Everything You Need to Know About Latticing and Texturing in Autodesk Fusion 360

JASON LICHTMAN: Hello, and welcome to today's session Everything You Need to Know About Latticing and Texturing in Autodesk Fusion 360. I'm your host, Jason Lichtman, and I am excited to teach you today's class. Before I begin, I have been asked to show you our safe harbor statement. You can pause this recording and watch this rather read this in detail.

The gist of it is that we may make forward-looking statements and any investment decisions or purchase decisions should be based on what is actually available in Fusion 360 today, not what might be in Fusion 360 in the future. Also, all of this content for Autodesk University is proprietary. Do not copy, post, or distribute without express permission from Autodesk.

And with that, let's talk a little bit about our agenda for today. I'm going to tell you a little bit more about me, as your presenter. We're going to get to know each other just a little bit, and then we're going to dive right into the fun stuff. We're going to talk about appearances and why they're important. We're going to talk about the differences between appearances and textures.

We're going to talk about geometric patterning to create surface textures, volumetric latticing to create internal geometrical patterns, and lastly, volumetric latticing to create surface textures, as well. We'll summarize everything that we've covered today. And of course, I'm going to have two favors to ask of you. So please wait till the very end and help me with those favors. I would appreciate that very, very much.

So let's start about your presenter. I'm Jason Lichtman. I'm a senior technical specialist for Fusion 360 at Autodesk. I've been with the company for the last five years. And my job is to meet with customers to learn about their business, what their needs are, and to show how Fusion 360 can meet and exceed those needs to help improve their workflows to make their business run more efficiently.

My background is in mechanical engineering. I have a bachelor's degree from Columbia University and a master's of mechanical engineering from University of Wisconsin-Madison. I spent a little over 10 years in industry designing consumer products. And for me, I like to think of it as everything from an idea to a 3D model, taking that 3D model and turning it into prototypes, and taking those prototypes and turning it into final mass-producable goods.

I've done that for a long enough time to become an expert in CAD, but I do have some specialties. They include consumer product design and engineering, and in particular, design of molded parts, 3D printing, 3D scanning including reverse engineering, as well as generative design and shape-topology optimization. Based on all of the above, I think I'm going to be the perfect person to present today's topic.

And I guess we should start with why texture is so important. Here's an example of a razor. You might have seen these razors before. You might have even used one before. But the point here, is that even though it's a simple small object, there's a lot of detail that goes into it. Here you could see the backside of the razor itself. This is what the packaging looks like, and there's plenty of detail that goes into making sure that when you buy a product like this, you end up having just as much fun unboxing it as you might have actually using it.

But when you are using that product, we try to put in simple little details that really distinguish between a mediocre product and an excellent product. And keep in mind, that an excellent product doesn't necessarily mean a high-price point. A razor like this is not very expensive. And of course, you could go and buy it in all the big-box stores.

But when you look at the back side of that handle, you're seeing lots of these little tiny details, those little bumps or textures, that really set this apart. They can provide grip, but they, more often than not, really just provide visual cues that this is a really nice product. And so we're going to use this as our example throughout today's session.

I hope you're excited. I prepared several different CAD models for you to use to follow along. We have one for appearances two for geometric patterning. We have a basic model as well as an advanced model. We have, for latticing, three different models a basic, an intermediate, and also an advanced. You can always go back, since this is being recorded, and pull out your phone and scan one of these QR codes to find the appropriate model, but I will introduce these QR codes again at the relevant section.

So with that, let's talk a little bit about appearances. And of course, this is the model that you're going to want to go and look at. One other thing to note that I think is going to be important. You can scan this on your phone, and use your phone itself to view the 3D model, but your best experience is going to be to view this in Fusion 360 itself. That would be the desktop app either on your Mac computer or on your PC. Either way, that's going to be your best experience. But if you don't have access to a computer at the moment or you just prefer your phone, feel free to use your phone to look at these 3D models throughout the presentation.

All right, so appearances, appearances in Fusion 360, are meant for photorealistic rendering, meaning photorealistic images to make the product look like a real product. This is typically done for rendering, or ray-trace rendering where you take into account the surface itself of the part any kind of shadow and light and a whole bunch of other factors, to make your product imagery look like the real thing.

