Consumer Product Design Re-Imagined

KRISTEN KILROY: Hello. And thank you all for joining us here at Autodesk University. In this class, you'll hear from me and two of my Autodesk colleagues on a workflow to facilitate an easier collaboration and process for designing electronic consumer products. As our class description detailed, we'll be taking a look into how to utilize Fusion 360 for product design, PCB design, and product manufacturability insights. Without further ado, let's do a quick intro of each of us so we can get into the fun stuff. Ed, do you want to start?

EDWIN ROBLEDO: Hi. Thank you, Kristen. I appreciate the introduction. Well, my name is Edwin Robledo. I work for the tech marketing manager for all things electronics here and Autodesk. And I join Autodesk approximately five years ago as part of an acquisition of EAGLE software, which I had been working for approximately the last 20 years before joining Autodesk. And now I run tech marketing for Fusion 360 electronics as well as for Autodesk EAGLE. Thank you.

GARIN GARDINER: Great. Thanks, Edwin. My name's Garin Gardiner. I'm a senior product manager on the Fusion Team. I've been at Autodesk around 18, 19 years. Early career, I spent a lot of time on Inventor and have worked both on adventure and Fusion 360. Right now, focusing on some really fun things you're going to see today around product design extension and some of the cool things we're doing with that. So excited to be able to share that with you guys and. I'd love to see how you guys use it in the future.

EDWIN ROBLEDO: Thanks, Garin. As mentioned, my name is Kristen Kilroy. And I'm a product marketing manager for simulation products here at Autodesk. I've been with the company for eight years. And my background is actually injection molding.

I've always been the type of person to think about how to improve part quality of a plastic component. So that's kind of what brought us three together here today to create this class for you. Now, before we get things started, I do need to share the slide with you, which at a high level explains that we will be sharing some forward looking topics, including previews of technology not yet available within Fusion 360.

Therefore, there is some risk that the technology shown here today may change or even not be included within the product in the future. So this is our way of letting you know and to please keep that in mind as we move through our demonstration here today. With that, I'll go ahead and turn things over to Garin, who will jump into plastic part design. Garin.

GARIN GARDINER: All right. Thanks, everybody, for joining us. We're really excited to be able to share with you a workflow with the product design extension moving into electronics and downstream into simulation. We're going to show with this Logitech headset how we can take the left side of the enclosure here, be able to build some plastic features into it, make sure it's manufacturable, and also add a PCB in it to make sure everything's going to function properly.

So we're first going to start off by taking a look at just that left side. And we don't need all the components in here. So let's just burrow in a little bit. And you can see here that we have the front and the back cover here.

And to dig in a little bit more, we're just going to turn the front cover off. And I've got a proposed sketch here where we want the PCB and some mounting holes. And we want to be able to work with Ed on the electronic side to make sure everything's going to work together and what adjustments we need to make in either the model or the PCB design.

So we're going to start off first by going into my plastic tab through the product design extension. And you'll notice that we have-- much like sheet metal now, we can declare this as a plastic part. And we can choose what kind of material we're making it out of.

And you'll see as we go along how that's beneficial. But basically I have a library with some standard materials that will help build my downstream features and allow me to modify those as needed. And you also notice that I have a couple of features in my browser that allow me-- or in my ribbon up here to add additional features to my model.

So the first thing we're going to do is add a couple of bosses in here. And you'll notice with our boss command, we now have presets. So we've added a new boss command. You'll see in certain areas in the extension we have presets.

You'll be able to create your own presets. And I've created a couple, one of which is a PCB boss. And a couple of things I've done here-- it's just looking at one body that it's attaching to, a straight hole. And it's not putting any step. It's not joining two bosses together.

And then here we can see what offset value I have. And in the future, I'll also be able to specify what fastener I may want to use in this. But with that, I'm going to place a boss in both of these areas. Now, one of the nice things about our boss command-- it's automatically tapering and putting fillets at these edges.

And what we have is the ability here, based on the type of material-- based on the type of material, it's adding various parameters. So it's knowing the overall thickness of my material. And then in some cases, it's got an equation dividing some of these values. And I can tweak these as I want and save these as a preset and use them elsewhere.

