Creating the Autodesk University Factory Name Badge with the New Product Design Extension

PETER SIMPSON: Hello, everyone. And welcome to our AU Class. Today, we're actually going to be going through how we created the Autodesk University Factory name badge, and specifically how we leveraged the functionality in the new Product Design Extension, as well as fusion injection molding. So your presenters today are going to be myself, Peter Simpson, and we also have Tim VanAst. So let's get into it.

So first off, we're going to do a safe harbor statement. And what this basically covers is that sometimes when we're talking about our product, we will mention some forward-looking statements regarding planned or future development efforts. And we just want to let people know that this is confidential. This stays within the room, and it's all to do with the fact that we are a development company who are actively developing our software. And as a result, we want to make sure that is kind of covered at the beginning of this.

So first of all, who am I? So as I mentioned, my name is Peter Simpson. I'm currently the customer advocacy manager for design and simulation within Fusion 360, which basically means I'm kind of a specialist in all things design and simulation. I live in London in the UK. And I actually graduated with a masters in mechanical engineering from the University of Birmingham.

I started working at Autodesk in 2019, and I've done a variety of different jobs. So I've been a design engineer. I've been a manufacturing and design consultant. I've also worked in generative design, simulation. And most of my industry experience comes from automotive, consumer products. I've done a bit in sports equipment, some heavy engineering, and a fair amount of stuff in 3D visualization.

And we wanted to include something a little bit fun about ourselves in here. And so the first time me and Tim actually met, we ended up spending a whole half an hour of Zoom call talking about football. And so we both wanted to mention our favorite teams. And my favorite team is Chelsea Football Club. So I will pass you over to Tim.

TIM VANAST: Thanks, Peter. Again, my name is Tim VanAst. I actually live in Grand Rapids, Michigan. So I just wanted to welcome you to our class as well.

My first job out of university was as a design engineer for a company that produced plastic parts. And so while I was starting to learn the ropes of designing, they also were like, oh, we have this software for simulating the process. Why don't you play with that a little bit as well?

So ever since then, I've sort of spent my career working on simulation of the manufacturing process of injection molding plastics. As Peter mentioned, we talk a lot about football. For those of you who are watching this from the United States, he mean "soccer," which I don't know what the rest of the world is thinking.

But anyways, no, absolutely. I am a huge fan of both American football but also football for the rest of the world. My team is Leicester City, which smaller club for sure, but of course had their-- certainly their moment of glory a few years back by winning the Premier Club. So that was pretty exciting.

Anyways, yeah, I just wanted to welcome to the class. And I'll send you back to Peter for now.

PETER SIMPSON: Thank you very much, Tim. So let's get started. And actually, what we want to talk about first is what exactly is the Autodesk University Factory. So there are people in this school, obviously, that may not have actually had the chance to visit Autodesk University in person. But the Autodesk University Factory is actually something that we've been running for many years now.

So here's a little bit of a video to give you an experience that a lot of people will get in person, which is what our general Factory experience is. So what our aim is with the Factory is to actually try and get our users to see the entire lifecycle of a product-- so from its design and inception right the way through to its manufacturing-- and then actually walk away from that Factory with one of these products that we've designed.

So our first Factory was actually in 2016. So we've been running it for quite a few years now. We've done them both live and also virtually for the last couple of years because of, obviously, COVID. And we've basically designed a wide range of parts.

And what we do is we work with our partners. So they see a house machine. And we try and get them involved so that they can come down. We get the machines on the shop floor at AU so that everybody can come round and see exactly what is possible within Fusion.

And what we try and tend to do with the products that we're designing is we try and make them relevant. We try and make them topical. But also, we really try and push that functionality and try and push it as far as we can within Fusion 360.

So obviously, within Fusion we have all the different workspaces. So we're able to design. We're able to even do electronic design. We can then manufacture. We can simulate our manufacturing. We can simulate the actual function of our part. And we can even do stuff like 3D realistic rendering within our tool.

So obviously, Fusion is a great kind of software to use for something like this because all of these parts were designed, made, and simulated within Fusion 360. So really, if you've managed to get to the Factory or you've been to a previous Factory, everything in your hands when you're at that Factory has Fusion at the heart of it. And that's what we want to achieve every year.