And this is a great way to test out a product before you actually go and make it because you can get feedback from your customers before you ever made the real product. It saves you time and also money, of course. But appearances, they may look 3D, but ultimately, the actual appearance is not going to show up in your manufactured part.

So on the right here, you can see an example of a knurled handle. That might be made out of aluminum, or aluminum if you prefer. But this neural appearance is not going to show up in the 3D-printed handle if I go and I 3D-print a prototype. It's also not going to show up in a CNC-machined handle if you just apply the appearance because the model itself is still smooth even though it looks like it has that appearance applied to it.

So keep that in mind. That's going to be a very serious limitation of appearances, but it also means it's a really easy way to make your model look correct or look real. There is an extensive library of material appearances. You can use any of the existing materials or appearances in that library. You can also customize an existing appearance or even create one from scratch yourself. So there's a lot of customizability in here, as well.

When you're assigning these appearances, you can assign them by component, body, or even face. And a little caveat, just so you're aware, when I say that you can apply it by component, that includes what we call the root-level component, which is the top left corner of your Fusion 360 design document, which will allow that to assign to anything that's in that document.

So if you waned to, you can apply it to the highest level of your design document, or to the actual component, or to the body, or to the face. So there's a lot of different options for you. Now, let's actually go and take a look at this.

So let me pull up my Fusion 360. Here I have a 3D representation of that same razor blade. I told you we were going to use this throughout our presentation. You can see that I put in all the details, besides the texture or appearance, so far. And we're going to just get to focus on applying that appearance and seeing what it actually does.

If you're curious how I made this, by the way, I 3D scanned my actual razor blade. I have one right here that you can see. And I used that scan data to create this or reverse engineer this particular CAD model. Let's go and take a look at our Appearances menu. You can find it under Modify, right here. And you'll find Appearance down at the bottom. You'll see the letter A here is the keyboard shortcut, so in the rest of this presentation, I may just use that keyboard shortcut and pull this up really quickly.

Here I have a variety of different appearances that I'm already using this design or have used in this design. This will include one like this rubber soft or soft rubber, I would say In this light blue. I also have a shiny blue, which is going to be used for the bottom tip of this handle. And then I also have the soft rubber in the darker blue.

I have a variety of other things here, as well, including a light source that I could use for my rendering, but for now, let's actually stick to the basics. I'm going to go and use my soft, light-blue rubber, and we're going to apply this to our model. Now, I'm going to actually open up our handle, so you can see that I have multiple bodies in here.

And when I go and I grab this blue rubber soft, or soft rubber, I sound funny when I say that, I can drag this on to the component level, and it will turn this light blue, of course. I'm going to go and undo that real quick and go back into my Appearance menu. I can also go and drag that onto the handle itself and [INAUDIBLE] body instead of the component.

When I applied this to component, it applied to all three of these bodies as opposed to just one. And by the way, earlier, when I mentioned the root level, this on the top left, this is what we call the root level. So if you drag an appearance onto this, it will apply to anything in your file. But of course, I have a blade that I do not want to change the colors of, so I'm not going to be doing that today, but just be aware that you can do that if you'd like.

All right, so, so far, I have my light-blue silicone or soft rubber applied to my handle. What about the end of the handle? So if you recall from the slide deck that I showed, there's a darker, shinier color at the bottom. And so if I want to go and apply that, I could just change this menu to Faces. Choose the shiny blue, drag it down here, and apply it to just this surface.

So now I also have what we in the industry like to call a color pop. So I get this nice little pop. It's not exactly a texture, but it definitely looks different. It actually does feel different than the silicone rubber, so when I go and I grab this, it can actually feel smooth versus a little bit more grippy, so to speak, on the rest of the handle.

If I did want to add additional color pop, I could do that, as well. I'll just go and drag this onto my part to the various faces that I care about. And now I have the color pop there, as well. And overall, that's looking really good. But what about appearances that might not already be in your design?

So let's go and undo all of this again. All right, so now I'm back to my blank part. And I could search for different material appearances down here at the bottom. We have different categories, so if you want a plastic, you can go and find various different plastics. We do have some that are more textured.

You'll notice that some of these have a little arrow next to them. The arrow is just saying that it's not already installed in your computer. If you'd like to use it, click the arrow to download it onto your computer. Why is it not downloaded? Well, you probably remember that the Fusion 360 installation time is about 10 minutes or less. And part of how we're able to do that, is by not installing things you might not actually be using on a regular basis. But if you do want to use it, simply download it. It took 5 seconds, and then I could go and apply that to my part.

