& Construction
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Integrated BIM tools, including Revit, AutoCAD, and Civil 3D
& Manufacturing
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Professional CAD/CAM tools built on Inventor and AutoCAD
Integrated BIM tools, including Revit, AutoCAD, and Civil 3D
Professional CAD/CAM tools built on Inventor and AutoCAD
Transcript
00:02
In this lesson, we'll create a 2D contour on a complex part.
00:07
After completing this lesson, you'll be able to create a 2D contour tool Path,
00:12
use project in a sketch, modify sketch constraints and use simulate to validate a tool path.
00:19
In Fusion 360, we want to carry on with our multi-axis positioning.
00:24
The first thing I'm going to do is hide my stock and minimize my model,
00:28
and I want to talk about creating a 2D contour to cut the outside of the part.
00:33
Typically when we have a 2D contour, this is done by selecting a face or an edge, which creates a chain that fusion can follow.
00:42
However, in the case of this part, we have these fillets to these rounded edges that are not in the same direction as a 2.5 or 3-axis tool.
00:51
So, what happens when we create a 2D contour is we get some interesting selections, and we have some problems that we need to deal with.
00:59
To get started, let's try to create a 2D contour, again using tools seven and moving over to the geometry section.
01:07
From here, we need to select a contour.
01:10
When we do this, we are allowed to select the side edge, for example,
01:14
and notice that it pushes the tool down, and this at first seems like it might be a good option.
01:20
But what happens if we just simply say ‘okay’, and we allow it to machine this.
01:25
Well, we can see that the tool cuts the outside but it's also cutting the inside.
01:31
The reason this happens is because we selected a contour that was not in the same direction as the tool.
01:38
So while the contour looks like it's fine,
01:41
what's actually happening is we have two edges or two contours that its trying to follow and it’s machining them from both sides.
01:49
While we can try to come in here and we can try to play around with these settings, for example, if we hold down the Alt key,
01:57
we are able to make a single selection but notice that when we make this single selection,
02:03
that it's actually giving us a bunch of different options here.
02:07
If we view this from the top, you see that we have some on the wrong side and if we move these around and we make these selections,
02:15
we can give this a try and see where the tool goes.
02:17
Now the tool stays on the outside but we have some issues because the tool is at different Z heights.
02:23
Again, we can make adjustments to this operation, and we can make improvements.
02:28
But sometimes using this 2D contour on a complex part, just isn't the easiest thing to do.
02:35
Sometimes what you can do is go back to the model and back to in this case our link and take a look at the sketches that we have available.
02:43
So, if we have a specific sketch, in this case you can see that we have sketch three.
02:49
This contains what looks to be an ‘okay’ representation of the part.
02:54
However, the fillets were added as a feature and not part of the sketch, so we can't simply just follow this.
03:01
If we go down the line, you can see that we have other sketches for different areas
03:05
but in most cases, those fillets were added as features after the fact.
03:11
So what this means is if we want to sketch that accurately represents what we're looking at, we need to go back and make one.
03:18
So again this is going to be very much part specific because sometimes you can get away with just making those selections,
03:25
but let's take a look at the design workspace and see how we can create these contours that we need.
03:32
Back here, I'm going to hide the stock and even hide the fixture assembly and focus my attention just on the link.
03:38
I'll activate it, and I'm going to start a new sketch.
03:41
When we start a new sketch, the selection is going to be important.
03:45
We want to make sure that we select geometry that's useful to us, and in this case, I'm going to go ahead and select this top face.
03:53
This will automatically project those edges for us.
03:56
If I double click on one of these edges, it's going to bring the entire chain in.
04:00
Once it's selected,
04:02
I can use Delete on the keyboard to get rid of it or I can change the line type to construction, so that it's not available as a selection.
04:10
In this case, I'm going to hit Delete to get rid of it which is going to leave me only with my external contour.
04:17
What I want to do here is select each of these ends and then convert them to construction.
04:22
What this does is it no longer has a closed profile that we can use for our contour operation
04:29
but that's okay because what we actually want to do is we want to carry this all the way out to the end.
04:35
If I select this face and go to my Create Project Include and Project, what I can do is I can bring these faces into my current sketch.
04:46
When I do that, I now have this face as my selection.
04:50
Once again, I can either delete or convert these edges to construction whichever makes the most sense.
