Fusion 360 Introduction to Generative Design

ROBERT SAVAGE: So again, my apologies. There's-- but we'll get there. We're going to have some fun. So while we're getting started, how's everybody doing? Everybody enjoying AU so far?

AUDIENCE: Yep. Yes.

ROBERT SAVAGE Good. Good. I want to take a moment to introduce the people who are going to be helping me in here. We're very fortunate. We've got some industry leaders in this. First of all, the first one over here in the corner is Kevin. Kevin is just what I call my all around guru. Very tech savvy on pretty much all things CAD.

And then we've got Kenny Cornett over here. Kenny is a-- how would you call Kenny? Well, Kenny's a generative design guru. Kenny's one of the people Autodesk calls when they've got questions about generative design. OK? So if you've got that type of question, Kenny's probably your man.

And we've got Ravi back here, and he's our-- what I call him, my oddball of the group. He's just more civil and structural, correct? And architectural? Yeah. So he looks at generative design from a different standpoint than most of the rest of us do, but it also brings just a different perspective. OK?

So in here, let's just try to have a little bit of fun. Again, my name is Robert Savage, and this is going to be an introduction to generative design. Oops. Wait a second. Yeah, there we go. That's right.

So a little bit about myself. My background is mechanical design. I've been in the industry for over 30 years now. I've dealt with a lot of different pieces of software and worked with a lot of different industries, as far as the design industry, from a manufacturing standpoint. But what we're looking at today is really kind of one of the newer areas that we're going to get into from a design perspective.

So when we talk about what we're going to do in here, again, this is just an introduction to generative design, so we're going to start at kind of the most basic level. We're going to start out describing what these things are, how they work. And then we're going to apply them to, I guess what I would consider, a relatively basic part just so that you start getting an understanding of what generative design is and how it applies and how you different-- work with the different segments in here.

So in this first section, I'm going to spend a little time talking about definitions of what some of these things are. And I apologize if the floor creaks and pops a little bit on me as I walk, but I do tend to be a walker in all this. And so when I talk about what generative design is, I'm talking about it really from a general standpoint. I'm not going to get too specific with the details of some of this. I will in specific areas. But I am going to stay away from getting too technical. That's for Kenny to do.

All right. So just to kind of start out I want to talk about what generative design is. I tend to like to think of generative design as a system that is trying to interpret how nature would make this part. Because it's looking at it through different algorithms and calculations. And it's looking for the most efficient way that it can create it based on the criteria that we've set up. Would you agree with that, Kenny?

Now a lot of people call it, I guess just, well-- a lot of people get real technical with it, but again, it is a cloud-based and analysis and interpretation of the information you give it. And so generative design results are only as good as the information you give it. And so that's why I want to focus just really kind of on some of the core information in here on what generative design is.

But before I really get too deep into some of that, I want to set up the information. First of all, Fusion 360. Generative design runs inside of Fusion 360. And they're setting you guys up with a log in for all that stuff. OK? And so inside there you're going to actually work within the Fusion 360 environment to create generative design information.

Doesn't mean that information can't be passed around to other pieces of software. OK? Because once we get to a certain point, we're going to talk about bringing that information down and sharing it out to other things in here. Now Fusion 360 is a cloud-based design and collaboration tool. That just tends to be the most basic way to think about it.

But it has some different pieces in there. And one of the things about Fusion 360 is what's called Fusion Team, and Fusion Team is really where your files are stored. Because Fusion is what they refer to as cloud-based, so therefore, the information is not necessarily designed on the cloud, but is stored on the cloud.

Now later on, when we get into generative design side of things, that is going to be calculated on the cloud. All right? But now Fusion Team also allows me to do other things. It allows me to share and collaborate that information with other people. So therefore, when I use my generative design in here, the files that I create for that are stored in the Fusion Team.

So the next thing is, what is a cloud server? A cloud server is just a big room with a bunch of computers in it. And what happens is when I set up my generative design information and I upload that, I'm uploading it to a set of cloud servers. Those cloud servers are actually going in and running all the different simulations and options that I give it.

Because we're not looking for one result here. We're looking for multiple results. And so the cloud server is the best way to generate those multiple results because of the fact that a lone PC is probably not going to be able to handle those calculations. Not, and still be effective. So when you upload it to a cloud server, that information again, gets stored up there at the cloud, gets run there, and you can actually go on and do other things while that cloud service is running, and then go back and look at the results when it's finished.