So here you see one of the factories a couple of years ago, where we made an air quality sensor. So just for some context, we've now had eight live and virtual factories. So if you've been to the virtual Factory over the last couple of years, you might recognize me because I've done a few of them. I was also at the last live one, which was in AU Las Vegas, I believe, in 2019. And we've had over 4,000 attendees attend these events.

We've also distributed over 3,000 of the devices that we were making, whichever device it was. And so we personally think it's been a huge success. And it's always been one of the things that we know that our customers love to see.

So just to kind of introduce you into a few things that we've made before, so in the top left, we have a laptop stand, which was actually something that we used generative design for as well as 3D printing and milling to make during one of the first virtual AUs in 2020.

In the top right, then, we did a UV phone sanitizer, which was in 2021, which was last year. And that UV phone sanitizer was pretty topical based on the kind of environment that we were all living in. We were all very cautious of transmission of germs, et cetera.

But we didn't want to just leave it there because we didn't want to be too topical and too doom and gloom. So we also added in a wireless charger. We added in some cool LED lights that you could program to do your own things.

And the most popular one that most people have probably seen is actually on the bottom right, which is an air quality sensor, which we did for the last couple of live AUs that we had. So these air quality sensors were kind of designed for use as in, say, a machine room or potentially a 3D print studio to monitor the exact air quality of your surrounding environment. But we also had some really cool stories where-- when there were the tragic forest fires in California, people were actually using these air quality sensors to measure the particulate matter in the environment around them so that they knew exactly whether it was safe in their house or not.

So the core concept behind this is that we are kind of trying to evaluate and replace outdated methods such as these kind of standardized design, prototype, test, and manufacture timelines. So if you look here, this is kind of what a standardized kind of part production/design field would look like.

So you'd start in month 1. You'd have your design brief. And you'd maybe say, what do we want to make? So let's take the air quality sensor. We say, well, what do we want to make? Oh, an air quality sensor.

Month 2, you'd come in, and you'd start beginning kind of making some schematics, maybe making some constraints. Oh, we want it to be maybe this big, or use this, that, and the other material. You then start the design development phase where you're looking at maybe your PCB board design, your prototyping.

And then especially more recently-- so this is obviously for 2021-- you get to the point where you're then trying to source your materials. And I'm sure we're all well aware that the supply chain at the moment can be something that is very difficult to work with.

So potentially, you've done almost five months of development, and you get to the point and you then say, OK, well, we need to get these made. We need them in two months time. Oh, wait, the lead time is how long? How can I get a replacement that might work? Maybe people aren't picking up the phone because they're so overworked. And that's when the costs really start to ramp up. So what we wanted to do with this year's Factory is to try and also represent the changing work conditions that we're living in.

So for this, we decided that what we wanted to do is embody exactly how our customers would work and potential new workflows that our customers might work with. So we went for an agile product development cycle. So the reason that I call this kind of a "cycle" rather than a "timeline" is because it is very secular.

So if we look at our kind of design and make workflow, what we're actually doing is designing multiple different iterations of the same part. So if we look at a standard kind of agile product development cycle, we're starting. We're analyzing and we're planning. We're then doing one complete loop of design prototyping test. So what we're doing there is we're looking at the feasibility of each of our designs. And then along those steps, as you can see, we're doing more and more of those exact same loops.

So what we actually ended up doing is designing way more than just the part that you're going to see. So the part that's actually been made is I believe now sprint 5 or 6. And the whole purpose of this is to try and actually adapt to the different things that get thrown at you.

So for instance, if you potentially included a certain type of screw in your first assembly, and then you realize that was really hard to source in the quantity that you needed, that would be something that the agile product development cycle could capture, and then in the next sprint you could look at actually changing those fixtures and then making it a lot better.

So as I said, we want to practice what we preach. And the beauty of using Fusion and things like Upchain, the Forge platform, AutoCAD Inventor, is that they're all interlinked. So what we could do as a team is, instead of having one person working on it at a certain time and then passing on the design to the next person, because we have that entire platform of the Autodesk products, we could all work on it simultaneously to get stuff done.