So it's very robust, very-- just very capable to be able to have the settings you want to use and configure those to be reused over and over. And have things like taper angle, fillet radiuses, width, depth, all of those types of things. So we'll create that.

And you can see here that it's putting the fillets. It's actually tapering the edges. So instead of having multiple features in my browser, it's capturing all of that with a single feature.

The next thing we want to do is add a rib in here, a web. And with that web, we're going to grab one of these edges. And you'll notice we're going to put a boss on here too. So we just want to add a little strength to it.

But I don't necessarily want it to go clear through my part. So I can turn off extended curve. And you can see what that looks like.

I also have my little favorite settings here. So I'll do a boss rib. And then I can come around and pick other edges here to do multiple. And, again, this is adding fillets on the bottom, taper angle on the side. And I can have that all tied to my material.

So as my material size changes or if I change to a different material, you'll see those update. And we can see that here. If I come to the back shell, you can see the rule that's being used. It's ABS plastic. Quick, I can come into my material library.

We can actually create a new library here. And we'll say that this one is going to be-- let's do something like 1.8 millimeters or 2 millimeters. We'll just customize that to 2 millimeters. And from here, we'll save it.

You'll see that I have a new one in my material. So now when I come in and say, let's modify this, I've got the 2 millimeter. Hit OK. And you're going to see everything in a little bit thicker. I think you probably saw everything get a little bit larger there.

We'll change it back. And you'll see it. It's kind of subtle. But you can make us big or small of change there as you'd like.

We're going to come in and add another rib. And then we'll change that material size to bring it back down to the original size. We're going to grab one of these edges out here-- or points. And much like we did before, we're going to say, this is for my boss cover.

So I've got two components that we're going to connect together. And right now it's only showing the back plate. But as soon as I come in and turn on the front speaker plate, you'll see that it's now looking to create a top and bottom of the boss.

Also, you'll notice that I have a nice little cross section here. One of the things early on when we were using this, we found we were always turning on cross section analysis, turning certain components on and off. And it was a lot of juggling things back and forth.

So we added this dynamic cross section. And you'll notice that I can cross section individual parts. And then I can turn the cross section on and off altogether. So you have some nice little filtering there.

And then let's come around and just grab-- once we like the shape of this, we can see its tapered walls. It's all set up like we want. We'll kind of walk around here and grab the other edges or other points.

And then we'll just accept that and let it generate all four of those. So, really, in just a couple of features, I've got my bosses that allow it to connect both the top and bottom. We have two bosses to connect the PCB once it's created. And then we have some ribs to stiffen everything up.

So we're pretty happy with that. All that said, we want to be able to work with Ed on the electronics side to be able to make sure that this enclosure will work appropriately and give us all the room that we need. So with this, I'm just going to save it where it's at. And we're going to pass this over to Ed to have him take a look at this, generate the PCB, and see what adjustments, if any, that we'll need to make downstream. So with that, I'm going to turn some time over to Ed.

EDWIN ROBLEDO: Garin, thank you for putting together such a detailed outline for the PCB. This type of outline is best generated in the Fusion 360 design workspace. When innovating a new product, the biggest challenge is communication and collaboration between the different engineering teams. Traditionally, the mechanical engineer would need to find a file format that the PCB layout engineer could import.

This broken process is prone to errors since units and grids must contend with the correct import. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Now, by using Fusion 360, the mechanical and electronic teams can work in the same environment. From the File pull-down menu, you could access the new electronic design environment. From the electronic document, we could actually either link existing schematics or create a brand new schematic.

For this example, I already have a schematic I already started. The same happens with the board layout. I could either link to an existing board or start a brand new one. So I'm going to go ahead and link my schematic.

OK. And there's our schematic. Now, please notice that the electronic document remains open. The idea is that the electronic document is going to be monitoring the synchronization between the circuit board as well as the schematic. So any changes done to the schematic will automatically update the board. I'm just going to save what I've accomplished so far.

Now, in the schematic, you're going to notice that at the bottom we could see our sheets as well as-- the environment is very similar to the rest of Fusion 360. Therefore, the engineers are going to be working with a very similar user interface. Now, the first thing I'm going to be doing is I want to show you when adding components to the schematic, you have access to thousands upon thousands of libraries that are created by our team of librarians or contributed by our partners.

