Easy and Fun Student Projects Using Fusion 360, Tinkercad, and More

LYDIA CLINE: Hello, fellow educators. Thank you for coming to my session. I'm honored that you chose it. I'm Lydia Cline, and I'm a drafting teacher at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas. I teach Fusion 360, AutoCAD, recap photo, Tinkercad, and then some other things, including 3D printing.

As far as the software goes, I am largely self-taught. I've had the great luxury of being able to pursue what interests me, and then I enjoy passing that knowledge on. I maintain a YouTube channel that has tutorials of the subjects I teach, and tutorials from the books that I write.

I write books on drafting. You may have seen them, they're used in a lot of schools. Some have gone into multiple editions and translated into multiple languages. And I'm working on a Tinkercad book right now that will be published next year.

So I got in to digital modeling when I was tasked to teach a 3D printing course at JCCC. And this was over 10 years ago. I had to design the course from scratch, choose the printers to buy, the slicing software to use, and then choose appropriate modeling software. This is because I didn't want my students to simply download models from Thingiverse and print them. I wanted them to be able to print their own designs up.

And if they printed downloads from Thingiverse, I wanted them to be able to edit them to their needs. The class had no prerequisites, and so my assumption was that the students would come in with no background in digital modeling. And that is indeed, the case for many of them. So I needed software that had a relatively short learning curve, so that the students could get up and running with digital modeling fast.

We all know that when something is hard, it produces discouragement. But when students see fast and early successes, that keeps them engaged and interested. And of course, that's my goal. I don't want them to drop the class.

So the programs that I currently use are Autodesk Fusion 360, recap photo, and Tinkercad. I also still use meshmixer, which is no longer supported, but is still great for analyzing files for 3D printing.

The goal of this session is to give you a taste of tinkercad in Fusion, and recap photo. And to show you via tutorials how to make three projects. These particular projects have been very successful for me at getting students up and running fast and keeping them engaged.

The bat cookie cutter and the business card are made by importing raster files. Well, should I say, finding a raster file, converting it to a vector file, specifically, an SVG, and importing the SVG file into Fusion. The reason I like this workflow, is because you're able to import a sketch that would otherwise probably take you a long time to do in Fusion.

And that is at odds with my goal of getting students up and running fast, early on. Later on, we do more sketching with Fusion. The candy jug was made by a really fun technique called reality capture. And we'll talk more about what that is later on.

And then I imported the capture into Tinkercad for editing. So if that's what you were expecting when you signed up for this session, that's what we're going to do now. And let's start with the bat cookie cutter.

Now before we get into it, if you haven't used Fusion 360, let me explain what it is. It's a cloud based app that you can also download and work on locally. So you can work on it locally or online. You can do solid modeling, surface modeling, t-spline, or organic modeling, and you can model parametrically or directly. So instead of using programs that specifically are for solid or surface or organic modeling, Fusion combines all of them.

I'm not going to get into the definitions of all those different types of modeling. Of course, I will invite you to read my book for a lot more detail. But we're going to do solid modeling here for these projects. And just so you know, Fusion can do a lot more than what I just described.

You can do sheet metal modeling. You can design generatively, that is it has artificial intelligence. It has an artificial intelligence component built in. You can do some rudimentary mesh editing, that is work on an STL file that you import.

You can render, meaning you can add color and texture and material properties to the model, which is useful for the simulation studies that you can also do. That is, you can apply stresses to your model and see how it reacts under them. You can create animations and generate g-code for CNC cutters, such as laser cutters and 3D printers.

So let's get to creating the bat cookie cutter now. First, find an image. I just do a web search looking for raster images, because of course, they're the most plentiful and easiest to find. Your raster image can be filled or it can be open. And this is what I mean by filled or open. And it can be high resolution or low resolution. But you need to have an eye out for ones that will convert successfully.