Now the cloud service is not always free. OK? There's what's called Cloud Credits. Cloud Credits is how we pay for analyzing the information and running the results, and there's a secondary Cloud Credit setup for actually downloading the information. So once I've sent it up, run the calculations, if I go to download a variation of that, it again charges me Cloud Credits. Cloud Credits are just your way of paying for it. Go ahead.

AUDIENCE: So you can run multiple analyses and only download the one you want.

ROBERT SAVAGE: Yep.

AUDIENCE: And you're not charging for downloading the one you don't want.

ROBERT SAVAGE: Correct. All right. Now the other part of that is, through the end of the year, they're setting this up for free. So they're not charging you Cloud Credits to run the analysis or to download the files either, correct, Kenny? So if you want to play with it through the end of the year, get in there, play with it, test it, run it, download it, and see what you can come up with. Because that's really what you're trying to do. See what you can come up with.

I tend to think of generative design as two different options. The first one is a setup where I already have a component and I want to optimize that component. So therefore, I'm going in and looking at that component and how I can optimize it, and what information I need to put into that so that I can optimize it. The other setup is I don't have a component, but I know what I need. I know where it's got to mount. I know where my loads are, where my pressures are, what areas I have to stay out of.

So I set up that information and let it tell me what the part should look like. So instead of going in with a preconceived design as to what the part should look like, we're going in and creating something, or having the cloud create something from scratch, based off of the information we give it. Now I will kind of give you kind of a side note to this. Anything that you run through generative design, it's typically not going to be 100% ready to produce when you finish bringing it down.

You're still probably going to have to go in and do clean up information on it, because again, we're talking about simulations and cloud calculations and things like that. So there will be little bits and pieces added to it that you may not want. OK? But it will help get you started in the right direction for what you're trying to do.

All right. So now I want to talk about setting up an analysis. Right? So again, I said a few minutes ago that there's two variations of this. The easiest way to start out looking at this is to start out looking at it from an existing part. OK? So we're going to look at it from an existing part and we're going to apply information from three different areas.

And those three areas are the model, obstacles, and then configuring the model. OK? So when we talk about the model, we're actually talking about the original part. When we talk about obstacles, those really tend to fall into two areas; obstacles and preserve regions. And I'll go in detail as to what these are.

And then when we talk about configuring the model, we're talking about setting up what you are trying to do with this. So these are just some of the basic steps, general steps, of an analysis. They consist of identifying problem areas. So if you're trying to optimize something, you're wanting to look really at problem areas. You're looking for where I'm having the issues. What are my loads? What are my constraints? Those type of things.

Then we're going to look at creating preserved geometry. This is geometry where we're defining areas of this that we need to make sure do not get removed. All right? Next, we're going to talk about creating obstacle geometry. Creating obstacle geometry is just that. It's areas where I don't want this new model information going into. So areas of "keep out" is really the way I've tended to look at it or define it.

Now the next thing in there, we talk about the starting shape. And the starting shape again, is just that. It's the shape that we're starting with, because in this situation we're working off of a file that already exists. All right. Now the next thing is defining what's called design conditions. All right? From there we're going to go into defining design criteria, selecting our materials, and then running our analysis. All right?

Now it's entirely possible that the analysis will not complete before we're done with this, but we will talk about analyzing those results also. Because depending on how much information you give it, the more you give it, the more calculations it has to do and the longer it takes. All right. So again, identifying the different issues. So in here we're going to talk about identifying issues of information.

And we're actually going to start this from a basic standpoint and we're actually going to build the part we want to work with. We're going to build a part, then we're going to run it through generative design in order to figure out what we're actually trying to create here. OK? So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take each one of these kind of step-by-step, and I'm going to move over now to the software and walk you guys through basically creating or setting up the part. OK?

So-- so before we go too far in actually creating the part, how many people have actually used Fusion to create information? All right. Good. How many people understand what bodies are? Good. Because we're going to be working within our information here, creating bodies. Because what we're going to do is we're going to define a body that's our part, and then we're going to define bodies that represent our other pieces of information. OK?

And we're going to create those bodies so that we can, once we get into the generative design side, use that information to define how we're setting up our model. All right? So does everybody have generative design up and running? Or I'm sorry. Fusion. Not degenerative design. [CHUCKLES] We'll get to that here in a minute. All right?