So if you notice in the list of components that we have, a list of libraries of our repository that we have, you have the primary ones that are done by our teams. But I could select the Open Manager and go to Available. And here, I'll be able to get access to many more libraries, which are contributed by our partners, such as TE Connectivity, Wurth Electronics, and many more that are out there.

So being able to find the part that you're going to be using in your design is going to be quite possible. Now, there are instances that creating your own component will be necessary. And that's no problem with Fusion 360. Fusion 360 also includes a very elaborate library editor, which actually building components in just a few moments. And I'll do a small example.

To access the library editor, you're going to click on the File pull-down menu and select New Electronic Library. This will bring you to our library editor. From the library editor, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to select a brand new schematic symbol.

But in our case, I'm going to import a schematic symbol that we already have in use. So I'm going to select an LED. And I'm going to go to my LEDs library. And that's the symbol I wish to use.

And I want to click OK. And I'm going to go ahead and input that led. Now, I need a footprint associated to the schematic symbol. So instead of having to create one, I could use a specification sheet from a manufacturer. And I could access the package editor.

In the package editor, we have a list of IPC compliant templates for many of the components that are actually being used in the industry. So now I'm here, I'm going to go ahead and select my LED chip because it is such a small LED. I could enter the measurement, all the mechanical details for this LED.

Now I'll ahead and click on Add. And you're going to notice that it's going to create the 3D model as well as the footprint. These dotted lines that you see here are referring to the footprint. Since this is the component I wish to use, I'm going to go ahead and click Finish.

Yes. I wanted to add it. Click on Save. Now I have the schematic symbol.

And the final step is associating the schematic symbol and the footprint. And that's as simple as creating a brand new device. I'm going to select my package, which is this one here, which includes a 3D model as well as the footprint, which is created by our package editor. And I'm going to associate my schematic symbol.

And the only thing they need to do now is actually associate which schematic symbol pins go to which pads on the footprint. So to be able to do that, I'll just click on Connect, anode to anode, and [INAUDIBLE], and click OK. And now my component is ready to be used in our design. So it's that simple to be able to make components using Fusion 360 electronics.

Now, let's go back to our schematic. In our schematic editor, what we would like to do is go ahead and create a PCB based on the schematic. Now, remember I told you earlier that any changes done to the schematic will affect the board. At this moment, we don't have a board layout created as of yet.

So I'm going to click on Create Board. All the components are going to appear on the left-hand side of an empty board layout. This empty board layout is a default size that we've been using. It's approximately 4 by 6 inches. Now, all of the connections actually appear on this board.

If I move one of these components, you're going to notice that there's these lines attached to it. Those are the connections that were defined actually in the schematic. But this is not the board outline that I wish to use.

Now, this is where it becomes really important for the circuit board designer to have an accurate board outline. Traditionally, as I mentioned earlier, they would have to do file conversions. That way I could import it. And if there's any changes, that will take another set of file conversions.

With Fusion 360, we don't have to do any of that. I'm going to go and work on the sketch profile that Garin has created in the enclosure that he has been working on. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to click on Create. And I'm going to select where it says derived from PCB sketch.

Why am I using PCB sketch? Because any changes that Garin does to the sketch profile, I will be able to see them if necessary. So I'm going to go ahead and select this and click here. Now, what this is going to do is it's going to go ahead and create what we call the 3D PCB. The 3D PCB is the interface between the design workspace and the PCB outline.

Now, notice that the PCB, the 3D PCB that got generated, actually has the complex outline. And it also includes the two holes, which are going to be holding this board in place inside of that enclosure. For me to draw this in the PCB design workspace would be extremely complicated. And being able to import a file is one solution. But it may not be as accurate as actually being able to do it within the same environment as the mechanical engineer.

Now, remember that the circuit board has its board outline. So how do I adapt that outline, which I've derived from the design workspace and apply it to my PCB. Well, let's show you this. Before I actually continue, let me say what I've accomplished so far.

