Autodesk Fusion 360 CAM: From Design to Multistage Machining Technical Documents

JOE KAWKA: Hello. My name is Joe Kawka. I'm a digital engineer at Toyota Motor North America Production Engineering inside the Powertrain Division specifically. And my class today is Fusion 360 CAM from Design to Multi-stage Machining Technical Documentations. And here's the safe harbor statement.

And to start off, I kind of want to preface this lesson or this class that there is a lot of development still going on with this, but also a lot of progress that we have made. And it's something I feel very passionate about to share. So if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me. But to start, there was a situation where we had a very substantial bottleneck of creating technical documentation that we would then hand over to the plant side, the people who actually making our parts.

And the documentation is probably one of our primary outputs. And so if we're spending mass amounts of time on documents that are very required and it's something that we definitely needed to kaizen and improve, and so my first approach was to look at the bottleneck and kind look at what's all the data that's going into. So we'll take a deeper dive into how I kind of came to this conclusion and where I went with it.

So overall, I went through a project cycle and kind of listed out all of the tasks that my group and I have during every project. And you'll see, there's many phases to the project. And with every phase, there's a design release. And with every design release, these documents, the technical documents, have a potential to update and to highlight the points. Like I said before, our documents, at one point, took us three-plus months to just make a few sets, which I feel is very unacceptable for such a fast-moving pace of the industry, something that we definitely needed to capitalize on and improve on internally.

And you can see the map that I've made. And I'll point out here, every phase of the project, there's data that's released and also per the legend, I have what's-- as a digital engineer, we have some scan data that we utilize. For instance, fixtures-- there's static data of the actual machines that's never going to change throughout the whole project or the whole lifetime. There's also dynamic data. While we're studying, we're going to make new layouts-- also simulate how the production is actually going to happen. Also validate-- so running simulations to validate our assumptions, making documentations, and also just other general support roles.

The most critical part is probably this red arrow, and I apologize it's a little bit small to see. And I keep repeating this because it is an essential part every time there is a design release, a new design or a modification design, we have to update our operation drawings. And that is a big time soak for us. And you can see the "key takeaway--" that same exact verbiage. And we need some time to do other studies within our project.

So the data flow for our technical drawings-- I dug a little deeper, and I was really trying to figure out what kind of CAM software, in addition to modeling-- we all know Inventor and Fusion 360, as far as product modeling, are two that are the best at that 3D space. And then what really drove us to go to Fusion 360 is the integration of models that we can bring into that Fusion 360 space, so we're able to view the machine itself, where that is the big no-good situation for Inventor, where we couldn't see the machine geometry within the state.

But Inventor still has its place with model states quite recently, and also iLogic being a little bit more intuitive to utilize. The Fusion 360 does have some connection API capabilities. And then, lastly, we use Vault as our primary data management system, whereas Fusion 360 is not fully supported in the Vault, it's possible to use it. But I think to get the best out of the functionality, an Inventor file is best.

As you can see in my diagram to the right here, our old way that really explains the reasoning to why it took so long is that we, one, had uncontrolled data. So it was all on a shared drive. Two, we were utilizing AutoCAD not to its fullest potential but to really make fine edits, which is very manual and tedious. And then that would output our technical drawings. So when there was a new release of data, we would update the numbers in our blocks, in our dimensions, and whatnot. But the visual was never really there. It's was very difficult and tedious, again, to update the 3D or the model view in AutoCAD.

And so we wanted to bring in 3D. The industry's going to 3D, obviously. And so first, like I said, we're going to use Inventor for 3D modeling. We have the Vault. We're going to store it in there. And then, so we have a raw material and also our CNC machine, our asset-- from there, we're able to bring both the products and the machine into Fusion 360 CAM as opposed to Inventor CAM-- we're unable to bring in that CNC machine. With the Fusion 360 CAM, we can evaluate, make sure all of our toolpaths are good, we're good to go, and all of the data that we've inputted into it is correct.

From there, we have different sets of technical documentation. And so I'll explain a little bit further in the following slides about how it can now be distributed. And so, again, the data flow for technical drawings continued this-- more written-out of the same process. But we're receiving design updates for different design releases, typically if not more working. In my previous experience with machine shops, it could be very much more with different variations especially, and then update the 3D model.

