Wall thickness check

[Willa1980]

Fusion360 is also aimed at amateurs that like to design and 3D print, correct? One of the important things to consider during 3D printing is the minimum wall thickness. Shapeways has some very neat online checks and tools to check the files. However, these tools can only be used after exporting and uploading your 3D model to the Shapeways website. Therefore, I think it would be awesome if Fusion would have a wall thickness checking feature. The user should be prompted to set a minimum wall thickness (ideally seperate values for supported and non-supported walls), and Fusion highlights problematic areas.

Image: Shapeways wall thickness tool. Safe areas are green, problematic areas are orange.

[roambotics_scott]

Totally agreed. Also a tool to ensure thickness within a range would be extremely useful for injection molded plastic part and stamped metal part design.

[madengineer13]

I would echo that.   For injection molding design it is crucial, and it is also important for 3d printing etc.

any idea when this might get implemented?

[Jimmyfabs]

 Any plans to implement this feature?  I could really use a thickness analysis tool right about now 🙂 

[Anonymous]

This tool would be awesome for the work I am doing in CAD. I work with complex surfaces and it is really easy to loose track of the wall thickness. I really love the draft angle tool and I think a wall thickness tool would complement it really well.

Is this sort of thing in the works yet?

[joost7GUSR]

+1 from me. I have been iteration quite a bit between Fusion and Shapeways. Immediate check within Fusion would save a lot of time and would substantially increase productivity

[Anonymous]

Copying from the 'archived' https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-ideastation-request-a/thickness-inspection-tool/idc-p/7541... asking for the same feature...

As @bkgoodman rightly pointed out there back in 2016, echoing @Willa1980 in starting this thread a year before...

"Right now when I work in F360 - I have to constantly export the design in STL - upload to my manufacturer, and have them do the thickness check - then get errors from them - fix my design and repeat."

Yes, exactly!

Given F360's existing functionality to test your models - and the growing field of 3D printing - this seems like such an obviously valuable addition to the product.

Right now I'm going back-and-forth with the Shapeways website on a design as follows:

1. tweak in F360
2. make .STL
3. upload to Shapeways
4. wait 2-5 minutes (yes, minutes!) for Shapeways to analyze it
5. spot the thickness problems
6. repeat...

If one of your 2018 focus areas is "Automate or offload as much of the mundane tasks as makes sense so our customers can spend their time on the details where it really counts," then here's a mundane very-detailed task that needs help please!

Yeah the Shapeways minimum thickness checker is great (see below), but seriously I'd expect F360 to offer the same functionality.

[DBVieira]

+1 Additive , mold design, requires the thickness evaluation

SpaceClaim has also an interesting option for internal reinforcement on AM

[lkokkone]

I'm not printing anything but I'm working on a shell structure. It would be awesome to have a tool to check the wall thicknesses by some scale similar to simulation stress analysis.

[m.d.woodworth]

This would be a great time and money saving feature to have in the software. 

[SamanthaJaneyCake]

Nearly 4 years later and still nothing. I’m disappointed. This would be an incredibly useful feature. It could be done as an actual Analysis by creating a mesh of each surface being compared and doing a distance check between the closest nodes on the two meshes. The finer the mesh the more accurate the result.

[roambotics_scott]

Sadly this is just their SOP @SamanthaJaneyCake

To be fair to AD, this isn't quite as trivial as you make it sound, but it's not at all intractable (Shapeways and Protolabs do it quickly, so there is an existence proof) and it's an essential tool for manufacturing and 3D printing, so it should be a no-brainer

[colinNJB25]

I just got handed some injection molded parts to draw. I would love to have this feature. The draft analysis has been helpful but I also need this thickness analysis.

[rpothier]

I often have to determine thickness to estimate cycle time for injection molded parts.    I use solid works to do that but would like to have a tool in fusion 360.  

[icegodd]

Netfab have auto wall thickness check .... Fusion 360 ... still not support 😞

[moriarty.chch]

this gets my vote - i do casting design -volume, thickness and draft analysis are the basic tools

maybe AD plan to make you pay for the last 30% of F360 functionality thats currently missing with extensions and cloud credits - that appears to be their strategy in manufacturing

[Anonymous]

echoing that this is critical in the injection molding DFM process... draft analysis only gets you halfway. 

[tschraederRUAQB]

This would be very useful for plastic injection design.

[JSovey]

This would also be great for a concrete mold design. thickness shows weak spots to reinforce or make thicker.