So what I want to do first is, within Fusion, what we're doing is, this is still a sketch-based modeler. So the first thing we're going to do is create a sketch. All right? And I'm going to create a sketch of the shape that I want to run my analysis on. So I'm going to come up here at the top, and I'm going to tell it I want to create a sketch.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ROBERT SAVAGE: Oops, it didn't change.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ROBERT SAVAGE: Let's do this. There we go. So in Fusion we're going to start a sketch, and then we're going to pick a plane in here to work off of. If I come in here, I have different planes here that I can work with. I'm going to pick what I consider to be the xy-plane. If you'll notice, I've got my blue in my red here angled here. And so if I pick that square that represents beside that, then that generates a sketch only xy-plane.

Gosh, these floors are noisy. I'm going to start standing still. OK.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ROBERT SAVAGE: Ah, true. So they're just switching teams here. All right. So the next thing I want you to do is, up here in the upper right hand corner, it should say, AU, dash, a number. All right? So if you pick on that and you come down here to switch teams, there should be an option for a team in there, or a couple of different teams actually.

You should see one that-- Savage? Is it showing up as R Savage? Nope? We're not getting that?

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

ROBERT SAVAGE: See?

AUDIENCE: R Savage. Yeah.

ROBERT SAVAGE: [CHUCKLES] Yeah, it should show up as R Savage, if you're not getting that.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ROBERT SAVAGE: Yep, that's me.

AUDIENCE: What's it called again? It doesn't show up [INAUDIBLE]

ROBERT SAVAGE: All right. That's the reason we work these things, right? [LAUGHS]

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] show up. But I can join a team. So--

ROBERT SAVAGE: Well, you actually should have been--

AUDIENCE: What's it called again?

ROBERT SAVAGE: RSavage@Rand.com. See that should have already gone out. You having a problem there, also? Ravi, you got it?

AUDIENCE: They are able to see your account yet. Do we need to do something?

ROBERT SAVAGE: No. Well, let's see. Some people are seeing it and some people aren't. That's the--

AUDIENCE: Yeah. [INAUDIBLE]

ROBERT SAVAGE: Oh. OK. Let's see. No, go back over to your Fusion.

AUDIENCE: This one?

ROBERT SAVAGE: Yeah. Launch Fusion there.

AUDIENCE: I signed out of the account.

ROBERT SAVAGE: Oh, OK.

AUDIENCE: I had to sign [INAUDIBLE] I signed in with [INAUDIBLE]

ROBERT SAVAGE: RSavage@Rand.com.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] you signed out of [INAUDIBLE] account. That's the reason.

ROBERT SAVAGE: Oops, I'm sorry. No, you're fine. So basically what the team is doing is, the team is, I've created a team, and I've invited all of you to the team to be able to basically share that information so that everybody has a location to store it. OK? Now each one of you, on the front of your computer here, there's a sticker with a number on it. Well, let's see.

These don't have the number on them, do they, Kenny? They don't have the number on them, do they?

AUDIENCE: Check on the monitor.

ROBERT SAVAGE: Is it 39? OK. So the first two digits of that number is your actual user number within that team. So this little sticker here that says 3 or 36, this one says 44 lab 3, 36 is your team name. OK? No, not yet. I just wanted you to know, because it'll come up here in a second. Did it ever do anything for you?

AUDIENCE: Not yet.

ROBERT SAVAGE: OK. Good. So now all we're doing right now is establishing really kind of where we're saving information. Ah-- OK. Let me check my end on that just to make sure. All of those. All right. So go over here and tell it you want to join a team.

AUDIENCE: OK.

ROBERT SAVAGE: And then put in RSavage@Rand.com. OK. Shouldn't each one of these accounts have a team of its own?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ROBERT SAVAGE: OK. Let me check mine here real quick. So Kenny, why would these things have not gone through? I got a whole bunch of send invitations, but--

I'm just [INAUDIBLE] up here. I'll tell you what. Since this is being a little bit slow on the team side, that's going to cause us an issue probably with the analysis, too. But I think we can go ahead and create the part.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ROBERT SAVAGE: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ROBERT SAVAGE: OK. So let's change that for just a little bit. We're going to create something from scratch. We've already got a team in there. If you go back to the team dropdown, there's a Cornett in there. Let's just use that one instead, because that one's already set up and already running. I sent out invitations. Some of them last night, some of them this morning, but I had to send out 50 of them, so--

AUDIENCE: [? You ?] want us to switch teams?

