Creating Precision Cuts and Openings for Wheels and Brakes in Rail Components

The next step is to make some cuts in our rail to make room for our wheel and brake. Let's go ahead and start with one of the construction planes we have already created. In the construction folder we will find the side of rail plane.

There is an icon we can click to unhide that work plane and there it is. Now we want to unselect it so we'll click off in space so nothing is selected. Now under the create menu we want to go to create sketch and we want to select that side of rail.

We're going to reuse that work plane. Now we're going to go back to the back portion of the rail and we're going to create a hole for the wheel connection but we need to locate the center of that hole first. We're going to go to the create panel and look for a line and we'll go to the top left corner of that rail.

We'll click right in that corner, move our mouse or cursor to the right and we'll type in 10 for 10 millimeters. We'll start the line command again and this time we will start where we left off by clicking one time, moving straight down and this time we'll type in 8 and enter. Now those lines were simply to guide us to the center of our circle that we'll use to make a hole later.

We'll find the center diameter circle tool, click one time in the middle, move our cursor away and the input here is a diameter and the diameter we want is 5. So click 5, enter and there it is. We've got that hole for the wheel connection. Now we can delete these lines we created to locate the center.

They're just location lines, we don't need to keep them. Now let's go ahead and create another circle for a second hole. This hole is for the brake mechanism.

We'll again begin the line command. We might have to zoom in a little bit to find the top corner of the rail. Click one time and move to the right and we'll type in 125 for 125 millimeters and enter.

It's a pretty long line so we might have to zoom over to the right. Start a second line, click right where we left off and this time we're going down and we're going to go down 13, enter. That's the center of our next circle.

We're going to go to create center diameter circle, click right there and we're going to type in 5 for the diameter. Now you guessed it, we don't need these location lines, we can simply select and delete them. Okay, we've got those two holes and we can click finish sketch.

Now to stay organized, let's go to our sketches folder and look for that most recent sketch and we can give it a new name. We can call it wheel brake connections. There we go, so we've got those two holes.

Now we need to extrude to physically cut our rail. In the create menu we're looking for extrude and the first thing it wants us to input is the profiles. It says select so we'll select the first circle and the second circle.

I'm going to orbit around to see a little bit better all the way through here. There is a blue arrow, we can drag our extrude all the way through both sides which ends up being 60 millimeters. That will cut out holes on both sides of our rail and then click okay.

So there it is, just double check verify that we have holes cut all the way through in the back for our wheel, in the front for our brake. Okay, speaking of wheel, right now the wheel will not fit in here because our rail cuts right through. We need to cut a second hole right here at the top and again we can reuse one of our construction planes.

We have this top of deck plane, we'll turn that on and zoom out to see it. There it is, top of deck. We will click away so nothing is selected and we'll do create sketch.

We want to select the top of deck and now we're going to create a rectangle right here in the back to cut out a spot for our wheel. That rectangle is 40 × 140 so let's go ahead and start that sketch. Now I think it can be easier to find the center of things so I'll start in the center right here, click and go to the right 140, enter.

So there's that first line. Now it can come up and start the line command again. I will start where I left off right here, click and go up.

Now it's 40 all the way across so I'm going to go half of that 20, enter and now it's just finishing off the rectangle. So where I left off I will click, go straight to the left, 140, enter. Another line, this time I can go all the way down a full 40, enter.

Another line, click and go to the right, this time 140, enter. Now I can delete the extra lines I don't need. So that center line, I don't need it.

I'll click it, delete it. I don't need this short line, it was just there to locate so I'll click delete and add one final line to go from the final two points. Once they're connected I have a solid rectangle and I can click finish sketch.

Back to the home menu and I will see that there's my rectangle and if I were to extrude that through it's going to cut my actual deck. I don't want to do that so one trick here is to go ahead and in the bodies folder hide the deck so we don't see it. We're just looking at the rail.

Now I can find the sketch, it's called sketch 5. Let's give it a name, we'll call it wheel cut and we'll find that extrude command and we'll drag it straight down. Notice how it makes a solid body until it finds the intersection. Then Fusion is smart and it assumes that we want to make a cut operation.

Now it doesn't matter how far we go down as long as we go down far enough to cut. So minus 20 is fine or you can go farther if you'd like. Let's go ahead and go to minus 30 just to make sure we cut all the way through and go ahead and click ok.

Now if it happens to happen like I am showing, I've got a couple sketches here that got unnamed and that's because once the extrude command used it, it got rid of our name for us. Convenient, right? We can go ahead and rename those, not a big deal. We can call that wheel and brake connections and we can call this one the wheel cut.

Alright, so everything's looking organized here. We have our deck rail with all of its features and details and we can turn back on or unhide the deck itself and we are now all set.