So you know someone was working on the ECAD. So someone was working on that PCB and working on sourcing components for that. If they, then, had something that needed to change, let's say a screen, we could then work around that as an agile product development team using Fusion 360 at the heart of it.

So what did we actually design? This is what we have designed. So it's what we're calling an electronic name badge. And it's something that has a couple of fun uses as well as some really useful ones as well.

So the core functionality of this is that we wanted to take out the need to carry around hundreds and hundreds of little badges whenever you go to trade shows. So everybody would print off a bunch of business cards, and you'd have your name, your email, your phone number, all of that, and it's really unsustainable.

You're bringing all of that card. You're then giving it to someone, and it maybe ends up in a drawer in that desk for however long before they actually decide they need it. And not everybody has a Rolodex to sit on their desk anymore. So it's quite hard sometimes to even find them once you need them.

So what we've done here is we've created this model. And what this will do is you can plug it into somebody else's name badge. And when you're setting this up in the Factory, they'll enable you to put in your own details. Once you plug them into each other, they'll do what we're calling a virtual handshake. So what that's going to do is exchange details with one another.

That will then pop up in the app. And then you'll be able to move along, and you've got all of those details stored for when you get home and you decide that maybe that collaboration you were talking about is something that you're really interested in or you have time for at the time.

We didn't want it just to be a name badge, though. So if you do have one, and you've got a friend that also has one, if you plug them in, there is a kind of slightly hidden functionality where if you want you, can play a game of 2D pong.

The other thing that we really want to do going forward is we don't want this to be a one-and-done kind of prototype. We want to build on this. We want to use that functionality and all of those interlinking that we've got, and we actually want to make this a bit modular.

So a couple of things that have been suggested is that sometimes at fans it can be quite warm. Sorry, sometimes at conferences you can get quite warm. So we're contemplating doing a fan to plug in to the end. So what we would love is, at the end of this as well, if you have any ideas that you think would be a great kind of modular thing that we could add on, just plug it in and go, that would be a really great piece of feedback from you guys.

So now that we've discussed exactly what the Factory is, we're going to do a slight review of exactly what injection molding is. And so I'm going to pass you back to Tim.

TIM VANAST: Thanks, Peter. OK. Yeah, like you said, just to level set everybody on injection molding, let's take a look at what the machine is here. So on the right side, we see the injection unit.

In the middle we have the mold itself, and on the left we have the clamping unit. The clamping unit, basically, is going to hold the mold in place. And it's going to basically resist the mold from being pushed open based on the pressure it takes to push the resin into the mold itself.

On the right, too, we see the plastic pellets there. When we put those into the machine, they're going to melt. They melt because of some of the friction of the screw but also because of some of the heaters there. But one of the really key things about manufacturing with plastics is when we melt those pellets, they expand slightly.

What happens is, when we push those into the mold, as they cool, they're going to shrink slightly. And that becomes very important when we try to understand our design and what goes into that. So go to the next slide in a second.

So again, we talk about this cycle of one part being made. So if we look at sort of the injection or the fill time, it's usually very quick. It's a fast 1 or 2 seconds that it takes to actually push the material into the mold. There's something called "pack time" that I'll get into in just a minute as well.

But then cooling time is next. And if you look, our cooling time is actually sort of the largest segment of our cycle. So we'll come back to that. And then finally, the mold open time is, basically, the mold opens, the part comes out, and it closes again, and we start over. So let's look at each of these individually.

So here we see, again, our injection time. Our screw that is in our machine basically pushes forward, squirts that hot, melted plastic into the cavity, or basically the blank of our part within the mold. And we're just trying to get it in there and get it full. And so that's kind of the filling phase, again, typically happens pretty quickly.

So the next phase then is what we call the "packing phase." And this one is actually very critical. Earlier I mentioned that when the pellets are melting, or when we've melted them they expand, but when they cool they shrink.

So what's happening when we're packing is we're trying to squeeze a little bit more material into our part in order to sort of compensate for the material shrinking. This way, our part basically stays as close to the shape of our tool as possible because otherwise, it would shrink and get significantly smaller. So we're just trying to push more and more material in there in order to keep it that original shape that we wanted.