Here you can see this random texture applied, and like I said, this is actually looking textured, but this is really just an appearance. This surface is still very, very smooth, but it's looking pretty good. Now, let's go and apply that other texture. Let's actually go and apply the knurl.

Now for this, I might not remember exactly where it is in the database. So you can actually just go and do a search. So just do a search here. We have a variety of different knurl options. I'll go and download, maybe, the knurled brass, as well. We'll take a look at that. And that's looking pretty good, but I have to admit, I like the aluminum color.

And maybe I'm pretty happy with this, but if I want to customize this, I do have the ability to do that, as well. For this, you're just going to right click on the particular appearance, and you're going to see the ability to edit that appearance. It looks like my appearance is showing up on my second monitor, so let's actually go and take care of that real quick. This is looking good.

All right, so here are my options for this particular appearance. Anything that you change in these settings is going to live update on their Fusion 360 window so to my left here. And the first thing that I like to mess with, is the scale. I can raise it up or, of course, I can make this smaller. You can type in a number, like I just did, or you can drag this bar to wherever you see fit.

And I'll admit for something like this knurl, I think the smaller looks really good. I think it looks a lot better, actually, but I am noticing that there's an aspect of this neural pattern that just doesn't exactly look right, at least not for now. So how do we go about looking at this?

Well, first of all, let's close out of our knurl pattern for a moment, and let's maximize this window again. I have to tell you about something called texture mapping, or UV gridding. UV map, or UV grid is a way that we're able to define how a service itself is set up, like what is their U direction, what is the V direction on the particular surface. And you can actually change that. We actually do this for you by default, but you can change this if you'd like.

So let's right click on our body, and you're going to see here, Texture Map controls. You click on Texture Map controls, and it's going to let you change the mapping, but for now, I don't actually want to change it. I just want to view it. At the bottom here, you'll see a display mode. You can change that to UV Diagnostic Texture. And now you're actually seeing the grid that's on this particular surface, pretty handy.

Well, let's see what happens when we want to change that mapping. Right now the projection type is automatic, so Fusion 360 is figuring out what it thinks is the best choice. But sometimes, I like to think that I know better. So I'm going to choose a cylindrical mapping.

It is going to ask me for an axis, and thankfully, I have one ready for us. And let's go and select that axis right here. And just like that, my UV map changed. The direction of the red arrow changed. The green arrows changed. Everything actually changed on this. And what's amazing about this is, not only can I look at this in the UV diagnostic texture, the UV map, I can actually see the appearance itself.

And now this is actually looking much better. Ignore this blue stuff you see here. This is really just a preview. Now this is showing me what it would actually look like. And that is looking so much better. And just to compare this a little bit more easily for you, I did prepare a model.

This is that very first QR code that you saw. And here you're seeing six different variations of this knurled handle. At the bottom, you're going to see 35% scale, 50% scale, and 75% scale all for the auto-texture mapping. The 35% looks like a solid handle, but if we zoom in, you will see the texture there, as well. It's just very small, of course.

And then, up top, we're going to see those same percentages so 35%, 50%, and 75%, but this time, we're seeing the cylindrical texture mapping, like I showed you before. And you can see a very big difference between them from what is now on my screen to the left, with the auto mapping, versus on the right, which is the manual mapping.

In particular, I'll show you this. This one here is the 75% scale. And while it might be too big, it does point out here some challenges you see with the way that that mapping works versus the way that this mapping works, which looks a heck of a lot better. So this is a great model for you to take a look at, and of course, you can edit this wherever you'd like. And I think it just gets the point across of those two points in particular.

All right, so let's jump back to our PowerPoint for a second. There are a couple of tips and tricks that I think you all should know about. So the first one is about the scaling the appearance. I've already shown you that live. The second one is about the texture mapping. I also showed you this live, but here's a more side-by-side comparison in still image form.

Now, when I got to the texture mapping, I did so by right clicking on the solid body and choosing Texture Map controls. If you are already in the rendering environment, you also have the ability to edit the texture map controls there, as well. On the top here, you could see this button here in the render workspace. That's your texture map controls button.