ROBERT SAVAGE: Yeah, go ahead and switch teams over to Cornett.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] Cornett. And in the data panel, there's a whole bunch of folders that are numbered. And the number on the front of your monitor, [INAUDIBLE] whatever that [INAUDIBLE] that's what folder you use.

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

ROBERT SAVAGE: Yeah, go ahead and switch everybody to Cornett. Everybody. [LAUGHS] See? I'm going to make it hard on the now.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] it's the bootcamp from it and your folder's whatever your number is on the monitor.

ROBERT SAVAGE: That's where you're going to save your file at.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

AUDIENCE: Everybody's got a folder, right? [CHUCKLES] [INAUDIBLE] 45.

ROBERT SAVAGE: Oh, you only did 45 of them? Oh, Kenny. All right. So how we doing? Everybody good? Thumbs up, thumbs down. I mean, all right. Good. All right. So now I want to create the basic profile of what we're going to do here. We're going to do something similar to what you saw just a minute ago. We're going to create a clip. All right?

Now normally I would have created this clip a little bit differently, but we're going to create this clip, and we're just going to do it with some basic shapes. OK? So I'm going to come in and I'm going to use a two-point rectangle starting at zero. And I'm going to make the height of it 0.75, tab, and then 1.5.

So it's going to create a block on there that's 3/4 of an inch by an inch and a half. Now if your units are metric, you can force in inches, but you can also change the units. So if your units are metric on this, hit your document settings there. So over here in this area, you have document settings. If I drop that down, there's a Units there and I can pick that button over beside of that and change my active units.

Sorry. What was that? All right. So if I change my units then I'm not going to worry about it. All right? So from here, I'm just going to go ahead and say, Finish sketch now. I'm going to select the second icon, which is Extrude and I'm going to make that three inches long.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ROBERT SAVAGE: 0.75 by 1.5.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

ROBERT SAVAGE: All right. So if you've got that, the next thing we're going to do is kind of round off the corners of this. Again, we're not making anything overly complicated here. I just want you guys to kind of see just the general process. So I'm [INAUDIBLE] a couple of tools in here into the Fill It tool and I'm just going to put an 1/8 inch round on each one of-- or actually a 1/4 inch round on each one of the corners.

So I'm going to start to fill it. I'm going to pick each one of my long corners here, and to that, I'm going apply a 1/4 inch. Fill. Is it not working for you?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ROBERT SAVAGE: [COUGHS] Excuse me.

AUDIENCE: --browser shows [INAUDIBLE] what I did [INAUDIBLE] back and modifies. [INAUDIBLE] it's on--

ROBERT SAVAGE: Good question.

AUDIENCE: --bottom.

ROBERT SAVAGE: See this across the bottom here?

AUDIENCE: Oh.

ROBERT SAVAGE: 1/4 inch. No problem. So the next thing I'm going to do here is actually I'm going to open this up. So I'm going to put a sketch on one end of it, offset that information, and then extrude it out as an opening. I could also do a shell. There's multiple ways of doing anything in here.

So if you feel more comfortable doing it a different way, that's fine. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to start a new sketch, and I'm going to pick that original front face there. And then inside of there, once we get inside our sketch, I'm going to use the Offset tool to create an opening in there for that.

So from offset, I'm going to pick the entire outside edge and I'm going to drag it inside. Negative 0.125. Actually you know what? Let's go a 1/16. Negative 0.0625. Too many decimals. So all I did was an offset for a 16th of an inch.

All right. Now once you've done that, I can say "finish sketch," use my extrude, pick that inside profile, and then in here I'm going to say "through all" and change it to a cut. Or I can just grab the arrow and drag it back through the part. OK? So make sure it's going in the right direction. Say "cut through all."

Now this is actually going to be a slide rail and I've got a piece that's going to be sliding through this. That piece is going to have a weight to it, but it's also going to have a mounting platform on the side of it. OK? So that I can mount that to something and then have whatever I'm having slide through that slide through it. All right? So again, I'm just going to come back to another sketch here and pick that original face again.

I'm going to start another rectangle and I'm going to go to the right side of this and I'm going to make a little lip out there to where that I can have mounting holes for this. So I'm going to come over here to the side of this and I'm going to adjust, later, where it's located on this. Right now I'm just going to draw a-- start a rectangle on that side. 1/8 inch thick, 1/2 inch long.

