Advice for someone moving from Sketchup to Fusion 360?

[davidhard]

Hi there. Are there any other Sketchup modelers out there who made the move to Fusion 360 and can share what some of your biggest hurdles and frustrations were? What were some of the biggest shifts to your workflow and what changes did you have to make to your modeling methodologies? 

I am developing a product that I started in Sketchup, and now need to build it in Fusion 360 so I can get it ready for prototyping and eventually manufacturing. While I do have some of the general details and dimensions worked out in Sketchup, I do need to still work out some conceptual things in  Fusion 360 as I'm developing the design and details.

I'm loving Fusion 360 so far. But I'm missing some of the things I was able to do in Sketchup so easily. The biggest things I'm struggling with is not having the ability to snap to components or bodies that are not in the sketch I'm working on. In sketchup, I could snap to some other face, line or midpoint fairly easily as I was push/pulling, scaling, moving or whatever. Not so much in Fusion 360, or so it seems. How have any of you other former Sketchup modelers adapted to this? I have no doubt that the more I use it, the more I'll get used to it. But for now it's slowing me way down. Any help and guidance would be greatly appreciated.

[jhackney1972]

I have never used SketchUp but I think you are looking for the Project command.  This allows you to pull geometry from other geometry into your sketch so you can constrain to it and also use if or continue design development.  It is a key tool in "Top Down" design if you know what that is.

[JamieGilchrist]

Hi @davidhard ,

parametric modeling is a completely different beast than direct modeling (Sketchup is a direct modeler).  It may be worth spending some time with Fusion as a direct modeler exclusively (you can set your preferences to "Do not capture design history).  This will provide some familiarity with Sketchup and direct modeling interaction behaviors, as well as give you the freedom to familiarize yourself with Fusions sketch behaviors which are really the foundation to good parametric modeling techniques.  With parametric modeling, if you don't have a fair amount of experience with it via Solidworks, Inventor, Creo, etc., has a lot of power and pitfalls that requires some careful planning as a designer so you can accurately, effectively and efficiently communicate your design intent; especially to your manufacturing partners.  @jhackney1972  advice about projecting into a sketch is sound, and I'd offer that the R.U.L.E #1 philosophy of design with Fusion is also a good starting point.  That said, I still think starting in direct modeling will help you understand some of the nuance differences between Fusion and Sketchup and transitioning to to parametric modeling will be a slightly less monumental leap.

oh yeah, welcome to Fusion btw.

[davidhard]

Yep, I think I'm getting the hang of using things like project and intersect to get the functionality I am looking for. It is a few extra steps than what I'm used to. But I'm loving the power of parametric modeling. I've found it's handy to keep a notebook handy to jot down measurements. AND! the inspect tool with "click to copy to clipboard" feature is amazing! I've been using that a lot. Measure something with the measure tool, copy the dimension to the clip board, apply it to the thing I'm trying to manipulate. Done! It's really great.