04:58
Remember though that we did select a 3D face and having a 3D face means that we're going to have contours on the top and the bottom.
05:07
Notice, however, that we don't have an outside edge here.
05:10
When we use project, it's simply grabbing the edges of whatever the selected faces.
05:15
So we need to use our line tool and come back and simply connect these ends.
05:20
Since all the edges are projected, their projected based on the selected geometry.
05:25
So we don't have to add any new dimensions or constraints.
05:28
We can simply just draw that out.
05:31
If you want to double check this, we can always go into our link and hide the bodies and just take a look at what we have.
05:38
I'll hit Escape to get off my line tool and hide the bodies and just take a look at my selection.
05:44
We have a close profile and the outside looks exactly what I need for my 2D contour.
05:50
While I'm in here, I'm just going to rename this 2D contour outside.
05:55
So that way I remember what that sketch was for.
05:58
I'll bring back the bodies, I'll finish the sketch and navigate back to my manufacturer workspace.
06:04
Once we're back here and notice that the operations we've created now say that they are out of date.
06:10
With the set up already selected, we're going to go to Actions and generate and allow it to recalculate those.
06:15
Any time we go back into the design workspace and make changes or make any adjustments, it needs to recalculate because once again,
06:23
some of these operations, the 3D operations are model aware, and some of the operations like the 2D contour we already created,
06:30
are based on selections that may have changed.
06:34
But now we can go into our 2D contour, we can edit, go back to our geometry and basically start over.
06:41
I'm going to select one of these edges, make sure that my red arrow is on the outside and then simply say ‘okay’.
06:48
Now you can see that we have a 2D contour that's cutting in the right orientation.
06:52
Now that we know that we're on the right path, the 2D contour is in the right location, I'm going to go back in, and I'm going to edit this operation.
07:02
The first thing that I need to do is set the height to the proper specific location.
07:07
Right now it's based on the selected contours.
07:09
But what I want to do is I want to take it below the remaining stock,
07:13
so I'm going to use my model bottom again, and I'm going to say -.3, which is what we used before.
07:21
Then inside of my past this section, I want to make sure that I'm handling this with multiple depths,
07:27
and the reason I want to do this is because that tool cannot take this in a single cut.
07:32
I want to make sure that my maximum roughing stepdown is going to be based on a realistic number for this tool, and I'm going to say quarter inch.
07:41
Also note that we are using multiple depths but we're not taking a look at leaving any material behind.
07:47
We're not doing any roughing passes.
07:49
We don't have stock to leave.
07:50
We're just simply doing a single 2D contour.
07:53
For now, let's go ahead and just run this as a single 2D contour, allow it to generate and then take a look at the results.
08:01
When we're looking at the results, we can always go into our options to hide the cutting moves,
08:06
and just focus our attention on the stock that's removed.
08:11
I'm going to hide our 2D contour, minimize everything in our browser.
08:15
And then I want to take a look at my 3D adaptive and then my 2D contour.
08:20
You can see between the 3D adaptive and the 2D contour that we are removing more material.
08:25
You'll also note that the 2D contour is actually cutting a little bit of this material away.
08:31
I don't know that that's strictly necessary.
08:33
So I'm going to make one small adjustment.
08:35
Go back into my heights and instead of going down -.3, I'm going to go to -.2 and make sure that the results are still okay.
08:46
You can see here that there is a small lip.
08:49
But when we take a look at that in the context of our actual part, we can see that the part is well above that,
08:56
which means that when we flip this thing over and we go in and we start to clear out that other side,
09:01
it's not going to cause a problem with the final shape.
09:04
Again, it's really going to depend on your specific model and what you're cutting.
09:09
But for our purposes, I want to take it down all the way to that -.3, that was the value we used before.
09:16
And I'm going to just simply allow it to go down.
09:19
But I am going to say plus .02.
09:23
Now, the reason I'm doing plus .02 is that was our stock to leave on the first operation.
09:28
That's why we had that small lip and that's why it was leaving that material behind.
09:33
Again, we can make any changes we want to these operations and ultimately you can go ahead and play around with those options,
09:40
figure out what works best for you, make those adjustments.
09:44
If you simply want to leave it at -.3, then go ahead and leave it at -.3.