So I've got it an 1/8 inch thick, 1/2 inch long. And then I'm going to come in with my Dimension tool and I'm going to add a dimension, setting that as a quarter-- as 0.25 down from the top. All right. Now again, I'm going to come out of that. I'm going to finish it. I'm going to do an extrude. I'm going to pick that profile, but over here in my distance, I'm going to select two object. And then I'm going to rotate around and pick the back face of that.

Oh, no. Wait a minute. Not two object. Let's just go "all." Or I can grab the arrow and drag it. Whichever way works best for me. We're actually going 3 inches down through there. So I'll just grab the arrow and drag it down or put in negative 3. Because remember, we're starting at a zero plane and going backwards here.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ROBERT SAVAGE: Because you're set to "new body." Change that to "join."

AUDIENCE: Assign all.

ROBERT SAVAGE: Nah. Hit the cancel there. Let's do that again just real quick just to make sure of something. Yeah, go back to your extrude. Up there at the top.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ROBERT SAVAGE: Change it. Go ahead and change it to join.

AUDIENCE: Change it to join right now?

ROBERT SAVAGE: Yep. And now grab your arrow off the end of that. I'll show you a little something. And drag it back. Now you can put in a distance of negative 3. I don't think the "all" is going to work in this situation so go back to "distance."

AUDIENCE: Negative?

ROBERT SAVAGE: There we go. So all we're doing here is we're creating a little ledge and I'm going to put a couple of holes in there for mounting a piece of information to it. So for mounting this. All right? Now I am going to go ahead and add a couple of Fill its to this to round these outside corners here.

And I'm going to set that to-- ah-- let's go ahead and make those a quarter inch round. All right. Now, so the next thing actually I'm going to do here is I'm going to put, again, a couple of holes in this because this is my mounting plate to hold whatever that's going to slide through that.

All right. So if I come over a couple of more steps, there's a Hole tool here and the Hole tool I'm going to use, I don't necessarily have to have a sketch for it, I'm just going to put it on the top face. So I'm going to pick this top face of this. All right? And then I'm just going to use this as a relatively simple hole and I'm going to say-- oh, no wait a minute. That's-- sorry. I hit the wrong one there. The diameter down here at the bottom, I want 125.

Now I've selected a face on this, but I'm also going to come down here to right below where it says "face" and pick a reference. And I'm going to pick that round edge for that reference. So I'm picking the face saying that's where it's going to start the reference saying I want it centered on that. OK.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ROBERT SAVAGE: That's because you can have multiple references. So if I wanted to set it off with two edges I could. All right. Actually it's-- I'm going to say, "OK" and then I'll basically repeat that process for putting one on the other end. So this is what I end up with. All right?

So now we're going to go ahead and save this file. So if you'll come up here to the top and hit Save, and then this is where you would define which folder you're saving it into. And the folder again, corresponds to your first set of numbers that are on that machine. And the way I do that is my information here, I can hit the dropdown, and I should have a folder name in there.

So I'm in a name mine Slide. And since you have your own folder, you can name it whatever you want. Now one reason that I go through this and actually define the part is because we're going to use similar processes to define other information in here as far as what we're actually trying to build. OK?

So I'm going to go ahead and save my file here. And so now I'm going to start adding in my other pieces of information. And this is where we get into something a little bit different. This is where we start getting into our obstacles and defining our obstacles. So I'm going to come back here for just a second so that we can talk about these obstacles that we're going to look at in here.

All right? So the first thing we're going to do is identify problems. And one of the way that we look at identifying problems is, is this a predefined-- pre-existing part and am I having issues with it? Is it breaking? Is it cracking? OK? So we have to have some, I guess, part knowledge of what we're trying to create here.

So as we create this, we're identifying the issues that we may have. Now beyond that, we're creating what's considered to be preserve regions. All right? Preserve regions are simply pieces of information that cannot be removed. So think about it from a standpoint of, if I've got a plate that I'm bolting to something, I need contact surface for where that bolt's going to hit. So I can't let it remove information from that area. That would be a preserve region. So I'm preserving that region. All right?

So let's go create a preserve region. So my preserve region right now, I'm going to have two of them. Well, actually three of them. One for each of those screw holes and one for the area that this is sliding in. OK? And I'll show you a little bit more what I mean by that here in just a second. So if I come up here with a sketch, and I'll pick this top face here, I'm going to go ahead and build the body that represents my preserve region.

