As a future engineer, designer, or maker, learning CAD software will help bring your ideas to life quickly. Starting your journey with 3D modeling can be overwhelming. Here are five different close-to-reality fictional case studies that you may relate to and may help you make a good choice.
1. John is a student in his freshman year at University. He has many product ideas in mind which can make everyone’s life easy. He wants to learn 3d modeling for the first time. He wants to understand how software tools work and how his ideas can be brought into the virtual world for everyone to see and appreciate his creativity.
Autodesk Fusion is a very easy-to-learn CAD software that has fewer tools for doing a vast number of functions. This makes it easier for beginners to learn the software. In fact, Fusion can be learned by middle school children too. But, that does not mean that it is not capable of designing complex products. Its surfacing tools can help in achieving complicated automobile or aerospace body shapes. As a user of the software, I always felt that the trajectory to move from easy to complex designs in Fusion is rather smooth. So, it does not take much time to move from beginner to expert user. Moreover, the online learning resources and community will make self-learning easy.
2. Chris uses a desktop at his college computer lab. But he uses his laptop at home. Carrying the files he needs is a tedious job. Either he should rely on email or USB sticks or cloud storage solutions like Dropbox.
In Fusion, you have a login and password to enter the software. As all the files are stored in the cloud, one can easily access their files from whichever laptop they login to the software. Accessing your files is as simple as checking emails. (Note: Commercial licenses may be node-locked or for single-user, single-system usage.)
3. Annie wants to do a robotic project. The project needs her to design multiple parts, mechanisms, electronics, animations, 3d printing, and much more.
Fusion comes with multiple workspaces. You can design, animate, do analyses for strength, use a manufacturing workspace for generating g-code, or 3D printing tools for setting the printer, and also render it in a real-world environment for realistic pictures of the final product. It also helps in electronics workflow. No tiresome job of learning and swapping between various software is required. Fusion can prove to be your one-stop solution for completing multi-disciplinary projects.
4. Mary and Julie wanted to work on a headphone design project. They belonged to two different cities, so they could not share a workplace. However, they have to collaborate to take continuous feedback and suggestions from each other.
Fusion gives each of them the flexibility to create collaborative projects. They can invite each other into specific projects and make only those projects visible to each other and keep the rest of their projects private, When they work on the same component the changes are also saved as per their names. There will not be any need to send files through mail and wait for responses. They can seamlessly use each other’s expertise to finish the project.
5. Ben wants to take feedback regarding a new rocking chair design from his senior. However, he does not want to share the design with him. He only needs suggestions.
Fusion being a browser-based software, allows sharing the link of the file. The access to download or not can be given by the designer. The other person will be able to view the model in 3D and make notes, using annotations on the viewer screen. However, they will not be able to make changes to the component. This makes taking feedback from various people easy.
The best part is that students and educators can get Autodesk Fusion for free. To get started, simply head to the Autodesk Education homepage. Happy design journey!
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