So the next thing is the cooling phase. And this is basically where that molten plastic sits in our tool, and it just takes time to cool down. And so the tool itself has cooling lines in it which are trying to keep the tool at a uniform temperature. And it's trying to pull the heat away. Also, while this is happening you see the screw is actually rotating back. And that is basically adding more material to the front of the screw that is bolted and ready to go for the next shot.

So then let's see. So the mold open phase, then, we are basically opening the tool. The part either falls out or a robot might grab that and pull that out. So that's kind of the final portion of our phase. The mold would close, and we repeat this over and over. And that's one of the things that sort of makes injection molding such a great manufacturing process is because once everything is set up, it's very repeatable to make very good high quality parts over and over and over.

So once more, we inject our plastic in. Once it's in there, we're going to pack that to help make it the shape we wanted. Finally, it's going to sit there and cool down. It's going to open up, and we repeat.

So a couple of other things, too, as we talk about this, want to get some common groundwork for some of the terms we use. So here we see what would be considered a two-cavity mold, where these are two cavities two parts that are molded at one time. And we see in the middle there, there is what we call a "sprue."

And that's basically where the machine attaches into our mold so that when we push the material in, it goes into the sprue into what we refer to as our "runner system" to get to the different cavities. And so then the runner system feeds to what we call a "gate." And the gate is simply the location where we're injecting the plastic into our part itself.

Here we see it's on one end of the part. You could potentially put it on the top. You could put it in the side. You can potentially have multiple gates on a single part. But we will definitely bring up gates again later on as well.

And then the last thing we really want to go, just so everyone's aware, again we have this injection mold itself-- can be called a "tool," can be called a "die." They have all kinds of funny names in the manufacturing process.

But if we look on the right, again we see that stationary half. And that is where the machine is basically hooked up. The screw and barrel goes right to that center circle there, and that's where it injects in to create our parts there.

And then the moving half is the other half. And that's attached to the clamping unit. And that's the side we call "moving" because it will move. It will open and close whenever the parts are ready to be ejected.

PETER SIMPSON: So now that we've given you a little bit of an overview about what the Factory is and also exactly how injection molding works, let's take a look at the actual part itself. So as you can see here, we have a lovely assembly of our name badge.

So I'm just going to go and hide a few of these things. So let's just turn the visibility off on these. And we're just going to look at the kind of different parts that we've actually designed within Fusion. So the first thing that we can see here is our PCB board.

So one thing that we have in Fusion a lot of people are really good at using-- and we had our own specialist take a look at this-- is actually ECAD. So with ECAD, we can actually design the actual schematics for this PCB as well as adding the different features that we need in order to represent the different parts of our PCB.

And this was really helpful because it allowed us to then design things around the components on the board. Obviously, if you're kind of interfering with those components, nothing's going to work properly. And you also might be interfering with the electronics themselves.

So we then also have a number of different assembly features-- so obviously, the enclosure not being one of them. So around here, we have all these different 3D printed parts. So just want to give a massive shout out to our partner Xometry, who have actually partnered with us for this. And they have helped us to produce the majority of our parts. I think they're doing everything other than the electronics for this. And I just want to give them a huge shout out for working with us on this because they've been extremely helpful.

So obviously, all of these parts are 3D printed. And these were all designed in order to kind of connect everything together. And they were designed in conjunction with the actual enclosure. So the benefit of these 3D printed parts is that you actually need slightly less lead time than you do for injection molding because there's no mold that needs to be designed to actually produce these. So these were one of the last things to be edited in order to work with everything else that we had.

And then finally, we have this enclosure. So as we mentioned, we used injection molding for this enclosure. And there's a few different things within the Product Design Extension that really helped automate this process and make the design a lot more simple. So what we're going to do is hop into this file here, which shows you half a mold that's nice and got all the features that you can see. And then we also have this bottom half, which I've defeatured to show you a few of the things that we can do.

So when we look at this and we look at our enclosure, we can enter here, and we can work on a kind of component level. So the reason that we create these components is it enables us to assign different plastic rules within the plastic part design section of the design workspace within Fusion.

So what we would do is we would come in here. Obviously for this one, you can see that we already have a plastic rule assigned. We could come in. We could assign our plastic rule to our component. And we could work out exactly how we're going to manufacture this.