Now later on, once you get into generative design, you'll find that you can start building these things inside of generative design. I prefer to build them outside of it, at least initially, and then assign them to the different ways that we're looking at it. OK? So the way we're going to build this body here is just the same way we did everything else. I put a sketch on here and I'm going to draw a circle here and I'm going to make that circle diameter 0.375.

And what we're going to use is we're going to use the inside reference information. So when we pick that sketch, it referenced in that inside edge of the circle. Now we're going to put the outside edge of where my bolt or screw would actually make contact with so that I don't remove that information. So I'm going to say it's 3/8 of an inch and hit Enter.

Now here's where we get to something a little bit different. I am going to go ahead and finish this, and I'm going to tell it that I want to do an extrude, and I'm going to pick that area between those two circles. But what I'm doing here is I'm creating a body and not a feature. The things we created so far were features. These were parts of that component. Now we're going to create a body that represents that information.

So that means over here in my operation, I want this set to "New body." Now again, I can just grab this arrow and drag it down. If I do that though, I have to be careful because if you'll notice, this thinks I'm doing the cut now. And so I want to make sure that it goes back and sets it as a new body. So I grab my arrow, drug it down a little bit, and then told it-- verified that it was being set as a new body.

Now I do still have to set the height of this. And that height is 125. So what I want to point out now is, on my part, I can see a circle there, but where I want to really come into now is expanding out that body's folder so that I see that second body in there. All right? The first body is our original part. Second body represents that preserve region for that.

I'm going to duplicate that on the other side. All right. So I'm going to go and do another sketch over here, put another circle centered off of that, finish it, and create that as a body. So I'm going to do an extrude, pick the area between. Make sure I got my direction going right. Make sure it's set to a body, and then make sure I give it the depth I want. OK?

So now I have a third body in here representing the other preserved region. Can anybody think of another area that you might want to set as a preserve region? So if I'm bolting that down and something sliding to it, I need to preserve that bottom that it's actually making contact with and sliding on. So that would be my next preserve region that I would create. All right?

So the way that I create that is again, I'm going to come in with another sketch here, and I'm going to pick that back face, and then I'm just going to basically create a closed loop. And the way I'm going to create the closed loop here is I'm going to draw a line that goes from the end of the radius to the end of the radius on both sides. So all I'm doing is going from the end of that radius to the other end of the radius, because I also want to maintain that radius because what I'm sliding through there is radiused. And then from there, I'm going to repeat that process.

So I'm going to extrude that, pick that loop we created there, make sure it's going in the right direction, make sure it's at the new body, and make sure it's set to three inches. Now that's-- again, that's going to be a negative number there. All right. So now I have four bodies in there. I'm going to create one more. All right? But before I create that one, I want to explain what that one's going to be.

So that is what's going-- that's going to be what's referred to as an obstacle. And again, I can create multiple obstacles in here, but the first thing-- but the obstacle I'm going to create is the area to the inside saying that whatever my generative design does, it can't come into that area. OK? So if you'll notice here, we've got another variation of an obstacle here, and the tall cylinder-looking obstacle represents two things.

The lower portion of it represents the screw. So the material can't go into where that screw would be. The taller portion of that would actually represent how I'm mounting it. Am I coming in there with a socket? OK? Or am I coming in there with a wrench? So I would create a preserve region there so that I make sure that the material does not go into the areas that I need either run a wrench on, run a bolt through, or be able to get my hand into.

And so that's the reason that I tend to-- and people always start looking a little glassy-eyed at this point. But you've got to start thinking about things a little bit different when you use this. You're not thinking about how I would make something. You're thinking about what are my obstacles. What am I trying to define in this? OK? So let's go and create that real quick. So for that, again, I'm going to create a sketch on this back face. And all I really need is that open area in the middle. And so since I created a sketch, it projected that sketch in. I can just simply finish and extrude now.

So I'm just going to go ahead and say Finish, and I'm going to extrude. And I'm just going to pick that open information in the middle there. Again, I'm going to make sure it's set to "new body," distance, but I'm going to change it to going two sides. Actually I'm going to go two sides. All right? Now if you'll notice, I've got two arrows here. One's bold and one's not. The bold one represents the first distance. The first distance is going to be 3. Ah. Come on. Negative 3. And the second distance down here I'm going to say is going to be also 3. Actually 2. Let's just go 2 with that one.