All right, so what else? The other thing to keep in mind is that when you switch from the design workspace as you're designing the part, and you switch to the render workspace where you're going to be rendering the part, all of a sudden, you're going to start to see shadows. And you might think to yourself that this is what your part's actually going to look like.

But in reality, it's not yet rendered. It's still just a preview. If you want to render your design, you have a variety of different options. You can do an in-canvas render, and it looks like this. And it basically renders on the spot for you, and you wait till it's finished sufficiently. And then of course, you could save the image.

Or you can click the little teapot icon. That's right over here. And you can render this in the background. You can choose to render locally, which is on your computer, or render in the cloud. There are plenty of advantages of rendering on the cloud. But the point here is, that in all three of these cases, you're rendering the image, and you're going to get a very different result.

Let's go back just for a second. This is what it looks like when you join the render workspace, and this is what it looks like when you actually render the image. That's a very big difference. So if you really want to see where this is going to properly look like, make sure, of course, to render that image in one of those ways.

Lastly, when you're creating these appearances or editing the appearances, I always recommend starting with an appearance that has all the attributes that you're interested in showing. And what do I mean by attributes? I don't necessarily mean that if you want to show ABS plastic, that you should use a plastic because they're similar. I'm saying that you should use the material that has the settings that you are interested in modifying. And let's take a look at that in more detail.

So the first result that you see here, the first screenshot rather, is from leather. The leather has a set of parameters so an image, reflectance, roughness. It has the ability to turn on translucency, which happens to be turned off. It has the ability to turn off emissivity, or the ability to shine light, so to speak. So if you want to a light bulb that emits light, that's the checkbox you're going to turn on. It also allows you to use a relief pattern or a bump map, so to speak. And it allows you to make a cutout, which is also turned off, as well as allows you to mess with advanced highlight controls.

When it comes to the stone, you're going to see that everything looks a little different. For the stone, you have a base color and base highlights. You do have a relief pattern, very similar to with leather, but there are advanced controls under stone for the relief pattern that you don't get in the leather. There's also a top-coat setting that doesn't exist in the leather at all. Another relief pattern or bump map, which is just a little different with its own advanced controls, and of course, the cutout that's in both.

The point here is simply that there are lots of different settings that exist in this stone that just don't exist at all for leather, or maybe some of the plastics, or some of the other materials. And I'll take this even further, and tell you that we have 3D wood materials, like the one on the right, which is 3D ash. And the 3D wood materials have a whole bunch of settings that are highly unique just for wood.

So things like late wood exponent, early wood roughness, the late wood roughness, the ring thickness, the ring bump, pores and rays, all of those are highly specific to wood. So just keep in mind that all of these materials have different settings, and you should choose the one that best fits what you're trying to accomplish. That's really the key here.

I think that covers everything that I wanted to show today for appearances in particular. So we're going to move on to our next topic, geometric patterning. Geometric patterning we're going to have two different models for you to see or to follow along with. We have our basic geometric pattern example and our advanced geometric pattern example. So feel free to use those and follow along.

Before I jump into the CAD models or how this actually works, I do have to introduce another topic, which is Fusion 360 extensions. Extensions are paid upgrades to Fusion 360. They allow you to get more out of the software that you're already using. They extend your platform.

They include specialized technologies or specialized tool sets to allow you to do what you need to do for your industry. They eliminate disconnected deployment so that you can actually make this happen very easy. And it's all because it's on one platform. So you can use one platform for all of your tools.

There is a lower learning curve because of course, it's all in one platform. You don't have import export problems because you're pushing to another software to accomplish a single task. There are so many benefits of being able to just extend what you're already doing in Fusion 360.

My favorite part about these extensions, though, is that you get flexible access options. If you want to purchase by the year, you can. You want to purchase by the month, perfectly fine. You want to purchase by the day because you only need it for one project today, that's perfectly fine too. So there's a lot of flexibility here.

The extension though that's going to be relevant to today's topic is called the product design extension. It's going to allow you to create complex models very quickly and very easily. And it automates a lot of the more difficult, time-consuming tasks that you might need to complete. It also has intelligent design strategies so that you can actually create your products using manufacturing-aware technologies. All of this is really trying to just make it so that you can design your products faster and easier.

