Fusion Rule #0 - How to effectively learn Fusion

[Drewpan]

[Post modified by moderator to remove "360"]

Fusion Rule #0 - How to effectively learn Fusion

The Fusion Documentation has a full explanation of commands and a number of excellent
Tutorials embedded within. They can be found here:

https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=GUID-1C665B4D-7BF7-4FDF-98B0-AA7EE12B5AC2

The Fusion Self Paced Learning has a series of step by step videos to get you started on
your learning journey. They can be found here:

https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/courses/

The AutoDesk YouTube Channel has excellent general purpose learning tutorial videos and explanations.
They can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/@adskFusion

Some of the Gurus lurking in the Forum also have great YouTube Channels, like this one:

https://www.youtube.com/@TheCADWhisperer

Warning: There are Cowboys on YouTube, not everyone knows what

                 they are doing. These links all DO know what they are doing.

General Tips for learning Fusion

1. Sketches should be simple and fully Constrained to prevent problems later.
2. If you can't find where the Sketch is unConstrained (no Lock icon) use the Text Command
    Sketch.ShowUnderconstrained

3. Dimension critical stuff and constrain the rest.

4. Work logically. The Browser tree is your friend not a beast to be wrestled to the ground and tamed.

5. There is more than one way to kill a cat than drowning it in butter. There are also many ways to do the

    same thing in Fusion.

6. Learn to use the Timeline early and fix issues with it WHEN THEY HAPPEN. If the timeline is yellow
    or red and you didn't fix it then that is probably causing you grief now.
7. Sketch simple and use the Tools to sculpt your models. Fancy Sketches are easily broken and sometimes
    hard to fix.

8. Refer to Rule #1 and Rule #2 OFTEN.
9. Practice a lot. Draw what interests you for fun, it makes learning much easier.
10. Challenge yourself. Give it a shot. Ask for help when needed. Follow through to the end. Look back and
      see what you have achieved. Reward yourself for the improvements.

Requirements for asking for help in the Forum.

1. If you have a problem then ask a question.
2. Attach your File and a picture or screenshot of the behaviour or what you want to achieve.
3. If your File is proprietary, create an example of the behaviour to share and upload that. Re-creating
    the behaviour may either solve your own problem or prove it may be a genuine Bug.
4. Gurus and Developers lurk in the Forum. Be nice to everyone but especially them!
5. Be humble if someone is pointing out things you have not seen or be aware of. They are NOT aiming a
    personal attack at you they are trying to help you learn.
6. Never stop learning.

[TrippyLighting]

@Drewpan outstanding post/thread!

@CGBenner can we make this a sticky thread?

[jhackney1972]

I agree this is a good post to be pinned except for the red warning about Cowboys on YouTube.  I feel this small section should be removed if it is considered to be pinned to the Forum.

[TrippyLighting]

@jhackney1972 I wholeheartedly disagree. It should actually blink in red!

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@jhackney1972 wrote:

I agree this is a good post to be pinned except for the red warning about Cowboys on YouTube.  I feel this small section should be removed if it is considered to be pinned to the Forum.

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What about Tip #5?  🤔  I've never tried that butter technique! 🙀 

[Fully_Defined]

I think the OP contradicted himself with #8 in the first list, but I mostly agree with him. Generally, I NEVER change feature or sketch names, or anything at all in the feature tree (what is that called in Fusion BTW?), but I go to town in parameters. THAT'S where you name stuff.

[TrippyLighting]

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@Fully_Defined wrote:

I think the OP contradicted himself with #8 in the first list, but I mostly agree with him. Generally, I NEVER change feature or sketch names, or anything at all in the feature tree (what is that called in Fusion BTW?), but I go to town in parameters. THAT'S where you name stuff.

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Let's not mistaken our own personal preference for general best practice.

I don't rename a lot of stuff either. Sometimes I rename sketches but almost never Timeline items.

I use parameters sparsely, usually not more than 10. 

I find it much easier to see a dimension/parameter in context in a sketch, for example. 

In the last three sentences I used "I" 4 times. Personal preference 😉 

[Fully_Defined]

I worked extensively on, and then walked away from, a Musical Machine X project featured on YouTube. I have seen the results of people who have no prior concept of best practices reading message boards and watching YouTube videos and then creating the worst CAD nightmares you have ever seen. I had to clean up after them! A common theme was to rename absolutely everything, have zero parameters and make assemblies with no mates. They're learning this somewhere.

