. Period. Learn that first.
For freeform modelling using T-splines, I strongly recommend watching the T-splines videos made for Rhino. These are jaw dropping. The functionalities are almost the same, you just have to find the commands used in Fusion. The idea here is to learn how to use T-splines to make things.
Know that Fusion has a Model, Sculpt and a Patch environment. These can be used interchangeably in the same project/design.
1. Model env = solids
2. Sculpt env = freeform, clay like
3. Patch env = surfaces
Make use of this forum. I have found solutions to 90% of my design problems here on this forum. People on here are helpful and knowledgeable. I endeavour to give back as it's been very helpful to me.

Lastly, know what bodies and components and the differences between them are. This will help you tremendously when you're models become more intricate and larger.

As I'm new to CAd and Fusion myself, I'm sure I made mistakes, so people are welcome to correct anything in this post.

This is just how I went about it. Hope it helps someone.

Re: Has anyone taught Fusion 360 to themselves?

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Aug 2016 12:54:56 GMT

Before learning Fusion 360 I had a couple years of solidworks experience from high school. As well as a semester of Autocad during college and I started using Fusion 360 when I was learning Inventor during school. I learned Fusion 360 while working for a small woodworking shop. My boss knows a bit more about cad than your average woodworker and started using Fusion 360 and hired me to help him out so that he could build more and draw less. I did not have any training in Fusion 360 and made a couple basic models before I started working and I dived in head first. I watched some videos but found them to be rather basic to me so I stopped watching them. That came back to bite me a bit as it took months to figure out how to move things using point to point. Then I started to get on the forums here and I learned so much just from reading the threads. Now I have had the opportunity to get an internship where I am helping a company transition from sketchup to Fusion 360. It can be done, it just takes a lot of time in the program and watching videos and reading through threads.

Re: Has anyone taught Fusion 360 to themselves?

mike.mattera — Mon, 15 Aug 2016 16:23:23 GMT

We're trying to produce new training materials all the time. I'm new with Autodesk and with Fusion. But I'm amazed with the how powerful this product is. I just produced a new tutorial for Fusion CAM. I would love it if you could take a look and let me know what you think. It's a series that walks you thru the complete process of machining a part, top and bottom.
http://fusion360.autodesk.com/learning/learning.html?guid=GUID-FEFD4AFD-C53D-4411-85C0-62053B2FD105

Re: Has anyone taught Fusion 360 to themselves?

mike.mattera — Mon, 15 Aug 2016 16:28:43 GMT

If you're completely new to CAM, you might want to start here...

http://fusion360.autodesk.com/learning/learning.html?guid=GUID1B16245E-AF0D-49AF-887A-FA85116723F8