If you're comparing the actual features of Fusion 360 the base product, or what we call the core product to the product design extension, you're going to see that you're going to, of course, get access to all of the basic functionality in Fusion 360 itself, which includes parametric solid modeling, parametric surface modeling, free-form modeling, direct modeling, sheet-metal modeling, mesh editing, and more.

In addition to that, with the product design extension, you're going to get access to plastic design rules to help you design plastic parts really fast and really easily. Some of the features that help you do that include the boss feature, the snap fit feature and design advice. We also, in the product design extension, are going to help you reverse engineer your parts faster and easier so things like the organic mesh to solid conversion.

But most relevant to today, we have two other features that I think are incredibly useful and incredibly important. That's going to include geometric patterning, that's this topic, and volumetric latticing that's going to be talked about in just a little bit. So when it comes to geometric patterning, what is it going to do? How is it going to do it? How does it help me?

All right, let's start with that. First of all, the geometric patterning is going to quickly apply a very complex pattern to a selected face. That pattern is going to maintain normalcy to that face throughout the pattern and throughout the surface of that face. The pattern itself can have varying sizes in order to create visual complexity. The pattern can be applied in multiple shapes and spacings, and the pattern object, or the base shape, the one on the right here is a sphere, just for an example, can be a custom solid body of your choice. And that's going to be a pretty wild example, you're going to see in a few minutes.

So the benefits of geometric patterning are as follows it's easy to use. It's incredibly fast. I would say the speed is, perhaps, the most important aspect of geometric patterning, and of course, you could achieve this desired result all in one software. As I mentioned before, it's extending your platform so that you don't have to work with disconnected tools. You don't have any issues with exporting and importing your designs.

Patterns like this are often made in tools like Grasshopper. Grasshopper is an incredible technology, incredible tool, but if you're using Fusion 360 for your design and then you're exporting to Grasshopper, doing the patterning there, and bringing it back, of course, that's going to create downstream problems when you have to make a change. So now you can actually do all of this in Fusion 360 itself.

All right, so ready for live-demo time. All right, so we're back in Fusion 360 itself. Here we are with our blank slate. We have an already applied appearance, and we have our geometric pattern. This is going to be our basic pattern we're going to start with.

Let's actually go and take a look at this in detail. I mentioned before, that these are spheres, and these spheres happen to be cut out from the design. If you like this, but you actually want them to be sticking out, that's perfectly fine too. You can always go back to your geometric pattern and change this from cut to join, for example, and just like that, now I have my pattern sticking out of my part.

So this is the basic pattern. You're going to see some more details of this in just a few minutes. So that you can see, also, how far you can take this, here's another example. Let's go and take a look at the backside. And this one is our advanced example. And here you're going to be able to see a lot more attention to detail.

Not only do you have various sizes of the spheres themselves, you also have various sizes of the depth of those spheres. And that's going to give you a really realistic view of the pattern. And in my opinion, this is a very close representation of what you're seeing in the original razor blade that I showed at the beginning.

All right, so how do we actually apply any of this? Let's start with truly a blank slate this time. All right, so here's my blank slate. I'm going to go to the Modify dropdown. And I'm not going to see anything there for this. You're going to find this under Create. Create, Pattern, and at the bottom here, Geometric Pattern. If you are expecting to use this on a regular basis, feel free, of course, to pin this to the toolbar. I've already done so, which is why you see it up here at the top. And now I can access it even easier from there.

Select the face you would like to apply this to. Select this side. Actually, first select the object type sphere, cylinder, square, and custom. I'm going to start with a sphere to keep this really simple. I'll choose my sizes. So let's go with, let's say, 3 and 1/2. And I'll make both of these 3 and 1/2 millimeters for now.

For a distribution type, you have a lot of different shapes that you can actually apply this pattern. So the rectangular pattern is going to distribute this across the face in a repeating rectangular pattern, of course. The triangular pattern is going to do something similar, but it's going to be a triangular pattern, and so on. All right, let's stick with the rectangular pattern for now.

I'm going to change this to an extent, and I'm going to go with 5 by 10. And this is a very close approximation to what I showed you in the basic version. We're going to go and hit OK. And here you can see a whole bunch of these spheres. Now, they're gray instead of blue because I chose the wrong option. So let's go back here and change this to, let's say, cut, which is what I showed earlier, or of course, join, which is what I also showed earlier.