[TrippyLighting]

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@Fully_Defined wrote:

I worked extensively on, and then walked away from, a Musical Machine X project featured on YouTube. I have seen the results of people who have no prior concept of best practices reading message boards and watching YouTube videos and then creating the worst CAD nightmares you have ever seen. I had to clean up after them! A common theme was to rename absolutely everything, have zero parameters and make assemblies with no mates. They're learning this somewhere.

---

Yep, we see this here not infrequently on the forum. They are "picking this up" from somewhere. I distinctly avoid the term "learning" and refer to the red highlights section in the original post. I would not necessarily call folks "cowboys" but would refer to a lot of youtubers as equally clueless hobbyists.

In this age of easy online access to unverified and unqualified information, unfortunately the value of true teaching by a competent instructor and the value of learning by practicing and discourse seems to be on the decline.  

Marketing materials suggest you can pick up a new skill TODAY. Folks that have less than a decade of professional experience in a given field propose to be able to create a Master Class of .. really anything. Regardless of any training in pedagogy.

What you/we are experiencing is the result of what I describe here. Its not a singular cause that is easy to fix!

[Christoph_360]

Hello

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@Drewpanwrote:

General Tips for learning Fusion

2. If you can't find where the Sketch is unConstrained (no Lock icon) use the Text Command
    Sketch.ShowUnderconstrained

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@DrewpanThank you very much for this really valuable tip, a great help with sketching, incomprehensible to me that this so important command is not present in the sketch commands.

Thanks

Christoph

[Fully_Defined]

This is why I affirm basic, generic best practices for beginners and discourage meddling with automatically generated things like naming of sketches and features, which are often discarded as part of the modeling process anyway. At the conclusion of a design, when it is approved and drawings are done, then there are plausible reasons for renaming certain things, but definitely not while modeling. Not for beginners, and not really even for those with experience, because they know why it is a waste of time at that stage in the design process.

So I disagree that I am looking at what I do as something other than my own idiosyncratic personal way. I generally defer to the defaults most of the time, unless there is a compelling reason to change the software's intended workflow to match what I do in my head. For this reason, I am diametrically opposed to Rule #1, which BTW almost exclusively lives in the English-language social media-supported Fusion 360 user community. If you do a quick search for a similar thing in a different language, nobody uses it, but sure enough, you'll find a single component inside of a single component nine times out of ten in a beginner's part who picked up CAD from English-language (maybe even specifically US?) social media.

I appreciate Rule #0 -  I think it's coming from the right place; I just think the author was giving too much deference to Rules 1 & 2.

[TrippyLighting]

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@Fully_Defined wrote:

...

I appreciate Rule #0

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I do too, which is why I asked the powers-that-be if we can make this a sticky post. 

[evanp4509U4JZ]

I am curious if you could point me in the direction of a project with step by step  instruction on best practices and explanation of why it is best. I think it would be greatly beneficial to have a video of start to finish sketching and modeling to end up with the best product. Explanations of why things were done which way and in what order would be tremendously helpful.

[TrippyLighting]

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@evanp4509U4JZ wrote:

I am curious if you could point me in the direction of a project with step by step  instruction on best practices and explanation of why it is best. I think it would be greatly beneficial to have a video of start to finish sketching and modeling to end up with the best product. Explanations of why things were done which way and in what order would be tremendously helpful.

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That would indeed be a great contribution 😉

[Fully_Defined]

@robcohee is a pretty smart guy. This has generally been my Fusion 360 reference and is a good place to start, and it's probably a good bet to go right to the source. I may have a philosophical difference here and there, mainly because while Fusion was actually my first ever CAD experience, I converted fully to Solidworks in 2017. Since then, I have been a commercial subscriber to Fusion 360, but mostly for HSMWorks and the aforementioned Musical Machine X project.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmA_xUT-8UlIxB5-GVV1UdLixtW_Gi64w

[thatotherfellasbrother]

That sounds great! Now I have to figure out how to enter text commands, lol. 🙂

[jhackney1972]

The Animated GIF will show you how.

[evanp4509U4JZ]

Thanks for that. I was about to ask for this info.

Now, is there a list of recognized text commands? My syntax and vernacular don't always get the recogition they deserve from computers.

[TrippyLighting]

@jhackney1972 @evanp4509U4JZ please your conversation to a new thread. Thanks!

[NNJ115679]

Please sir give me something learning information about autocad