And again, I'm going to come down here and make sure that it sets that to new body. (WHISPERING) Why is it not doing it? Oh, that went both-- that sent both of them in the same direction. All right. So the first one is negative 3. The second one I'm going to set to 2. Actually I think it's going to make me go a negative number also just to set it the other direction.

And I want to do that so that I extend that out. OK? I don't necessarily want that to be just the size of my part, because then it can start filling in around the ends of it. So even the 3 inch there, I might run that out a little longer. OK? So I'm going to create that. I'm going to say "OK" there. And now if you'll notice, I'm up to 5 bodies. If it starts getting too much for you, I want to show you one thing here you can do to help clarify a little bit. Notice the little symbol over to the left of each of these bodies. That is the visibility of that body.

I can turn off all the bodies but the first one so that I'm kind of back to a clean screen here if I want. If that information starts getting too much for you. So I'm going to come in here again, start a new sketch on the top of this. I'm going to use that circular information that was projected in when I created the sketch. I'm going to finish that and I'm going to pick inside of that circle on both of those because I can do both of these here. Drag that down. I don't care how long it is because I'm not setting really a depth on this. I'm just saying that I want to control this information.

So it doesn't really matter how deep I set that as long as it goes through the part that I want. OK? But again, if you're going to do that, make sure that this is set to new body. Now, if I want to come in and detail that a little more and add a little piece to the top of that to represent the head of that, I can actually come back in here and turn off body 1. So that I can come in now and say, all right, put a sketch on the top of that.

3/8 inch diameter for this, because I'm just representing the bolt head. And I'll grab both profiles an outer ring in the inside circular piece of that so that it extrudes both of those. In this instance here though, I'm not creating a new body, I'm adding to that body. OK? So I am using the "join" here, because I'm joining that information together. And then I'll do the same thing on the other side.

All right. So again, that was a 3/8 diameter going up a quarter of an inch. And it is a join here again. Now I'm going to come back and I'm going to turn all the bodies, the visibility of the bodies, back on. Now there's a couple of ways that I can do things that, in my opinion, will help me, at least starting out, to visualize what I'm doing here. All right? Because information when we come into create obstacles and preserve regions, they have specific colors.

The colors of those are red and green. And so I can actually change the color of these bodies that I created to represent those colors, if I want. OK? Or if I understand what I've got here, I can simply now go over to generative design and start setting my information up. You guys ready for that? All right.

So let's talk about what-- so the next thing there is the starting shape. The starting shape would be that original part that we created. The original piece that we're working off of. Now a starting shape as an optional thing. I don't have to have a starting shape. That was what I was referencing earlier when I said you can either start with a file, or you can start with the information of a file.

If all I have is where my slide is going through and where my pieces are bolting, then I can set that information up and run it off of there. The next thing is setting up what's called your design conditions. Anybody ever done stress analysis before? All right. So stress analysis comes down to two things. All right? A load and a constraint. All right?

A load is what pressure is being applied. A constraint is how it's being held. All right? That's the main thing we're talking about there. Now there are variations between loads and constraints. So now the next thing you're going to do is you're going to hit your design dropdown box here and you're going to go to generative design.

So if I come in here and I go down here to the second one in, it takes me over to the generative design area. Now I start having my tools here to set this up. Now I can start defining some of my conditions. Now if I wanted to build this information in place, because remember I mentioned that, I tend to build it out into the file and then use it in here. If I wanted to build it in the generative design information, I could do that under the Edit Model dropdown and it would let me basically do the same things I did there.

Now the design space area, this is where I define what is a preserve region and what is a obstacle. So I'm going to start with the obstacles. And so I'm going to come in here and I'm going to say obstacle. The first obstacle is this. And then I'm going to pick my two pins here. So I'm going to pick those three bodies as obstacles Say, OK. Notice they changed to red. OK?

Now I also want to come in here. I'm now going to hit the little symbol beside of obstacles to turn off the visibility of that so that I can see the other things in there. All right? So just a little eyeball symbol turns off the visibility of it. The next thing I'm going to define is my preserve regions, and that was this-- oh, no. Not that one. Got to make sure it grabs the right one there.

So those two circular shapes there and that little shelf along the bottom, those are the areas I'm keeping.