Now, with Fusion 360, what I'm going to do is I'm going to link this outline to that circuit board that I'm currently working on. I'll select here and click on Select. Notice that now the PCB actually has the outline. We were able to do this only in a few moments. And we're still in the same environment, Garin and I.

So now what I'm going to start doing is adding the components into the board outline. But before I actually do that, let me go check my manufacturing rules that I wish to follow. First of all, I have my layers. And I plan to use a six layer board because since this board is actually going to be using a lot of bulk reiterates and it's rather small, I need to do a lot of breakouts. So I'm going to be using a six layer board.

Now, my clearances, I'm going to go with the default values, which is 6 mils. I'll go ahead with those values. That should work for me.

But now when it comes to the distance, which is how far the-- for copper dimension, is how far copper could be from the outline of the board. I'm actually going to change this value to 10 mil because at 40 mil, it's just too big. The rest of the DRC settings, I'm just going to work with those. So I'll click Apply and Cancel.

Now, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to start adding components to my broad outline. I'll return to design and click on Move and select my components. I want my USB to be right here as well. And I want to take some of these connectors, put them where they belong around here.

Now, we have multiple environments that we could work with. So I'd like to go ahead and demonstrate that I'm going to-- right now, I'm going to use ignore violations. In other words, it's going to let me do any movement that I want to do on the board.

And I'll take this connector, which is going to be a connector for the battery. Notice I'm going to zoom in. As I get close to the outline, you'll notice that these hatch lines are showing up, letting me know that these-- in real time, it's letting me know that these are manufacturing errors.

But since I am in working with the environment to ignore violations, I'm going to go ahead and change my grid. I'll go to a much smaller grid. That way I get a much smoother-- and see how the grid [INAUDIBLE]. Now, I could change my environment to walk around violations.

And what this will do-- and let me zoom out a little bit. That way you can see the difference. Notice that now it will actually not-- I'm trying to put it there. It won't let me go any further than that because if it got any closer than that, it would actually create a violation. You see how it actually will jump?

See, it's making sure that I cannot place this component in an area where it will disagree with my design rules that I've already set up. This component actually is going to be on the bottom of the Layers. So let me switch it down to the bottom, which is what the blue means. And I'll go ahead and place it there as well.

Let me go ahead and continue moving to other components where they belong. Now that I've completed the layout of the circuit board, I'm going to pass this over to Garin. That way he could take a look at the board and make sure that all my components are placed in the correct spot and just to make sure if there's any other modifications before I spend time routing.

And that is one of the benefits of working on an environment that has so much collaboration between the mechanical and electronic engineer. Very commonly, I would just start routing this board and have it completed, maybe export a STEP file, have the mechanical engineer import it. Then he would actually make any modifications. But here, we're able to streamline that process since we're in the same environment.

So let me just go ahead and create the 3D PCB from here. Now, I would like you to understand that the PCB-- the 3D PCB that's getting created, it's not only a canvas. It's actually extruded bodies. All these components actually have materials assigned to them. All of these components have the appropriate properties.

So if I was to set up loads-- the much power they dissipate, I could-- in Fusion 360, I actually could do an equaling study on them as well. So it's not that you're getting something that is a 3D nonfunctional-- this is a fully functional 3D. So Garin, I like you-- go ahead and insert that in the PCB. And see if there are any changes that need to be done. Thank you.

GARIN GARDINER: You bet. Thanks, Edwin, for doing that. Really looking forward to getting a 3D PCB in here that we can kind of analyze and make sure everything's going to fit OK. So we'll come in here to the electronics and grab just the one that Edwin created.

You can see here that we can just insert it into my current design. I probably don't need the 2D representation here. So we'll turn that off in just a moment. We'll get rid of that. And then we just want to be able to add a joint in here to get it in the right location.

So let's just get that-- rotate that. So we have this in place. Now, from here, we want to make sure that all the buttons and everything match up. So we can come into our internals, turn on all these buttons. We've got a power, volume, mic.

And Edwin routed all of the buttons here. And you can see that this was a little bit larger button. So he may not have known where to position this. And we can tweak this. That's a great thing about he and I working together in here.

I can just do a quick edit in place. And we're going to make a quick change there. So with that, I can just grab that component and drag it in where it's going to fit OK there-- about right there. Hit OK. And when I'm done, he's actually going to get a notification that I've made some kind of change.