And the ones that convert the best from raster to vector are simple, are black and white, have a lot of contrast between parts, and have continuous connected lines. That's not to say that you can't get a good conversion without connected lines, or with little contrast, but that's the way to best.

If you have a raster image that you really want to use but it's not converting well, you can import it into Photoshop or whatever digital imaging app you like, and do things like ramp up the contrast or convert a color raster image to black and white. Or sharpen it. And sometimes that can make all the difference in getting a successful conversion.

So I used this JPEG that I screenshot. And then I imported it into an online converter. There are several converters out there, I happen to like this one. It's easy to use. You upload your image. You choose what kind of image it is, what kind of image you want to turn it into. Or what kind of file to turn it into.

And then you click Start. And soon enough, a download button will appear and you can download the image. And here's a video now of the process of importing that SVG file, the converted raster, and modeling it into Fusion. Let's import an SVG file and model it in Fusion. Click Insert. Insert SVG. And then navigate to that SVG.

Now, click on the plane to model on. I clicked on the horizontal. The SVG will come in. And then rotate it as needed. Then click OK. We have a clean import here with a solid face. Click Modify, offset. Click on the perimeter. And then either type a number or just drag the offset.

And once again, we have a clean break between the perimeter and the face inside it. Right click on the perimeter, click press pull. Either type a number or drag it up, then click OK. Now, with the inspect tool, we can click on opposite ends to see how large it is. It's 5.5 inches. Click Modify, scale. And then click a scale factor to get the exact size you want.

Inspect it again to see if it is indeed that size. And it is. Finally, go to File Export. Name it, and then click the type of file you want to export it as. I'm clicking STL. And then finally, click Export. And here is the Printed cookie cutter.

Now, let's take a look at how to model a business card. We're going to import a bit more complex file in, and then do some sketching around it. This is the file that I found online. And I used it as is, that is, I brought it to the online converter without finessing it in a digital imaging program. This is the conversion. Overall, it looks good, but when you blow it up, you see that there are rough edges.

And edges like that can be problematic when it imports into Fusion. And let's import it now and model it. I converted this JPEG to an SVG with an online converter. It converted OK. It's missing the top part. And if you look at this arc, it's composed of a lot of small lines that you can't do a lot with. I'm going to just erase this by using the Trim command under modify and holding down the left mouse button. And when I'm done trimming as much as I can that way, I'll just select and hit Delete.

Now, I'm going to draw a circle to serve as the face. And all these individual parts came in pretty well. They all extrude up separately. So I'm going to right click, choose press pull, and bring the sunglasses up. And click OK. I need to turn the sketches back on, because they automatically turn off. I'm going to repeat for the mouth, and then I'll repeat for the circle.

Next, I'll draw a business card to go under this emoji. Click on sketch, click on the plane to sketch on. Click on the rectangle. And I'm drawing it around the emoji. I'm going to round off the corners with the three point arc. Instead of drawing the arc three more times, I'm going to mirror it. And I need a mirror line, so I'm running the mouse over that horizontal line until the midpoint shows up so I can draw a line to mirror the arc around. And I'm drawing another mirror line.

Now, I'll click mirror. Click Select the mirror line. Select the mirror line. And there I have a mirrored arc. Now, I want to mirror both these arcs. So I select them both with the Shift key, and then select mirror line, and then select the mirror line itself. Click OK. And there are the other two arcs.

And with the Trim command, I'll remove the corners. Now, I'm going to draw a spline, because I'm going to draw a text along it. Click on text, text on path. Click the spline. And there is my text on path. I'll type what I want. And I've got all kinds of options here. For example, fit to path. That makes the text the entire length of the spline. I can choose a font. And I can choose the placement of the text. Click OK.

Finish the sketch. And now, let's right click on the text and press pull it up. Let's delete these mirror lines by selecting and hitting the Delete key. And now we just need to press pull the face of the card. I'm going to press pull it downwards, just to make it a bit easier. And there's the card. I'll turn off the sketches now to see it better. Click File. Export. Scroll down to STL file and export it. There is the card in meshmixer, showing that it exported with all pieces intact and looks good for 3D printing.