But the point here is that you can make these changes and they are incredibly fast. And that's what's amazing about this. If I were to do this manually, this would take me a long time. I would be spending a lot of time in sketches, a lot of time applying different Revolve commands, for example. And instead, I can just come in here, change a couple of numbers, get a totally different pattern, and be very happy with the results.

Now, if you want to be able to get more out of this there are a variety of different ways to do that. So one of which is you can use this Clear Perimeter. Clear Perimeter is a way to be able to clear a space around the perimeter itself. Now keep in mind, that based on the UV map, you might not get a perfect result. You would expect this pattern to have applied perfectly symmetrically, but based on the way the UV map is working, it's pretty close, but it's not exactly there. It's just a limitation of how this actually works.

So let me show you what it looks like on this design. So here we are in that basic design. We're going to go back and edit our pattern here. I'm going to turn on the Clear Perimeter, and that's already looking pretty good minus this one sphere. You don't like it there, just hit that delete key, and now that's gone too. So this looks exactly like I might have expected, excellent.

All right, let's go back here to the one we were just working on. And this time, we're going to go and change everything completely. I mentioned earlier, that you apply this to a face. I'm going to select a different face. This time it's going to be everything around what I selected before. Now let's see what this looks like on this one.

Now, this is a bigger surface. There are more of these spheres to apply. So this might take a little bit longer to actually apply it. Let's go and make this, maybe, a cup pattern. And I'm going to go and hit the OK button, and we're going to see the result that comes up in just a second. Almost there. One more second, there we are.

All right, so this is what the pattern looks like on the exterior surface. But notice how I chose one surface at a time. This is going to be a limitation. And we're going to talk about this in more detail, but just know that it is one face at a time. But you can come in here, change this to whatever pattern you want, change the actual shape to any shape you want, and very quickly, you end up having a result.

This, unlike the appearance, is going to be a physical shape. If you 3D print this, it will show up in a 3D print. If you CNC machine this, it will show up in the CNC-machined part, as well. So this is, unlike the appearances, very much a physical interpretation of what this pattern actually looks like, cool.

All right, so let's actually talk about those limitations. I'm going to go back to our PowerPoint here for a second. I mentioned earlier, that this will apply to only one face at a time. I'm going to repeat that now. I'll also tell you that, as a result of this, your first instinct would be, well, why don't I just apply the pattern to both of the faces as two different features? Sounds like a great idea.

However, if you look at this in detail, you'll notice that there's a misalignment of the patterns. The settings are exactly the same, but the pattern itself does not line up. It doesn't line up in the middle, and it definitely doesn't line up near those edges. Why is that? Well, let's actually go and take a look.

So if we have a model like this. And let's, actually, suppress that pattern for a moment. We're going to go and take a look at that body. And we're going to go and take a look at that texture mapping that we talked about earlier. All right. So here's our texture mapping. And what I do want to point out is that we have a very different grid between the center face and the side itself.

The green arrows don't line up. The grid doesn't line up. Pretty much none of it lines up, and this is exactly why the geometric patterning will not line up on your model. That being said, it's just good to know that these limitations exist so that you can work around them. There are a variety of different ways you can do that.

Another limitation is going to be with respect to external references and equations. So if you've been using Fusion 360 for a while now, you probably already know about the parameter table or parameter list. You can create variables or parameters that you could then use to derive all sorts of different things in Fusion 360. And when it comes to the geometric patterning, it applies as well.

So as you're creating the geometric pattern, you can type in any of your parameter names. As you could see on the screen, I used object size for my size. And then I used pattern spacing, down here, for my distance on my distribution. But one thing to keep in mind, is that while it will accept this number when you hit OK, and then of course, allow you to see the results, when you go back and edit a geometric pattern, at least as of today, you're going to see that it's actually replacing those parameters with the number that it's actually representing.

So object size was set to 2 and 1/2, and as a result, it resets to 2 and 1/2. And my pattern spacing was set to 7 millimeters, so of course, it reset to 7 millimeters. You can replace this again, with your parameter, but just know that it will reset every single time, at least today.