And then I can also see here that I've got a hole-- that mounting hole that I was kind of eyeballing where we wanted to put this. I need to move it to a different location. It's going to be right in the way of that particular switch.

So let's come into my sketch. Let's turn it back on. And this is the point where that boss was being created. We're just going to drag it over to a little more safe place.

And then we'll move that boss over and you'll see here in a second, it regenerates that boss. So now if we turn off our PCB for a minute, you can see here that we have our boss that moved from over here over to here. So Edwin's going to get a notification that we've made a couple of design changes here and be able to make whatever adjustments he needs to on his side.

So let's just save this. And we'll pass it back over to him to make whatever changes are necessary.

EDWIN ROBLEDO: Garin, that's great. Thank you for taking care of placing the components exactly where they need to be. That way I don't have to be routing over and over again. That really is a time saver as me as a PCB engineer.

So I noticed that I have some changes. And I'm going to go ahead and adopt those changes that you've applied. So in the 3D PCB, I'm going to go ahead and select Adopt Changes-- right here. You just take a minute.

I could see how the switch has changed to its new position because I see the PCB outline is still in its original space. So I noticed that you were-- you will have changed it. And I also can tell that the boss hole is actually changed as well.

Now, I need to adopt those into the PCB outline. So I'm going to click on go ahead and push to PCB. That way, I can go ahead and synchronize it. So now my PCB is going to adopt these changes.

Now, to complete the cycle, I need to push it back to the 3D PCB before I start making any more modifications to the circuit board and to start doing my routing. You will notice in a momentarily that the outline of the switch is actually going to go to the correct position. So let's go back to the PCB. That way, I could start doing my routing.

Doing the routing process, I'm just going to use the route command, quick route, which is one of the neatest tools that we have. It's a really convenient tool that we have in the PCB outline. So I'm going to take a couple of these components and I'm just going to use a quick route.

That way I can just route them for me. Go ahead and do some more. So quick route-- the best thing is that it actually takes into consideration all the manufacturing this is necessary on the board.

And it's being applied as it does this route. So make sure that the routing is complete, that the routing is manufacturable, and that there's no design rule errors throughout the board. Now, I could actually select multiple lines at the same time. I could select multiple paths.

And I could start routing those simultaneously as well. So as you could see here, I could route multiple lines. I've completed the majority of the board. I'm just going to do this last route here that we have, the signal. Yeah, going around.

Now I'm going to go ahead and push this to the 3D PCB. That way I could hand it back to Garin. That way he can insert it in the enclosure to make sure that everything lines up correctly.

OK, Garin. Go ahead and insert this. And let's see if everything works OK.

GARIN GARDINER: All right. Thank you, Edwin-- really appreciate it. Nice to get that all done and get the button moved around and just make sure everything is working OK. I can see here that there's an update that's happened. So I'm just going to get latest here and pull any updates that have changed. There we go.

So we've got all the details, everything in place. We've got the bosses. We've got the top and bottom enclosure all ready to go. So we'll turn on-- just so we can see everything together, we'll turn that on. Turn on the ear cup.

And one of the last things that we want to do here before we wrap this up and do some simulation on it-- we do have our ear cup that we need to put some holes here for the speaker. So we're going to go back over to our plastics tab. And then inside of here, you'll notice that we have a new geometric pattern for the product design extension.

And with that, I'm going to turn on-- just to give a couple of examples of what this can do, I'm going to start with something that-- maybe that we're looking to add some grip texture, not necessarily holes. I'm going to give you a couple of scenarios of some things that you can do here. You'll notice that I grab the sphere. And then I can grab a surface. And it's having the sphere follow the contour of the surface.

It could be an organic type of shape. And this will flow across that organic shape. And then I can do things like change size, have it flow from one size to another size so it gets bigger or smaller or vise versa-- a little bit too big there. But overall, what we want to do here is actually put holes through here. So I'm going to turn off the grip piece.

And we're going to grab a-- and this is-- we will have some predefined shapes that you can use. And then you can also use your own custom shape. So I just created a cylinder here I'm going to use as a whole until we get all the objects in place. We're going to select this surface right here.