So did you get all that? If you want to add color, go to the Modify menu, click on appearance, click on faces. And then a paint folder will appear while you scroll down to the paint folder, and just slide colors onto the model. This is obviously, if you only want to use the card digitally. That is, you aren't going to print it. Because if you print it, then you don't need color, because the card will be whatever color your filament or resin is.

Now let's make a candy jug. And we're going to use a technique called reality capture to make it. This is a lot of fun. First, what is reality capture? It's the technique for making a model from photos or scans. So if you have an existing object that you would like to repurpose as something else, that is you want to edit it. In this case, I want to take this glass head and put a hole in the top to hold candy. I don't have to model it all from scratch.

I can simply take photos of it and get a model from that. So there's two kinds of photogram- there's two kinds of reality capture. One is photogrammetry, and that's done with a smartphone or a DSL camera. You send your photos to stitching software, and that software extracts data from multiple overlapping photos. It finds common features in the photos, and then recreates the subject. And you get a mesh model.

So this is a mesh model that was created from photos of this. The other kind of RealityCapture is done with LiDAR, that is light detection and ranging. Also called laser scanning or 3D scanning. And it's most commonly done with a laser scanner, although later model iPhones also have LiDAR capability. And the result is point clouds.

I use meshes in my class, because they're easier to work with. And I think more useful for small consumer items. Whereas, point clouds tend to be used for large scale projects. RealityCapture is used for a lot of great purposes. As I discussed, you can create a base for editing with it. It's useful for the arts. You can scan or take a whole bunch of pictures of a leaf, and look at that dense mesh. How long would it take you to model that from scratch?

You can, the entertainment industry uses it a lot to create video game assets and stage sets. Or they'll do a capture of someone's head and then edit it into whatever fantasy creature they want. The medical industry uses it to personalize prosthetics and other accessories. vs You can use RealityCapture to verify the accuracy of 3D printed objects, which is very important when printing replacement parts.

And then what's really cool, is its uses in the science and heritage space. For example, were you aware that the Smithsonian and Nasa have made reality captures of hundreds of items in their collections? And you can explore them. Click on these addresses, and you can download them for free and 3D print them yourself.

Recap photo is Autodesk's stitching software. It's cloud based software that processes the photos and it creates polygonal mesh models for you to download. You need to install ReCap Pro first. And that is LiDAR software. When you install it, there's a box to check to ask if you also want recap photo, which is an add on.

You click the box, and then you've got recap photo, which installs as a separate program with its own icon. So let's watch this video now on how I captured this glass head. In this video, we'll make a mesh model with photogrammetry. That is, by taking pictures of it. Here, we have a glass head. It's very shiny, and shiny objects don't photograph well. So they need to be covered. And you can use tape or water-based paint. Or as what I've done, cover it with flour. You also need to put it on a contrasting background. I've used birthday party wrapping paper here.

Take photographs of the object by walking 360 degrees around it at two different levels. Take the photographs every 30 degrees. You can use your smartphone or a DSL camera. The higher quality the camera, the better the photos, and the better the resulting capture. Once you get the photo set, you need to examine all the photos to make sure that they are consistently lit and crisp and clear. Discard any fuzzy, overexposed or underexposed pictures. Then open recap photo and upload the photo set.

Click Create. And then name the file. And click Start. In the lower left hand corner, you can see that the model is processing. This may take 20 to 30 minutes. Now click that graphic in the lower right of the larger graphic to go into the editing space. You can see the head was brought in with a lot of background that was on the photos. To remove the background, click on Edit and slice.

Make sure that fill is chosen, and then find a slice location where you can remove most of the background. Notice how the bottom of the head has been filled that is closed. So let's select, I'm clicking on window selection here. Let's select it and then hit the Delete key to get rid of the remaining background.