So we're looking-- for the driver of the manufacturing changes would come from a spreadsheet, while the raw material is driven from a linked-- linked to another 3D model. This is because we want to really specify what's going on in the manufacturing space while we're not so concerned with the raw material. We'll bring it into Fusion 360, and we'll connect it using the native connector between Inventor and CAM, and then we'll output the technical drawings, either through Inventor or Fusion 360 depending on the capabilities and the preference, really. And so how do we set these connections? How do we make the data flow?

And so driving through the data, this is really similar to the data flow that I've kind of expected, that I've set up to expect from the output of this project of mine. And so with starting out inputting all the data, it is a requirement, from my end, that we use a more universal input so that more people have access to weigh in or even edit or if they don't need to have that intricate CAD skillset, so you can share this out with a broader audience. So I chose Excel. Spreadsheets are very common-- most universally accepted, especially for inputting a lot of data. Or really, you can use other datasets per part.

And within this dataset, we're specifying everything about the process per operation. So in our case, because we're running multiple machines in a line, and every operation has its very specific job to do-- essentially, rough mill a surface, drill or predrill holes, tap holes for the next machine, and so on. And so this is how we're splitting up all of our inputs. Every machine-- we're specifying the machine. We're going to specify the dimensional tolerances, and we're going to go beyond that every intricate detail within-- in that case, we have that master input of all the data.

From there, we use the iLogic API within Inventor to pull the data from the spreadsheets. And the data then is able to really drive the parameters with Inventor. And I'll go into a little bit more detail later on on how exactly we're achieving this. But this really enables, again, the engineers that are not skilled in 3D modeling, or anybody else really that's not skilled in 3D modeling, to be able to make changes and see it reflect in the 3D, so parametrically-driven. And then we would move the model into Fusion 360 CAM.

From there, they're synced both ways. You're able to update the Inventor file from the Fusion 360 file. But most of the time, in our case, we're going to be uploading the Inventor file into Fusion 360, again, for its CAM capabilities. We'll make every setup of every operation and run simulations for every one of them to get a go/no-go evaluation, or if it's a cycle time evaluation for each set or what have you. So we start getting more data about our specific operations.

And again, really key point is enabling those people to change the parameters within CAM. Even though they have no idea how to work CAM, they can update numbers within an Excel sheet and run this program, and it will spit out what exactly they're-- the results that they're looking for.

And then, finally, generating the documents-- we have three standard documents that we output, operation drawings, tool layouts, and precision measurement lists, which is an inspection sheet essentially. And these three are pretty common with everybody, I feel. And this can be accomplished in both Inventor and in Fusion. But ideally, in my case, drawings are driven by the 3D model, the CAM sim, and the spreadsheet.

So the visual is updated constantly without having to manually go in, update it in the very tedious 2D world. We're able to output CAM data into our tooling layouts, so we know what exactly we're dealing with, how many cycles we can run, and also the spreadsheets to really fill in all the metadata that we are packing into our technical documentation.

And so the next steps-- I kind of alluded to before, there are still some items that are missing, but there is a lot of progress going on. So I'll start going into the missing details. So currently, Toyota and Autodesk have a EBA, which is an Enterprise Business Agreement. And with that, we are able to raise our hand and ask for help when we need.

And this is a case where I definitely need the help from the-- this is a copy flow of what we've seen before, so the input data, the driven 3D models, driven CAM, checks and simulations, and then the outputs themselves. I was able to, with every green arrow, make links to wherever I needed to create the links as far as whether it's the 3D model itself going in just a universal 3D model, going into the Inventor space, and then creating model states from it, or taking the spreadsheet from our manufacturing list and putting it into the Inventor parameters.

That is all set-- obviously, able to move Inventor products into Fusion 360, and then also bring in our asset library, so our machines, geometry, and then our tooling library, into Fusion 360, with the a few snags. But we can get that done for the most part.

But the big issue that I've had is being able to populate all the tools used and the setups used within the Fusion 360 CAM and output technical documentation that is driven by said documents. And so that's where our relationship really came to an advantage to the both of us because this is giving light to maybe a gap in their software, but also helping us out in filling in these issues that we're having.

And so, like I said, we're leveraging this Autodesk service, and that's the EBA. And we're able to interface with them. They're able to quickly understand and start developing the workflow for these connections and these gaps because they're so knowledgeable in the Fusion 360 space or their own software space, really. And they were also able to not only just develop but also point me into the right resources because, sometimes, resources can be hard to find when it comes to such niche subject matter.