So the benefit of these plastic rules is that they will update certain things later on in the design. So let's take this one for example. If we expand this, this takes into account the physical material. It also takes into account a thickness range that we all deem to be allowable. So for this one, we're working with 1.5 mil as our standardized thickness.

It's also taking a thickness variation into account. So that will come later on, and we'll mention that later on, like I said. It also suggests a possible draft angle, a possible minimum draft angle, both of which are very important for the actual manufacturing.

Because if you didn't know, if you have a kind of 90-degree surface, as we have here on this kind of internal face, what will happen when you try and remove it a mold is it will come off, it'll almost create a kind of vacuum in the end of that part. And that vacuum will make it very difficult to actually remove your part from your mold. So by adding that draft angle, you're effectively tilting that out slightly so that vacuum is not created, and then you can remove the mold a little easier.

The other thing that it creates is a nominal radius, which is for your fillets-- and that will be half of the thickness that you've defined-- and a knife edge structure which, again, we'll touch on later. So we were very lucky with this because when we spoke to our partners Xometry, we said, what would you recommend for these different variations?

We wanted to create it nice and thin, so we wanted to go for around 1.5 mil because, again, we wanted this to not be too bulky because this is ultimately something that you're going to carry around, and we want it to be as small as possible. So we said, hey, we want to work with 1.5 mil. We had a few different product design things in our mind. And we knew what we wanted it to look like. We kind of were going for that almost retro kind of electronics vibe with a bit of a kind of tinted clear plastic.

And they came back, and they said, hey, that's great. Here's your list of materials that you could use. And actually, it really nicely mapped out to this ABS 1.5 default that we've got.

If it didn't, though, what we could have done is we could have gone into our managed plastic rules. And you see here we can actually come in and we can create our own new rules, or we can edit the plastic rules. So we could have come in here, created a new rule, called it something like a "Geometry Test," and then we could have actually come in and edited each of these. So we could have based it off the correct physical material. And then we could have gone through and actually populated our own versions of these parameters.

As I said, for us, we didn't need to do that because it matched up really nicely with the ABS. So we're going to keep the ABS in this design. And that would then be assigned to our part.

And as I said, this is really beneficial for a number of reasons. And I'm going to try and show you a few of those along the way. So the first thing that I am going to talk about is using that nominal radius. So we spoke about how it creates that nominal radius, which is half the thickness of the actual thickness set in the part.

So what I'm going to do here is I create some custom selection just so that it's a bit less clunky. And I'm going to select these bottom edges here. So for this, we want to create a fillet because we don't want those hard harsh edges that are going to cause some issues later down the line. And what we can then do is we're going to modify and create the filler.

Here you can see that our fillet has actually auto populated what's called "NR." So NR is the Nominal Radius. So you can see that it pops up saying expression, nominal radius, and the value is 0.75 millimeters.

So what that means for us is if we wanted to create a load of fillets on this part, we know that they'd all be that nominal radius, i.e., half the thickness of the actual thickness of the part. And that would allow us to kind of control our manufacturability. So this is something that actually I didn't necessarily obey because I went a bit more down the design route. And Tim will show you why that's not necessarily the best idea later.

But it's quite often the case that the standardized thickness is one of the first rules you often break when you're actually doing plastic design. So that's one way to do fillets. But there are also some other smart ways to use parameters within Fusion. So let's look in here and let's look at actually making custom parameters.

So here you see our custom parameters in here. So certain ones of them are going to be kind of standardized. But what we're going to look at here is actually creating user parameters. So parametric design is a great way to work because it allows you to control various different things within this dialogue. So I've set here that I wanted to maybe have a larger fillet in some areas.

So for me, I've set that a larger fillet should be 2.5 millimeters. So now let's look at these corner fillets and use that selection set. And then when I come in here and do a fillet, what I can do is, instead of NR here, I'm going to type in "large." And you see it's going to prompt me to choose that large fillet size. So now we can look, and we can see that all of those large fillets are populated to about 2.5 mil that I defined.