The model is textured, and we want to see the mesh. So click on visualization and then the mesh icon. And you can see, it's very dense. So we need to reduce it to make this importable into another program. It can take some trial and error to pick a number that works for you. But make sure that you do check best geometry, and that will help preserve the shape.

Now click decimate all. And there's the decimated model. And if that works for you, it looks good to me, click on Export. And then choose Export as STL. And click Export. Now we can import this into another program.

So you have to admit, that's pretty cool, isn't it? Because that's all that's involved in getting you a fabulous accurate model, whereas, you might need to spend hours trying to model that from scratch. And now that we've got this fabulous model, and note that we decimated it to make it easy to import, we are going to import it into Tinkercad and turn it into a candy jug.

Dense models don't import well into Tinkercad. And they don't import well into Fusion, either. So decimating a RealityCapture is always needed if you plan to workflow it with other programs. So what is Tinkercad? My guess is that most of you have probably already used it. But for anyone who hasn't, Tinkercad is a cloud based app, there's nothing to download. And it was originally created to teach digital modeling to kids.

It's very popular for 3D printing and for making Minecraft game assets. And while it's seemingly simple, it does have powerful features, like shape generators and code blocks, and a circuits workspace for electronics making. Now you can import your own STL files into Tinkercad. And another great feature of Tinkercad, is that it examines and fixes them on Import for 3D printability.

For instance, if you have faces or holes or overlapping polygons, these are all flaws that keep a file from being water tight. Water tightness, that is, if it were a water jug, you could pour water into it without any leaking out. Water tightness is essential for a successful 3D print. In my experience, Tinkercad also does a good job of maintaining the design intent while fixing flaws. Because a lot of software programs that repair meshes, they repair them for 3D printability, which Tinkercad does. But the end result may not look like what you wanted it to look like, so it's useless.

Now, Tinkercad can't fix very damaged STL files. If I send, if I import a file that it can't fix, it will send up warning labels saying there are issues with it. And then I'm best served by going back to the original application or the original file and trying to fix it manually. But the head file came in beautifully.

And now what I want to do, is cut a hole in the top so that I can put candy in it. So here's a video on how I did that. We'll import a mesh model into Tinkercad and edit it. Once you're in the dashboard, click on designs, create, 3D designs. And that takes you into the 3D design workspace. Click on Import. Drag the model in. I'm clicking on inches, and then I'm typing six. And then the other numbers will adjust proportionately. And then click Import. There's the model.

And if I click on a grip, the size will show up. You can see, it's 152mm, which is about six inches. I want to put a hole at the top to make this a candy jug, so I'll click on the bottom of the viewcube, and then click on that icon to see it in orthographic.

Drag the cylinder over, and I'm going to eyeball centering it. Now, click on it and drag the arrow up to move it up to the top of the head. To resize it and scale it around the center, hold the Shift and Alt keys down. And then drag a grip and it will rescale around the center.

Now push the cylinder down into the Click on the hole tool, select the hole and the mesh, and click group. Then click off it and there you have it. And here is the printed head and my attempts to paint it. I'm sure you could do a better job.

A lot of makers are content with just using Tinkercad because of the shape generators in the LEGO blocks and the other features it has that are enough for them. But for other makers, they want to graduate to something a bit more complex. Or maybe they want to edit a model they made in Tinkercad with features that Tinkercad doesn't have.

So you can export your Tinkercad model directly to Fusion. Know that you can only export basic shapes. That is, you couldn't export the glass head we just saw. You can't export meshes. But you can make a lot of great complex models in Tinkercad with just basic shapes. And then you can export them directly to Fusion.

And a fun thing is that even the colors will export. So if your model is red in Tinkercad, it will export red into Fusion. Well I hope you enjoyed that presentation. I invite you to visit my YouTube channel and connect with me there. Thank you.