And so you can see here, I got a workflow from one of the Autodesk employees. And really mapping out what's going to happen next helps me understand what exactly is going on, what I need to do, and also lets me validate what's going on in my project. And so you can see we're starting with the tool specifications that I already have. P21 is a newer format that's coming out as a standard for everyone. And there are some insights on other partners using this P21 format.

From there, they're able to really expedite this Fusion automation portion of it. We're able to import the files, map data to drawings, and format the drawings, and then, ultimately, exporting the drawings. And when I say drawings, I mean the tooling layout, and not just what is there in a standard way, but more of a very customized proprietary tool layout output for Toyota to use that we've used for forever.

And then we're able to do a proof of concept. Their [INAUDIBLE] was really able to break out what is the flow for this proof of concept. So we want to make sure we're going to open up the files, make it very clear. We're going to make subprograms to reformat the Excel file into a Fusion tool library import, verify the import, and then create the drawing in an automatic way, and then, also, making sure that all the information, the metadata, is copied from the Excel file into the drawing fields appropriately. So this is very well-spelled out. It's very helpful and great to see.

I think some things to note that also could potentially need some improvement, but able to get around, is the connecting Inventor parameters to an Excel sheet, although it is really possible. And you can see here, this is my flow of how I've done it. It was also kind of a little bit difficult to get to. but once it's set up, it's set up, so it's very nice now.

What I did is I started with the Inventor parameters. I made sure to label them within the parameter sheet or spreadsheet within Inventor itself, just so it's easy to identify and link later on if need be. But I had to create an automatic iLogic export. So every time I save the Inventor file, I'm going to have iLogic prompt and export the XVL file out to a specific area, or if I need to-- if I have both a spreadsheet of parameters open and the file open, have a quick button to export out these parameters to make sure both my files are updated at the same time or are in sync.

From there, we have the raw XML file, and the best way that we found to edit this is to get it into an Excel format, so a spreadsheet Excel format. Again, we're going to have to-- we had to develop in-house a VBA or a macro to convert the XML format into an Excel format. Although Excel is able to import an XML, it's not as straightforward to export. But that was a whole thing.

And so once we get the XML imported into an Excel file, we're able to edit it. We're able to bring in the engineers' input spreadsheets, so that main master data sheet, we're able to bring that in and link the appropriate parameters in, save it out. Again, a macro will have to convert it back out to an XML format, how Inventor is able to read it. And then, again, every time I open up Inventor with this specific model, it'll pull that data automatically and update the model according to these new parameters-- again, needing to sync if I have both open at the same time.

So that is Inventor parameters and how to make them driven by Excel sheets. The reason I went with the XML import and export as opposed to the more simplified spreadsheet export and import is because of the capability that the XML has over the spreadsheets. I believe I'm able to specify tolerances a little bit more in XML as opposed to just the spreadsheet with just the main parameter.

Also, another note of mine is that there is some opportunity for linkage between the Inventor and Fusion 360. Although it's possible today, and it works great, and it's wonderful, the issue that I've found in my particular case is the use of model states, and I believe this is because it's fairly new. And unfortunately, every model state will have to render a new Fusion 360 file if that's the route you want to go. I am opting to match my setups with my model states, but break that link between and just start with the raw material and evaluate it from there. But if you do go on the route of needing every model state into Fusion 360, that could be a potential barrier of needing multiple Fusion files for every one Inventor file.

And then, lastly, our standard method of our precision measurement lists-- and that's essentially our inspection sheet-- is to bubble the dimensions. After many, many Google searches, I was not able to find a native feature within Inventor or Fusion 360 to bubble just numbers along with the dimensions, as you would a measurement list. And there is an add-in for Inventor that's quite recently come out. I have to try that, but an option nonetheless. But I think with the interactions I've had with Autodesk, I'm able to raise this flag and see if there's a possibility for some development, which is very nice. And I'm hopeful to see this soon.

Other than that, I think this about wraps us up. I appreciate your time. Please reach out for any questions. I know it was a lot more connecting Inventor/Fusion 360 and less CAM but I feel this subject, though being developed, is very important to our work to really shorten and bring down the amount of time it takes for us to study and output our technical documentations out to people that will need it. If there's an update to a drawing, if there's a change, a slight change, that needs to be done, this is the best system to use, in my opinion, to quickly and effectively output these changes to the people who need it the most. Other than that, have a good day. Thank you.