But if I now go through and I decide, actually, 2.5 mil maybe isn't the right size for me, maybe that's too large, what I can do is, instead of going in and editing each of those features, if you look in here and you click on this, you can edit this at any point. So let's say we wanted to change that to 1.5. We could go into 1.5, edit that. And you can see that our fillets have now auto-updated so that they're at 1.5.

So there are some really interesting workflows, especially with things like fillets and different features, that you can actually control them without necessarily needing to go back in and constantly edit and remodel your actual parts. So that's why it can be really beneficial, especially within kind of plastic parts and different things like that, to use not only the nominal radius but also use user-based parameters to work with your parts.

So the next thing that we're actually going to talk about requires this sketch. So what we're going to talk about here is actually our boss command. So our boss command is something that will enable you to create your fixturing when you're looking at your part.

So what I mean by a "boss" is this little tool up here. So a boss is something that a screw basically sits in. And if you can design bosses really well, it can actually negate a lot of the problems that might be associated with it when it comes to injection molding. So if we select the boss command, and we select these two points that were projected down from our PCB board, we realize that now you've got control of your boss.

So what we're going to do here is we're just going to flip this. And the other thing that we can do is we can turn on our top side. So what this does is it will actually populate both sides of this boss.

So I know that I don't want the actual screw to enter from the top side, I want it to enter from the bottom side. So here you see side 1 in the bottom side. And I'm going to set it as an in-hole. And that's because we want that to actually be our entrance because we don't want those screws poking out of the top and causing kind of either nasty visuals, or potentially when someone's actually using this, they might get in the way.

So when I was designing this, I do actually know some of the kind of parameters that I used for this. So I used an offset of 6 so that it would be nice and countersunk in there. And I changed some of these. So I went for a 3-mil screw, and I decided that it should be 15 millimeters long.

Obviously, this is all stuff that's really design dependent. So this isn't necessarily going to be a one size fits all kind of style. So here you can see that we have those bosses. But you know, currently they're basically interfacing together.

We know that we have a load of different stuff in between them. So we know that that can't be the case. So then we could look at, say, doing some of these advanced features. So most of these will prepopulate, again, via the Product Design Extension and that design rule, that plastic rule that you assigned at the very beginning.

So we can look through these, and we can actually take a little look at exactly what it has defined. So most of these are what we call "expressions." So you see here, our C1 is just 3 mil. That's just a default parameter, and that's in there. But a lot of these are using things like HD, which would be Head Diameter, and stuff like that. So it's all kind of intelligent.

And the main thing to note in here is that we also have our draft angles added, which, as you may recall, we defined in that original kind of design rule that we were setting. And those draft angles will save you a bunch of work when it comes to actual manufacturability of your part. So for this one, I know that top part we didn't edit much, but this bottom part we did actually change around a lot.

So if we go into the Advanced, we can come down here, scroll down, and we have all of the exact same options that we had before. So I was modeling it from the top because we wanted to model it based off what we already had. And I seem to remember that G2 here was, I believe, 5 mil. O2, I believe, was 8 mil. And I believe we set our D as De times 2.

And here you now see that we actually have a gap between our bosses, which will fit perfectly with our wider assembly. So a lot of this was done using the Inspect tool. But I'm not going to bore you with that kind of workflow because it's not necessarily enjoyable to watch. It's just me clicking a lot of surfaces and getting some measurements.

But here you can now see when we press OK, we get those bosses, and they're created within our design with those plastic rules at the heart of them. The other thing that it creates is not only the bosses, but it actually creates our fasteners as well. So that gives us that reliability that we now know. And we can remember exactly what fasteners we've used, exactly where we've used them, and how they're going to work.

So now for the final thing, let's just hide these bosses for a second. And we're going to talk about something that's very kind of manufacturing focused. So as I mentioned, we talk-- well, I spoke at quite great length about draft angles. And draft angle is something that is really important when we're talking about manufacturing.

And what we actually have within Fusion is we actually have a draft command. So what we can do here is we can use this draft command to actually control our draft when we look at our part. So here we have our draft. And we set it with a pull direction. So for the pull direction for this one, I know that I want it to be basically perpendicular to this face. Or you could define it by an axis or a plane.

