Transitioning from 123D Design to Fusion 360

[Anonymous]

I teach an 8th Grade 3D modeling class that focuses on scaling and proportions and have been using 123D for the past 2 years and have been AMAZED at the ease of use and intuitiveness of the program. Students make dice, rooms with scaled furniture, recreate apartment and house floorplans, cars and trucks and more...with ease in 123D. So, when it was discontinued, I was devastated! I downloaded Fusion 360 last week and have been spending about an hour everyday getting familiar with it. Overall, it does not appear to be nearly as intuitive as 123D. I have a few questions and hopefully someone can help me because I'm thinking about sticking with 123D for the upcoming year.

1. Is there any way to select the initial plane default to the X,Y axis? Every time I enter a primitive, it asks which plane I want begin with. We always begins with the same plane. Also, if we are zoomed in, we have to zoom back out to the point of origin to select the initial plane. This occurs with creating a plane on an object as well.

2. When inserting text, 123D would assume that I wanted the text entered wherever I had the screen. Fusion 360 defaults to the point of origin when inserting text...every time!! It's annoying to have to re-orient myself after choosing the text screen and then typing the text where I want it.

Any help on this would be appreciated. Thanks!

[cekuhnen]

@Anonymous

intuitive I think is the wrong term - fusion is very intuitive for a real cad app. 123d Design is a toy so yeah it is easy but also limited,

i think however overall fusion is incredibly similar and dramatically more powerful and fantastically easy to teach.

everytime y9u make an object or sketch all apps will ask you what orientation it should aka asking you to specify the plane.

[Anonymous]

I appreciate your comments. I do indeed mean intuitive...for someone who
has never touched any type of CAD software, it was easy to learn for myself
and my 8th grade students, and powerful for the applications that I
mentioned in my in my previous post. Students were able to figure out many
items on their own. I do see a high amount of similarities in 123D and
Fusion 360, you are correct. While you mentioned that every CAD application
asks you to specify the plane you would like to use, you didn't actually
answer the question as to whether I can choose the plane by the default
ahead of time and prevent it from asking me all the time since the students
are building from the XY plane upwards. From your response, I am guessing
that you can't.

[davebYYPCU · Accepted solution]

Correct, there is no default setting for your purpose,

however there is a Preference setting, for Z up or Y up orientation, for all documents.  Z up will mimic 123D Design's interface.

about as close as you can get, teaching to always use this one....

[Anonymous]

Yes, I did see the Z up change in Preferences. Thanks!

[cekuhnen]

No you cannot in fusion by default reuse the same plan without selecting the plane.

I agree that 123d is easier - but in terms of intuitive they are the same.
You have to consider that fusion can do a lot so it is not as easy of a subject matter.

3D is just a massive area.

Btw what’s up with tinkercad? https://www.tinkercad.com/

It is similar in simplicity than 123d Design.

[Anonymous]

Good question!!! When I first began teaching the 3D class 2 years ago, I
looked at Sketch up, Tinkercad and 123D. I played with each for about 3 or
4 hours and felt that, at the time, 123D worked the best for the class. I
remember thinking that Tinkercad was too simplistic in nature for 8th
graders and wanted something slightly more robust. Also, our feeder high
school uses Inventor and I wanted to at least stay within the Autodesk vein
for familiarity which is why I ditched Google Sketch up.

I spent a few more hours last night with Fusion 360 looking at all of its
components and the similarities between it an 123D were more magnified
except for yes, this does wayyyyyyyyy more! If it were not for the
dissolving of support for 123D by Autodesk, I would continue with it
because it really suits the student's needs of the class. Fusion 360 does
way more than what we need, but so does Inventor at the high school level.
So I'll continue to plug away at the tutorials online.

Also, one other question: In 123D, I could select items and press "D" to
actually place them on the grid before exporting to print. Is there a
similar function in 360? I haven't been able to locate it.

Thanks again for your reply!

[davebYYPCU]

Most likely function that will realign, is the Align Command, 

and the Align Command, runs nicely together with Joints, they both use the same selection techniques, 

The Move command does it too, but the Triad and its function will likely confuse the kids, more than Align.

[Anonymous]

Ah...I see. Thanks!

[micahgoodman]

I hate that there is no "D" function anymore. While 123D was limited and simple at times, it was very intuitive. I still use it and have found it difficult to transition to Fusion 360.

[TimelesslyTiredYouth]

Hi @micahgoodman 

Heard of the saying, "Let the past be the past," we've learnt and moved on.

If you would like a function for this "D," just fill in the idea form or whatever it is to make fusion better.

This "D" function may exist depending on what it is, as in fusion; even though it is limited, there are some keyboard personalisations.

Cordialement 

Ricky