Sheet Metal

[mark9XJEG]

Fusion Gurus - please bear with a noobie.

I am primarily an electronics design engineer, and have used Eagle for several years for my electronic CAD.   My products consist of electronic components mounted into a clamshell case, which is fabricated with sheet metal.  Up until now, I have manually designed the cases with pencil and paper.   I have purchased Fusion 360, and hope to use this tool for my case designs.   I have started by watching the Absolute Beginners videos with Lars Christensen, but I am wondering if there are better methods available for when I am working with sheet metal - can I draw a flat piece, and then fold it to get the 3D object  and weld seams? - If there are tutorials that might be applicable, I'd love to know where to find them!

Ideally, I'd like to take the designs and flatten them, then be able to use those designs to drive a laser to generate my prototypes.

Thanks all!

Mark Sauerwald

[Anonymous]

The workflow with sheet metal is typically to model the finished shape and then unfold (or create a flat pattern) from that finished design. There really is no need to start with the completed flat and try to form it, let Fusion do that work for you.

[Anonymous]

I've created a short Screencast to show a simple box in sheet metal.

Note: Unfold is not necessary and will create steps in your timeline. You can delete them after viewing the flat pattern, which will help with the processing needed on larger files.

The flat pattern is what would be sent to a manufacturer, it can be activated in the browser, and can be exported as a .dxf, which I did not show.

To answer your last inquiry, Fusion does not support welding at the moment. The work around I usually use is to export my drawings as a .dwg and open in a different program and add symbols.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

I'll try actually adding the screencast this time...

[mark9XJEG]

Thanks WLOWE!

This is exactly what I needed!

Mark

[Anonymous]

Mark,

Glad I could help!

David