Component Assembly and Revolute Joints for a Spinning Scooter in Fusion

Now let's have some fun and get the wheels spinning on our scooter. To do that, we're going to start assembling our components together. What does assemble mean in Fusion? It essentially dictates the logic of how each component interacts with other components.

In this case, we're going to have wheels that spin in place. So right here in our browser, our first step is to go to the top level, select it, and click the activate circle. That activates the top level.

And we should now see all of our components. And we're going to start by assembling this back wheel. To do that, we want to go to the solid menu, then look across to the assemble area and click the joint button.

This brings up the joint window. I'm going to make it a little bit bigger. And the logic of this window is as follows.

Component one will rotate about component two, or component one will attach to component two, or component one will move to component two. Essentially, the first component is the one that's typically in motion. Now we want to start with this back wheel.

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So let's make everything bigger by zooming in. And it's a little hard to see all of the back wheel. Why is that? It's because this rail and deck are in the way.

So let's go ahead and hide those in the browser by clicking the little eye icon to hide the deck. And so we just see the wheel very clearly now. Now, the first option is the origin mode.

And by default, it's set to simple. If I hover over this wheel, I will see that that origin would just go to any face that I hover over. And that's not what I want because that would put the origin kind of to one side of the wheel.

Instead, I want to center the origin. So I go to the second option, which is between two faces. And how I select the faces matters.

Now, this can be a little bit confusing, but don't fret if your wheel doesn't spin the way you'd like it to. It's okay. In theory, when the wheel spins in Fusion, it's just a spin.

It can go forward or backwards. But if you want to see it spin forwards, the way we select our two planes is important. And the logic there is if you look at your view cube, there is a Y-axis.

And the positive Y is what we select first. And then what you don't see, the negative Y, is what we select second. So the Y is pointing, in this case, up or to the left, which that can change.

If I rotate around, now Y is pointing to the right. So this side would be the positive Y. And the back side would be the negative Y. So that's how that logic works. You want to start with positive Y and then click the other side.

So plane one is positive Y. Right now it's pointing to the left. So I'm going to go over here this side. And yep, Y is pointing over here.

So that's the one I click first. Plane two will be the other side. And now I need a snap point.

The snap point is essentially the center. And so I'll click Select. And the snap point I want is this cylinder right in the center of my wheel.

So I'll click one time. And once all of these three items are selected, it grays out that component. And it shows the component right here.

It's wheel one. Now the snap point has a green line pointed down towards the floor. And if that's the case, it means the wheel will spin forward.

If that green line is pointing up, the wheel's going to spin backwards. You can go ahead and unselect and redo it. And just pick the opposite options you picked before.

You can always unselect and just select again until that green arrow points down. Okay, so that's the first one. Now our second component will be the rail and the deck.

So I'm going to unhide the deck. And we'll repeat the same logic and same process. First, the origin mode.

I want to select between two faces. Which face do I pick first? I want positive Y. It's going to go over here. Click positive Y on that outside rail face.

And then click the other outside rail face. I've got the two rail faces. Now we need the snap point.

That snap point is the same circle. And if we orbit so we can see, all those circles line up together. So I want to make sure I'm clicking right on that circle.

It highlights and it puts the snap right there in the center on top of the other snap. I want the two to line up with each other. So there they are.

With everything selected, I now have some alignment options. Now we don't want to mess with these. I'll show you what it does.

You can see it moves things out of alignment. That's because we modeled things specifically lined up. So there's no reason to change these from anything other than zero.

We also do not need to flip our axis because we clicked consistently when we selected both components. Now the other tab in the joint window is called motion. And we'll call this the fun tab because this is where things happen.

The default is rigid. That means they're stuck together or they don't change position in relationship to each other. And there's a preview motion.

We'll click the play button. That shakes everything. And it shows that even if we shook it, the wheel and the deck would stick together.

We don't want that. We actually want the wheel to spin. We'll do the second type, which is called revolute.

And we'll notice that by selecting that with the preview motion, it's going to spin that wheel. We can orbit around and make sure that the centers are staying put. They're staying in alignment and only the wheel is spinning.

That's what we want. And if that's what we got, we're good. We can click okay.

So that is our first one. And we'll notice that we have relationships here now. And if we pull that down, we have joints and we have this revolute joint.

And there it is. We now have a relationship between two of our components. Let's go ahead and minimize that and do another one.

Cause that was a lot of fun. Let's do a second one. Let's go ahead and go back to the assemble area.

Click joint. And we'll move this window off to the side. And this time we'll focus on our front wheel.

We're going to go ahead and hide our fork. It's kind of in the way. We'll hide the fork.

And then our origin mode, again, will be between two faces. I want to click the side on positive Y. So I'll click that side first. And then I'll click the other side.

And then I'll select my snap, which is that hole in the middle. And the wheel selection is done. It shows it right here, wheel two.

Now component two, I will switch over to between two faces. I will unhide the fork. And again, I want to pick the positive Y side of the fork.

Then the other side of the fork. And now the snap point is that circle. And I can double check that motion is set to revolute.

I can preview the motion. If everything looks good, I click okay. And now if I open my relationships and joints, I have number one and number two, both revolute.

If I'd like, I can rename these. I can click and I can call it revolute wheel one. And the second one, I can call it revolute wheel two.

And with that, our scooter can start rolling down the road. It's a great time to hit that save button.