Simple but effective tips for fusion 360

[Anonymous]

Over my time working with Fusion 360, I have learned some very simple tips and tricks that I think can be used to seriously speed up workflows. For an experienced user, these may seem trivial, but if I knew about these when I started out in Fusion, they would have made my life so much easier.

Changing your camera settings: If you are migrating to Fusion from another software (as many are), you can still retain your original camera movement controls. Just click on your profile name in the top right corner, click on preferences and change Pan, Zoom, and Orbit controls to your previous CAD software (below you can also reverse zoom if you find the unintuitive zoom of CAD software confusing)

Yes, you can search! - It's really simple: Just press 's' and you can easily search for any command you may have trouble finding (neat trick for certification exam)

Rebind shortcuts: This is a particularly useful one. If you hover over any command in the expanded menu, 3 dots will appear to the right. With these, you can pin the command to the toolbar or shortcuts, or (most importantly) map it to a keyboard shortcut (such as spacebar, w, or a combination with shift/alt/ctrl/cmd)

Returning to home: This one is simple but handy. If you're ever stuck somewhere in the design, simply double click the middle mouse button to return to the home view.

Parameters exist: This is an extremely unused feature hidden in the modify tab (I highly recommend mapping it to a key) that provides a powerful tool for large assemblies, allowing you to create variables of any measurement (length, weight, angle, etc) to use when defining sketches or assemblies. It can also help ensure proportions remain constant so small edits to sizing require little manual labour

Try using a canvas: Go to insert->insert canvas to add a 2D drawing or image to use as a reference for a model. It honestly has saved my so much time and now I cannot start a large project without adding a canvas first.

Use a rigid group: This one is really basic, but I remember spending so much time constructing large assemblies where I spent hours creating rigid joints to connect each part. Don't do that. Use a rigid group to connect them all at once. In a similar vein, as-built joints should always be used instead of regular joints if the parts are already aligned

Component color cycling: To those who do not color their assemblies, component color cycling can be a lifesaver. Located in the inspect menu, it uniquely colors each component, making it easier to differentiate between parts in an assembly. I personally use appearance (shortcut key a) to manually color components as I have to market my designs and I'd like to believe I have better color sense than a randomizer!

Explore tools: Ever feel like it's too much effort to make certain parts (like gears for example). Be sure to check the add-ins in the tools menu to see if there is a program designed to do the work for you. If not, check out the app store (under the add-ins menu) to see if anyone in the community has made such a script. 

So that's my compilation of simple but effective tips in Fusion. They greatly range in complexity but are designed so that a beginner can effectively incorporate them into their workflow. Feel free to add any suggestions that you think should belong in this list in the comments. Hope my list can help shave some hours from the more tedious tasks of modelling

[Anonymous]

Important Correction to tip #8 - It has come to my attention (thanks to @jhackney1972  and @davebYYPCU ) that although an As-Built Joint is better for many cases, one major flaw with it is that if you make any edits to the geometry of the design, the joint will not update as it is positionally linked and not linked by any features as such. So if you are planning to edit geometry that may affect the positioning of the Joint, an As-Built Joint will not be suitable for that purpose

[TrippyLighting]

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@Anonymous wrote:

... one major flaw with it is that if you make any edits to the geometry of the design, the joint will not update as it is positionally linked and not linked by any features as such...

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That might be true in some cases, but it cannot be generalized.

I'd be happy to take a look at  @jhackney1972 or @davebYYPCU designs and point out what the problem is.

In a proper top-down design - the true reason for the existence of the as-built joints - they work very well.

[Anonymous]

I completely agree with what you're saying. For most cases (and for all of my use cases), an as-built joint worked better. But I wanted to clarify this point as my list incorrectly made it seem as if that was true for all cases. Since a lot of these tips are meant for beginners, I wanted to avoid any potential issues that may come up by assuming that an As-Built Joint works the same way as a regular Joint. If my original clarification was unclear, I hope this clarification clarification answers that 🙂