And you'll notice that it puts that cylinder on there. Now, typically, this comes in at 0 degrees. But because I have a slant on this surface, we want to come in and have that go at an angle. So you can see where patterning it across the sphere or that surface there.

We can specify-- maybe we want it to be more of a triangular pattern or a hexagonal pattern or, in this case, a circular pattern. And then we can also say, we want it to start out at 10 for the maximum size. One is the minimum size. You'll see that we've got a couple of different orientations so you can change your alignment here.

And then we can adjust our spacing. So we can specify what kind of spacing we want in here. And then once we're happy with that, we can just tell it that we want to remove the material.

So in some cases, you may want to join material. In some cases, you may want to cut-- remove the material, add the material, or create new bodies here. We're going to cut it. So we have our speaker holes that look like that.

Imagine doing that manually-- a lot more effort to go into creating all of those. And imagine if it was a bit more of a contoured surface. So just some examples of some of the things you can do with the new geometric pattern.

And I think just to wrap this up, being able to declare that it's a plastic part, put the ribs and the webs in there, and then being able to get the PCB and all the intelligence built in. And now we want to be able to come in and make sure that it's actually manufacturable, that we can make this part. So we're going to turn some time over to Kristin to be able to come in and just make sure that we can actually turn this into a nice molded part. So Kristen, we'll turn the time over to you.

KRISTEN KILROY: OK. Thanks, Garin. I appreciate you getting the part pretty much finalized and ready to go. This is the point in time where you're usually asking yourself, as a designer or a mechanical engineer designing this plastic part, how to actually go about manufacturing it. Will it be manufacturable with the current design choices?

For instance, all those boxes that Garin added-- will those be able to fill within the mold? Injection molding is a powerful way to manufacture a part. However, it does take some care when you're actually designing a part for that specific manufacturing method. And for this reason, Fusion 360 has an injection molding simulation tool that helps that designer understand what design changes may be needed in order to accomplish a high quality part.

So we'll take a quick look at it here. We've got the full assembly of side section of the headset here. And we'll just switch over to the simulation workspace. For this particular class we'll, take a look at that injection molding simulation.

So now that we're in the injection molding simulation, you could see here it's listed as study number one, plastic injection molding. And right off the bat, you get a little concerned because you see a little sick warning here. What this is saying is it's prompting me to select a target body.

Within the injection molding simulation in Fusion 360, it is part specific. So even though we have a full assembly put together here, that's not how it's going to be manufactured. You're going to be focusing on a particular part in order to see how it is manufactured.

So in this case, we'll take that back body that Garin has put together for us. Select that as OK. And as soon as we do that, that warning goes away.

So over here, we're all set. You can draw down this menu. It says body one is the target-- so even more confirmation that we've chosen the correct body here. At this point in time, we could realistically just go ahead and actually solve the simulation.

However, it contains all the default values, which won't necessarily be exactly how your part is being manufactured. So for instance, the material-- in this case, it imported a specific material grade. That might not be what we were looking for in this particular design.

So for that reason, I would encourage you to just take a stab at selecting the material at least or even changing this injection location. This is where the material is actually pushed into the mold cavity to form that part. And with plastic, it is critical for the placement of this because, one, it's got to be able to be built into the mold correctly. And then, two, it also affects how the part actually turns out-- part quality-wise.

So in this instance, let's go ahead and just try selecting a new material. Garin had mentioned earlier that he was designing those plastic ribs and bosses on the part as ABS material. As soon as we click into this material database, we can see here at the top, it's got over 11,000 materials. How are you supposed to choose throughout those if you don't know the first thing about plastic injection molding. That's why there's all these generic materials at the top.

Because they're generic, you're able to really get some flexibility when you're solving. So we can see here right off the bat, there's a generic ABS. If we click into it, it shows up with all the characteristics that this generic material grade is associated with.

So returning back to the database here, if I were to have a specific material grade in mind, I could search for ABS or search for the manufacturer or trade name and find that material specific to what I was looking for. All of these materials are either tested from the manufacturer. And the data is provided to Autodesk for the purpose of incorporating it into the solver or the Autodesk material lab test the material and generates the material within this database.

