Discover the intricate process of creating shapes in Fusion, starting with creating a new design, building a series of cubes, and expanding to include components, assemblies, and joints. Learn how Fusion mimics the real-world construction process, providing options for components to be rigidly stuck together, rotated together, or screwed together.
Key Insights
- In Fusion, individual shapes are referred to as 'bodies', which are 3D geometries. The creation process starts with a basic cube, which can then be replicated or altered to create more complex shapes.
- Multiple 'bodies' can be grouped together to form a 'component.' Components, in turn, are organized into assemblies, which are essentially collections of components that can be manipulated and moved as a single unit.
- Components in an assembly are connected with 'joints.' Fusion offers several joint types to mimic real-world connections, including rigid, revolute, slider, cylindrical, pin slot, planar, and ball joints. This allows for a variety of movement and interaction possibilities between components.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
We've had a ton of fun making shapes in Fusion. Now it's time to get organized. Let's create a new design.
We have a blank workspace here and let's create a series of cubes. We'll go to create and we want box. We'll click the ground plane.
We'll click around the center and pull straight up and then pull our box up. Give it some height and there it is. We'll click okay.
We've got one box. Now we can repeat that process to create other boxes, but we want to have about four boxes. So that's quite a few.
We can use the move copy command. We'll go to move copy. Let's click the top of our box and we'll notice in the options window for move copy, we can check the box for create copy.
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And now if we grab one of these arrows to move the box, we're creating a copy at the same time. Let's go ahead and click okay. Let's repeat that.
That was fun. We'll click the move copy, click the next box, click the create copy, drag it down, say okay, and let's create one more. We'll have four.
Move copy, click the top of this box, select the create copy, and move it over. And once it's there, we'll click okay and we've got four separate boxes. So what's going on organizationally? If we take a look at our browser, we see bodies.
If we click that down, we have bodies one, two, three, four. So in Fusion, they're called bodies, essentially geometry. And they're 3D geometry.
Sketches are sketches. Bodies are 3D geometry. And we have four of them.
So how do we start to get organized and create something in Fusion? Well, first, let's create what's called a component. We've got body one, and we will right click on it, and we will say create components from bodies. And that moves it down to its own little component with one body inside, body one.
All right, that seems like a little bit silly. Why do we take a body and make it into a component? That's because most components contain multiple bodies. So let's create another component that does have the multiple bodies.
We'll go to body two, and we'll right click, and we'll say create components from bodies. Now we've got component two, and it's got body number one inside again, because it kind of starts the numbering over again. That's fine.
Now we'll take body three and drag it to component two. And we'll do the same thing for body four. We have four boxes, yet only two components, component one and component two.
Now we see that Fusion components can contain multiple bodies. Now how are they organized? Components are then organized into assemblies. Now before we create an assembly, we'll notice that there's a little anchor symbol next to component one.
That means that component one is anchored to the project. It's not going to go anywhere. Let's un-anchor that and have a little bit of fun.
We'll right click and un-ground from the parent. So it can move wherever. And component two isn't grounded either.
It can move anywhere. And now we combine these into what Fusion calls an assembly. And an assembly is created with joints.
So let's just click off of everything, so nothing's selected. And we'll notice that there is an assemble drop down. Assemble.
And then we have joint tool. We'll create a joint. So let's click on joint.
And we'll combine two components into one assembly. So to do this, we have to pick where that joint will occur. So let's say we click the top of that first box.
So click the top of that first box. That's where we're going to assemble two. What do we want to assemble? Component two.
Now I'm going to click the top of one of the component two boxes. So I'll just click that one time. And look, they all assemble really nice.
You saw that box flip up and fly right into place. Now let's move these joint options into place. So origin mode is simple for component one and component two, and that works.
Let's click over on the motion tab. We can see the type is rigid right now, but we have other options. For example, revolute.
Those joints could be something that spins together. It could be a slider. And that's a z-axis.
You can see, that wouldn't work because they slid into each other. I might swap that out for a y-axis. That makes more sense.
Then there's cylindrical. Again, might have to change the axis and how far it goes to make that one work, but we'll just play with these for a moment. Pin slot, planar, and then a ball.
Now those are the options we have. The rigid just kind of shakes because it lets us know it's a rigid connection. Now, if you think of how things in our world are built, they're usually screwed together, rotated together, rigidly stuck together, and that's what the fusion assembly is trying to mimic with this tool.
We'll go ahead and leave this at rigid and click okay. Now we've got two components, one and two, and we'll notice that we have a new folder called joints and that rigid connection is there. What we've created now is a fusion assembly, a very basic one.
Now we'll take it to the next level and use all of these skills to create a real product.