The other thing to keep in mind, is that the pattern, remember, I said, is going to apply normal to the surface of the face that you've selected. Now normal to the face might look visually more interesting or more correct, but it's not always moldable. So if you're going to be using this for injection molding, for example or CNC machining, just keep in mind that this geometric patterning can create geometry that has undercuts or is inaccessible completely, and as a result, not moldable or not CNC machine-able. So you may need to make changes or modify the actual results until you are happy with them for molding or for CNC machining.

The other thing to keep in mind, is that you don't get full control over the depth The pattern makes into or out of the original part's surface. So in the example you see on the right, I have a bunch of cylinders applied to just that thumb area on the handle. And this was applied as a join, so it's sticking out of the part. The height of the cylinders is based on the diameter of those cylinders. If you make the diameter bigger, the height will increase. If you make the diameter smaller, the height will decrease.

The same is also true if this were a cut command, so the depth of the recess will change based on the diameter of the cylinder and you can go in later and replace the height of the cylinder, by selecting the faces and using a Replace Face command, but of course, that's additional work that you have to do as opposed to the ideal world, where you would just modify the height as a setting inside the dialog box itself. That would be wonderful.

The last thing, is about the control over the way the pattern morphs from one size to another. And actually, this brings up an important point, which, I think, means I didn't show you this and how this works. So let's actually go and unsuppress this one more time. Here we are. Almost there.

So we're going to have a pattern. Actually, we'll go to our other designs just to make this a little easier. I have my pattern itself. Let's go and edit this. I'll make this back into a cut. And this time, instead of having both of these sizes be the same, let's make this 2 millimeters and maybe this 4 millimeters. And what you're seeing now, is the variation between the two. Some of these are smaller, some of them are bigger.

But the limitation that we're talking about, is that you can't exactly control where it starts small and where it ends up being bigger or the orientation that it morphs from one size to the other. This is an exaggerated example, but the point here, is that you don't get the control over the way that it morphs from one size to another.

Now, that was a lot of negative, and I don't want you to think that I'm super negative about geometric patterning because I am not. In fact, I would tell you that I think geometric patterning is incredibly powerful at what it can do. It's just important to know what the limitations are so that you can play up the strengths and downplay those disadvantages because everything, of course, has both.

Let's talk about some tips and tricks, though, so you can get the most out of this. The first is about using a custom object. You can define this object based on a solid body of your choosing. Choose the wrench icon instead of the sphere, cylinder, or square. Choose the custom object, then choose your perpendicular direction, just so that it's oriented correctly. You can flip it if you need. You can rotate it if you need. And then you can apply that to your part.

So here you can see that I used an Autodesk logo, and I applied it to that same area of the grip. And now you can see the Autodesk logo all over the grip. This can work in a variety of different ways. So for example, if you made something that's more of a 3D-diamond shape, you could use that to potentially knurl your part, like you saw in the appearance. And you can also do that as a cut or, of course, as a join. You'd have to play with the settings until you're happy with them, but there are a lot of different options there.

We also talked about clear perimeter and how clear perimeter can eliminate any non-whole instances of your pattern, especially near the edges of your face. This is a great way to be able to clean up your design. And on the screen, you can see an example of one that has the clear perimeter off, on the left. And then on the right, the clear perimeter turned on. And that's looking much better, especially in this corner here, for example. It's looking great. And also, this area is looking much, much better, as well.

Now, if you want to get more control over everything. It's going to be a little bit of extra work, but you can get a whole lot more control. What you're seeing here is an example where you're able to get this control for the depth by applying the geometric pattern, not to the primary object you're trying to pattern, but instead, to the secondary object.

That secondary object is defined in a way that I can control the gap or the overlap between the primary object and that secondary. And by controlling it, I can therefore control the depth. And so the advanced example that you are going to be able to download from your QR code, is the one that you see here on the right. And you can see that pattern has a lot more detail in it. It's not just the different sizes of the sphere diameters. It's also, how deep those spheres push into the part. That can affect both the look, visually, but it can also affect the moldability of the part, as well. So this is a great way to be able to get a lot more control over your part.

I think that covers everything for geometric patterning, so we're going to go to our third and final topic for today, which is going to be volumetric latticing. We have three CAD models for you to download and enjoy the basic latticing, intermediate latticing, and the advanced latticing. I also included a bonus, which is a cell shape comparison. So you can actually see what everything looks like in a little bit more detail, just in simple cube form. I'll show you this in just a few moments.