09:49
But it's always a good idea to play around with these to make sure that you understand what all these options are doing.
09:55
For the purposes of this lesson, let's go ahead and save the design and then move on to the next step.
Video transcript
00:02
In this lesson, we'll create a 2D contour on a complex part.
00:07
After completing this lesson, you'll be able to create a 2D contour tool Path,
00:12
use project in a sketch, modify sketch constraints and use simulate to validate a tool path.
00:19
In Fusion 360, we want to carry on with our multi-axis positioning.
00:24
The first thing I'm going to do is hide my stock and minimize my model,
00:28
and I want to talk about creating a 2D contour to cut the outside of the part.
00:33
Typically when we have a 2D contour, this is done by selecting a face or an edge, which creates a chain that fusion can follow.
00:42
However, in the case of this part, we have these fillets to these rounded edges that are not in the same direction as a 2.5 or 3-axis tool.
00:51
So, what happens when we create a 2D contour is we get some interesting selections, and we have some problems that we need to deal with.
00:59
To get started, let's try to create a 2D contour, again using tools seven and moving over to the geometry section.
01:07
From here, we need to select a contour.
01:10
When we do this, we are allowed to select the side edge, for example,
01:14
and notice that it pushes the tool down, and this at first seems like it might be a good option.
01:20
But what happens if we just simply say ‘okay’, and we allow it to machine this.
01:25
Well, we can see that the tool cuts the outside but it's also cutting the inside.
01:31
The reason this happens is because we selected a contour that was not in the same direction as the tool.
01:38
So while the contour looks like it's fine,
01:41
what's actually happening is we have two edges or two contours that its trying to follow and it’s machining them from both sides.
01:49
While we can try to come in here and we can try to play around with these settings, for example, if we hold down the Alt key,
01:57
we are able to make a single selection but notice that when we make this single selection,
02:03
that it's actually giving us a bunch of different options here.
02:07
If we view this from the top, you see that we have some on the wrong side and if we move these around and we make these selections,
02:15
we can give this a try and see where the tool goes.
02:17
Now the tool stays on the outside but we have some issues because the tool is at different Z heights.
02:23
Again, we can make adjustments to this operation, and we can make improvements.
02:28
But sometimes using this 2D contour on a complex part, just isn't the easiest thing to do.
02:35
Sometimes what you can do is go back to the model and back to in this case our link and take a look at the sketches that we have available.
02:43
So, if we have a specific sketch, in this case you can see that we have sketch three.
02:49
This contains what looks to be an ‘okay’ representation of the part.
02:54
However, the fillets were added as a feature and not part of the sketch, so we can't simply just follow this.
03:01
If we go down the line, you can see that we have other sketches for different areas
03:05
but in most cases, those fillets were added as features after the fact.
03:11
So what this means is if we want to sketch that accurately represents what we're looking at, we need to go back and make one.
03:18
So again this is going to be very much part specific because sometimes you can get away with just making those selections,
03:25
but let's take a look at the design workspace and see how we can create these contours that we need.
03:32
Back here, I'm going to hide the stock and even hide the fixture assembly and focus my attention just on the link.
03:38
I'll activate it, and I'm going to start a new sketch.
03:41
When we start a new sketch, the selection is going to be important.
03:45
We want to make sure that we select geometry that's useful to us, and in this case, I'm going to go ahead and select this top face.
03:53
This will automatically project those edges for us.
03:56
If I double click on one of these edges, it's going to bring the entire chain in.
04:00
Once it's selected,
04:02
I can use Delete on the keyboard to get rid of it or I can change the line type to construction, so that it's not available as a selection.
04:10
In this case, I'm going to hit Delete to get rid of it which is going to leave me only with my external contour.
04:17
What I want to do here is select each of these ends and then convert them to construction.
04:22
What this does is it no longer has a closed profile that we can use for our contour operation
04:29
but that's okay because what we actually want to do is we want to carry this all the way out to the end.
04:35
If I select this face and go to my Create Project Include and Project, what I can do is I can bring these faces into my current sketch.
04:46
When I do that, I now have this face as my selection.
04:50
Once again, I can either delete or convert these edges to construction whichever makes the most sense.
04:58
Remember though that we did select a 3D face and having a 3D face means that we're going to have contours on the top and the bottom.
