What the biggest thing you can create with Fusion 360?

[Anonymous]

I created a sphere out of the default material here.

Then I was able to scale it some. I had to scale it since fusion 360 didn't allow me to create a sphere larger than the scientific notation here.

Here's the sphere. First of all. It turned dark on the sides. But I have to scale it some more. 

So I did just that. So it turned pale. And now I don't even see the origin. And I can't scale anymore. It's a little clunky. But, I can't actually tell the difference. Because the UI is buggy as it is.

[Anonymous]

Yeah like i'm stuck on the scientific notation trying to modify the history for the scales i made.

all the information is straight up in red. And, I can't see anything in the objects view. I can get some properties.

[jeff_strater]

can I ask "why?".  What is your goal here?

I don't know the specific limit to size - there is no hard-coded size limit, to my knowledge.  But, I do know that the larger the size gets, the more problems you will run into.  I would keep it within 100m size, beyond that, you are in unexplored waters.

[Anonymous]

Because the biggest unit I found in Fusion 360 is only meters. And, I notice wierd bumps on objects sometimes. I want to know the biggest size Fusion 360 will accept because it uses meters to specify the size of the item scale.

[Warmingup1953]

Rather than using sphere try revolving a fully constrained semi circle and check if you still get "Bumps"

[TheCADWhisperer]

For predictable behavior create your geometry within a +- 100 meter cube about the Origin.

[etfrench]

1.000E+08 meters or 99999999 meters

[Drewpan]

Hi,

I would have to say that this is something the Devs might need to look at. A scale of say 200m is huge if you

are modelling a car or some complex piece of machinery, but what if you want to model a wind turbine or a

ship? I know and have seen boats modelled but a "boat" tends to be on the smallish side (unless it is a

submarine which are traditionally called boats). A ship on the other  hand can easily be 200m or longer. If

I wanted to model a sport stadium then in Australia I would have to make the ground almost 200m, let alone

the grand stands surrounding the ground.

"The playing surface is oval in shape, 135m to 185m long and 110m to 155m wide. The preferred senior oval size

is 165m x 135m as this provides the greatest flexibility to cater for all standards of play."

Western Australia Local Government Guidelines.

We do get a bit carried away with Australian Rules Football down under.

My point here is that there does have to be some limit, and that limit needs to be set down somewhere so that

we know the limitations. I don't expect to see parsecs offered anytime soon in the default Fusion units menu but

certainly big things like dams or buildings would not be suitable to be modelled at full scale. That being said,

AutoCAD has for years drawn in "units" which can be whatever the user wants them to be. Maybe this is the

solution.

Cheers

Andrew

[TheCADWhisperer]

What does the AutoCAD command -dwgunits return?  Units matter. 
In the background CAD programs use cm as base units. 

Model components. Few human made components are larger than 200,000 cm

Assemble components. 

[etfrench]

You can model a sphere 8 times larger than the earth in Fusion 360.

[Drewpan]

Hi,

I am fully aware that units matter, my point was that AutoCAD has the ability to have just "units" and the

user can select which ones. There are several settings in AutoCAD for specific units, Architecture defaults

to feet and inches for example. One of the reasons I made the comment is that in this instance metres may

not be the ideal unit to preset as a unit but a "unit" that the user chooses to represent 1m might be the answer.

The most recent model I have been doing uses millimetres but it is 13m long so inputting units of 13,000 is

common and Fusion handles this ok. It seems that it isn't the number of units, it is the actual distance that

Fusion is internally struggling with.

My other comments about various things that Fusion may be used to design are valid. I agree that many of

the users in the Forum are designing relatively small objects so probably don't need functionality for big

distances. This does not mean that we should not worry about it. A wind turbine can easily approach 200m

when total diameter is taken into account. I saw a news story only yesterday that it is becoming an issue

for designers of these structures because they are so big and bigger means more efficiencies. But a wind

turbine is still not the biggest thing someone might want to design with fusion. You might not want to

design an aircraft carrier using fusion, but a coastal freighter can easily be 200m and is relatively straight

forward for a ship.

A relatively huge structure I can think of that someone may want to use Fusion to design would be a Solar

Chimney installation. These structures are basically a Chimney and a Skirt. The Chimney can be any height

but I have heard of several hundred metres tall being discussed. The skirt for a chimney this big would be

measured in metres and possibly kilometres. The structure is fairly simple but the the whole thing is BIG.

Yes, you could design repeating units much smaller and probably would, but then I see Fusion struggling with

many small components AND big size.

I don't see any reason why Fusion could NOT be used to design a bridge. It is a case of, would Fusion cope

with the bigger numbers.

Cheers

Andrew

[etfrench]

Why do you think Fusion 360 can't model huge objects?  Model a primitive sphere.  Enter 9's until Fusion 360 reports an error.  You should be able to reach 99999999 meters.

[TrippyLighting]

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@etfrench wrote:

Why do you think Fusion 360 can't model huge objects?  Model a primitive sphere.  Enter 9's until Fusion 360 reports an error.  You should be able to reach 99999999 meters.