So I'm just going to set it perpendicular to that face for now. And then we're going to select our faces. So again, as you can see, this still is far from a complete part. But let's just work with it for now, and then we'll move on to a complete part in a bit.

So when I click that, you see how that bottom edge kind of poked out? What we can actually see here is that we're adding that draft angle right to this face here. So you can see how it's now an angle?

What I know, though, is that that's actually the wrong direction. So I'm just going to quickly flip that. And what I can then do is go around and do that to a lot of different places on this part.

So with this draft command, it would allow us to see that. When I press Control, we go back to predraft. We then add that draft angle that will allow our part to be significantly more manufacturable. And it will allow it to just get off that mold nice and easy.

So what you could do here is you could go around your entire part right at the end, add all of your drafts. You could even, if you really wanted, to control your draft via parameter. Or just use your design rule and set it up very well at the beginning. And it takes out a load of that additional work.

So different methodologies for this would have been potentially even modeling the exact angle and extruding along that part, something like that. Whereas with Fusion, and with the Product Design Extension, we have that draft angle baked into our design rules relating to our plastic rules. And so now as soon as I've set up my draft angle to assign the face and the pull direction, it automatically populates this draft angle here, which obviously is going to be that 2 degrees that we defined at the very beginning.

So the last thing I'm going to talk about is going to require a different model because I don't want to do it on this horribly defeatured model. So I'm going to look over here and look at this actual complete model but just the enclosure itself. So when we look at this, the final thing that we can look at is what we call "design advice."

So not everyone always wants advice when it comes to design. I know I personally like to design something. And as a designer, sometimes your parts can almost become like your children, and you can be very proud of them. But within Fusion, we have something called "design advice," which is purely for kind of manufacturing's sake. So I'm going to give you a very brief demo of this, and then Tim is going to talk you through exactly how that can work within the manufacturability of your part.

So what we can do here is we can assign a solid body. So we're going to use the top half of our enclosure for this. We're going to select that. We're going to assign a plastic rule quickly, which is our ABS 1.5 And we're going to click OK.

And then we're going to select our pull direction. So again, we know it's going to be perpendicular to this face. So we can just select that face, and then we're all good to go. And what we're going to analyze our part for here-- so everything in this blue region is going to be analyzed for variable thickness, undercuts, draft, and knife edges, which, if you think about it, is pretty much all stuff that you defined find in your plastic rule, hence why it prompts you to actually assign that plastic rule.

So when we click Analyze here, we're going to slowly get some results. And here we go. So you see-- that actually wasn't that slow. I don't know why I said slowly. It's pretty much immediate. And this is giving us immediate feedback.

So I have to come clean. I did make a few edits to this part so that I had some actual feedback from each of the different outcomes. But you'll see as we go through. So let's look at our thickness here.

So this thickness itself is showing us that there are some regions that exceed our variable thickness limit. So here we have our thickness variation, which might look a bit familiar to a lot of you. And that thickness range is something that is very kind of-- is at the heart of injection molding because-- I mean, Tim will go into this later, but if you can, try and keep a single thickness.

So we can see here that we have all these regions that are quite problematic. So that might be something that I actually want to go back in and redesign. Now, because I really care about aesthetics, and because I like to make Tim's job hard, I'm not going to go do that. And I'm going to keep going.

So the other thing that we have, which is one of the ones where I added these just so that we had some undercuts to show you, are undercuts. So especially in a mold, if you have an undercut it will basically be impossible to get out of the mold. So here we have some numbering that we extruded into our part in the internal. And this was actually a way for us to kind of reference our parts. When we were talking, maybe not using Fusion, or maybe we were messaging or emailing, we had this part numbers to help us out.

So with these part numbers, we can see that there are some fairly significant undercuts that wouldn't allow us to actually mold this part. So that would be something that we'd have to change. The other thing we can look at is draft angle. So here we have our lovely Autodesk Fusion 360 logo. And whoever was designing this obviously didn't decide to add draft to this.

So again, that could be problematic. But what this shows you is exactly the regions where you don't have that draft, so that now what I could do is I could go back into my modeling, and I can say, hey, I've seen all these faces that need draft. Let's open up that draft command yet again, automated from that plastic design rule, and we can add the draft where needed.