So we'll keep this at the generic ABS for now. And once we selected it, if you notice-- it was really quick-- adjusted these melt temperature and mold surface temperature values. That's because once you select the material, everything's connected. So default values is updated with that material selection.

Just to continue on with that thought, click into these process settings. And you can see here, it actually lists the recommended value for that particular material. So you can come in here and customize as needed or keep it at the recommended, which is typically how a process is created on an injection molding machine.

They start in the middle and then work their way either higher or lower depending on the results that they get at that point. There are additional settings that you are able to adjust. Again, for most users, this might not even be needed, just because at this point in time you're really looking for how you're manufactured part is being affected by your part designs. We'll leave that at default and go ahead and click OK.

And then circle back to this injection location. As you can see it, as soon as we went into this targeted body when we selected it, it applied an automatic injection location where that material is being pushed in. In this instance, I'm going to go ahead and actually change that.

So let me go ahead and delete that first automatic one. And let's say I want the injection location on this front side-- just click it up here. I like the spot because the assembly part comes down and it blocks that.

So it's not going to be a visible defect or anything because it'll be hidden by that head strap. While we're in here, you can see that the injection location placement tool is still active on my mouse. So I can add any number of injection locations.

It's not ideal or it's not realistic to have this many injection locations on this small of a part with a few features it has. So in this case, I'm just going to leave it to that single gate, that single injection location, and go from there. What I can do, however, is once this is all set up-- so we can go through the rest of these. But we can actually go over here and clone the study. And it'll pull everything that we set up in here already-- duplicate that so that we can go in and actually experiment with where to place that.

So if you don't know where it is, that's OK. We can experiment, run various different studies, and identify where the best location would be. Now, this last setting here is aesthetic faces. Again, this is an optional feature.

But what it is doing is letting you specify what faces of this part are critical with regards to visual aesthetics. So in this case, since this will be most likely hidden by the head strap connection, I'll go ahead and select these faces just for us to take a look at today. Click OK. And you can see it's updated.

And then it highlighted those green just so that we know we did apply some type of boundary condition just for the solvers to be able to look a little bit closer towards that. And this will make a little bit more sense when we go into the result. So stay tuned for that.

Now, let's go ahead and click Solve. And you can see here it pops up with a cloud solve option. And once we send it off to be solved, Fusion 360 pops up with a notification letting us know if it's successfully started. And then it even shows this jobs status window.

So I'll close that up. For the sake of time, what I actually have done is duplicated this. And I have the results for this similar setup in addition to a couple other studies so that we can take a quick look at.

So now that we switched over to completed simulation, we can take a look at what's different here. Notice next to the study it's got this green check mark. That means solve is completed and you can actually go into the results.

And you can see that here too. So I have a couple other studies set up. One is completed whereas one is still in progress. But it's a good indicator for seeing what results you're able to work with, especially if you're using comparison tools.

So let's go into the results. And what happens is you actually get placed into what is called the guided results section. And within the section, it's ideal for those not too familiar with plastic injection molding because what it's actually doing is telling you what's wrong, why it's wrong, and how to fix it.

So if we take a quick look, we've got three different categories here for the guided results. The first one here, fill, has a green check. And you can see here it's basically saying that cavity is able to fill with the material that we've selected. And all of the geometry seems to be allowing that material to flow through correctly.

Now, if we switch over to the visual defects, you can see there's a little warning listed there. Eight faces on your model will have sink marks. And 55 will have weld lines. And if we hover over this aesthetic faces, you could see there's green sections and red sections.

So let me just flip that part over so it's a little bit easier to see. And what this is showing is the green sections are those faces that we selected during the setup to be aesthetic faces. The green areas are free of any defects whereas the red do have some concerning areas.

Now, when you first see this. You might think, oh, that's not good. It's got red all over it. That's not the case.

So if we take a closer look at it, you can see these sections here, these are the sink marks. And if we look at the scale, sink mark depth in millimeters. It's 4/10 of a millimeter deep.

So depending on your tolerance allowance and whether or not you're adding any additional surface finishing options, that might not be a concern for you. Sink marks are caused by thicker sections, especially behind features like bosses. You could see there right at the top of those bosses that Garin had added.