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Because he hasn't actually tried 😉

[Drewpan]

Hi,

That is correct, I haven't actually tried to model large objects. My discussion came about because of the

original question about the size of a sphere and the problems and my response was really why is this a

problem? It was more TheWhisperer asking about modelling big things when you should make smaller

components to build them.

Unless you guys know any reasons, if I chose to model something big, what are the restrictions? At my

level of knowledge about Fusion I am still learning. A wind turbine IS the sort of thing I would model to

expand my knowledge. It has airfoils, a tower, and a machinery head. All within my current reach if I can

find a picture to base the guts on - the rest is just basic modelling.

Cheers

Andrew

[jeff_strater]

"AutoCAD has the ability to have just "units" and the user can select which ones"

Yes, and no.  AutoCAD is actually unitless.  When you set units on an ACAD drawing, you are really only affecting how dimensions are displayed.  Fusion, on the other hand, stores everything in a single unit system:  Centimeters (don't ask...).  This allows you to mix and match designs created with Imperial units with those designed n Metric, and everything will be the right relative size.  You cannot do this in AutoCAD.  This is the source of the limits, such as they are, in Fusion.  Everything has to be stored in Centimeters.  At large enough scale, you start to run out of digits.  Also, the internal modeling tolerance is 1.0E-9 CM.  This starts to be a problem with extremely large (or extremely small) objects.

Again, I would ask the OP:  Why?  Why do you need to model something large to its actual size?  All of modeling is just scaling, to some extent.  The object is scaled to fit on your computer screen.  So, if you want to model something at astronomical scale, just mentally remember:  1m = 10,000,000m in this design (or whatever scale makes sense).

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@Drewpan wrote:

…my point was that AutoCAD has the ability to have just "units" and the user can select which ones.

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@Drewpan 
What are “just units”?

How is this different than Fusion 360?

You didn’t answer my question.

Type in the command -dwgunits (exactly as written with the preceding -symbol and no space).

Q. What do you observe? (In any AutoCAD file created in the last 10 years.)

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@jeff_strater wrote:

AutoCAD is actually unitless.  This allows you to mix and match designs created with Imperial units with those designed n Metric, and everything will be the right relative size.  You cannot do this in AutoCAD.  

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Type -dwgunits in AutoCAD. What do you observe?

[Drewpan]

Hi,

All software has to have some things done "under the hood" that will not directly affect the user.

If a car does what I want it to do, does it matter if I use petrol or diesel? Does it matter if the engine

is measured in cubic centimetres or cubic inches? Sure I might need to know which fuel so I can refuel

but it will make no difference what the engine size is measured in.

I could model an Ark in cubits in AutoCAD and it wouldn't care because it would be using "units" that

I custom represent as cubits. The data displayed in the command above will still be there but as the

User and the software don't care as long as the model turns out ok then it doesn't matter.

Cheers

Andrew

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@Drewpan wrote:

I am fully aware that units matter, my point was that AutoCAD has the ability to have just "units" and the

user can select which ones. There are several settings in AutoCAD for specific units, Architecture defaults

to feet and inches for example.

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@Drewpan wrote:

...but it will make no difference what the engine size is measured in.

User and the software don't care as long as the model turns out ok then it doesn't matter.

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@Drewpan 

You are contradicting yourself.  Do units matter in design - Yes or No.

CAD History

For many years AutoCAD was unitless.

But more than a decade ago this was changed.

If you run the -dwgunits command on any AutoCAD dwg created in the last 10 years you will see that it has Document Units assigned - just like Fusion 360, just like Autodesk Inventor Professional, just like SOLIDWORKS.

The initial document units are dependent on the Template that you start with...

As long as  you stay within your lane and do not communicate with others - you might never know what your Document Units really are.

Architectural is not a unit.

Imperial is not a unit.

Metric is not a unit.

These are systems that use units.

Inches, feet, yards, miles, millimeters, centimeters, meters are units in the Architectural, Imperial or Metric systems.

Here is a dialog box from Autodesk Inventor Professional when importing and AutoCAD mm units file.

(would be similar for SOLIDWORKS)

Clearly the evidence shows:

1. AutoCAD is not unitless.

2. Other CAD software recognizes that AutoCAD is not unitless (I (or you) could reproduce this and verify with any other -dwgunits setting in AutoCAD.

I have responded to countless posts on various CAD forums over the years where the issue is not knowing the Document Units of an AutoCAD file.  It is easy to change the Units in any (including AutoCAD) of these CAD softwares so that there is not a conversion issue.

More history:

Years ago NASA sent a probe to Mars that crashed.

Upon investigation it was found that one contractor for the program was using metric system of units while another contractor was using imperial system of units.  Because the distance to Mars is so large - the numbers were not something we would immediately recognize as "out of wack".

I see this issue frequently in FEA analysis.

Units matter. Period. Full stop.

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@Drewpan wrote:

If a car does what I want it to do, does it matter if I use petrol or diesel?

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Uhmm, electric.

You might want to inform a few governments that are setting future mandates on how you power your car.