05:07
Notice, however, that we don't have an outside edge here.
05:10
When we use project, it's simply grabbing the edges of whatever the selected faces.
05:15
So we need to use our line tool and come back and simply connect these ends.
05:20
Since all the edges are projected, their projected based on the selected geometry.
05:25
So we don't have to add any new dimensions or constraints.
05:28
We can simply just draw that out.
05:31
If you want to double check this, we can always go into our link and hide the bodies and just take a look at what we have.
05:38
I'll hit Escape to get off my line tool and hide the bodies and just take a look at my selection.
05:44
We have a close profile and the outside looks exactly what I need for my 2D contour.
05:50
While I'm in here, I'm just going to rename this 2D contour outside.
05:55
So that way I remember what that sketch was for.
05:58
I'll bring back the bodies, I'll finish the sketch and navigate back to my manufacturer workspace.
06:04
Once we're back here and notice that the operations we've created now say that they are out of date.
06:10
With the set up already selected, we're going to go to Actions and generate and allow it to recalculate those.
06:15
Any time we go back into the design workspace and make changes or make any adjustments, it needs to recalculate because once again,
06:23
some of these operations, the 3D operations are model aware, and some of the operations like the 2D contour we already created,
06:30
are based on selections that may have changed.
06:34
But now we can go into our 2D contour, we can edit, go back to our geometry and basically start over.
06:41
I'm going to select one of these edges, make sure that my red arrow is on the outside and then simply say ‘okay’.
06:48
Now you can see that we have a 2D contour that's cutting in the right orientation.
06:52
Now that we know that we're on the right path, the 2D contour is in the right location, I'm going to go back in, and I'm going to edit this operation.
07:02
The first thing that I need to do is set the height to the proper specific location.
07:07
Right now it's based on the selected contours.
07:09
But what I want to do is I want to take it below the remaining stock,
07:13
so I'm going to use my model bottom again, and I'm going to say -.3, which is what we used before.
07:21
Then inside of my past this section, I want to make sure that I'm handling this with multiple depths,
07:27
and the reason I want to do this is because that tool cannot take this in a single cut.
07:32
I want to make sure that my maximum roughing stepdown is going to be based on a realistic number for this tool, and I'm going to say quarter inch.
07:41
Also note that we are using multiple depths but we're not taking a look at leaving any material behind.
07:47
We're not doing any roughing passes.
07:49
We don't have stock to leave.
07:50
We're just simply doing a single 2D contour.
07:53
For now, let's go ahead and just run this as a single 2D contour, allow it to generate and then take a look at the results.
08:01
When we're looking at the results, we can always go into our options to hide the cutting moves,
08:06
and just focus our attention on the stock that's removed.
08:11
I'm going to hide our 2D contour, minimize everything in our browser.
08:15
And then I want to take a look at my 3D adaptive and then my 2D contour.
08:20
You can see between the 3D adaptive and the 2D contour that we are removing more material.
08:25
You'll also note that the 2D contour is actually cutting a little bit of this material away.
08:31
I don't know that that's strictly necessary.
08:33
So I'm going to make one small adjustment.
08:35
Go back into my heights and instead of going down -.3, I'm going to go to -.2 and make sure that the results are still okay.
08:46
You can see here that there is a small lip.
08:49
But when we take a look at that in the context of our actual part, we can see that the part is well above that,
08:56
which means that when we flip this thing over and we go in and we start to clear out that other side,
09:01
it's not going to cause a problem with the final shape.
09:04
Again, it's really going to depend on your specific model and what you're cutting.
09:09
But for our purposes, I want to take it down all the way to that -.3, that was the value we used before.
09:16
And I'm going to just simply allow it to go down.
09:19
But I am going to say plus .02.
09:23
Now, the reason I'm doing plus .02 is that was our stock to leave on the first operation.
09:28
That's why we had that small lip and that's why it was leaving that material behind.
09:33
Again, we can make any changes we want to these operations and ultimately you can go ahead and play around with those options,
09:40
figure out what works best for you, make those adjustments.
09:44
If you simply want to leave it at -.3, then go ahead and leave it at -.3.
09:49
But it's always a good idea to play around with these to make sure that you understand what all these options are doing.
09:55
For the purposes of this lesson, let's go ahead and save the design and then move on to the next step.
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