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After completing this video, you will be able to:
Transcript
00:02
Create and modify freeform parts.
00:05
After completing this video, you'll be able to
00:08
create and manipulate basic form bodies,
00:10
use form tools to remove and patch geometry and
00:13
use form utilities to repair and smooth form bodies.
00:19
In fusion. 360 we want to get started with the supply dataset outcome one Alcoa
00:24
bracket dot F 3d.
00:26
If you use component color cycling.
00:27
In the previous example,
00:29
you can toggle that off by going to inspect and display component colors.
00:33
This will put back the default material appearance inside of your design.
00:38
When creating a design from fusion three sixtys generative design,
00:42
you're likely presented with a free form body as the result.
00:46
If you're using something such as two
00:48
axis cutting or 2.5 axis cam, then you likely have a two D extruded profile.
00:53
However, for most of the manufacturing methods,
00:56
you will be working with a free form body
00:59
in order to better understand those. Let's begin by creating a new design
01:03
and start by creating a new form.
01:06
Once we create a new form,
01:07
we're presented with a handful of options for primitives that can be created
01:11
boxes, planes, cylinder sphere torus quad ball and pipe are just a few.
01:18
Each of these has a benefit to using it as the basis for your design.
01:23
For example, using the quad ball will give you a spherical design
01:27
that has really good geometry to start for round parts.
01:31
Let's go ahead and select, cancel and start with the box,
01:34
which is one of the defaults that I use all the time.
01:37
Once we create a box form,
01:39
notice the dialog box on the right hand side allows us to make
01:42
direct adjustments to things like the number of faces in each direction,
01:46
the size and length as well as toggling on symmetry.
01:51
It is important to note that once we OK, this dialog box, we cannot get back to it
01:56
working in the forms environment is a direct modeling approach which
01:60
means anything that we do is not captured in the timeline.
02:03
And once we're finished making our adjustments,
02:05
we can finish the form and that'll take
02:06
us back into the design workspace where our design
02:09
will be converted to a solid or a surface depending on if it's closed or open.
02:14
Let's take a look at some of the basic tools that
02:15
we need to understand how to work with our forms.
02:19
The first thing that we should understand is in the utilities menu
02:22
is that the display mode will toggle on box display mode.
02:26
Our control frame display
02:28
or our smooth display,
02:31
our control is going to be a box that is outside of our design.
02:35
And that box is gonna determine the tang agency direction of each face.
02:40
Understanding this box display or viewing it as the control frame display
02:44
will help us better understand how we can work
02:46
with and manipulate our forms and get good quality geometry
02:50
toggling back and forth between these can be done with shortcut keys,
02:53
alt and 12 or three.
02:55
If you're on a windows machine,
02:58
let's go ahead and leave it on the control frame display for now.
03:01
Next, we want to take a look at our modify menu.
03:04
These are gonna be all the tools that we can use to modify or design.
03:08
There are many different tools that we can explore,
03:10
but we're gonna only take a look at a few of them
03:12
at the basic level. Edit form is going to be the tool that gets used. The most
03:17
edit form allows us to translate, rotate or scale our selections.
03:23
First, let's take a look at working with just a face.
03:26
If we select an individual face,
03:28
the manipulator that comes up on the screen is going to be the multi
03:32
manipulator.
03:33
This allows us to use the transform options
03:36
allows us to use the rotation options
03:40
as well as the scale options.
03:43
Each of these is going to represent moving,
03:45
rotating or scaling in a different direction or plane.
03:49
For example, here we're moving only in Z.
03:51
However, if we select this box in the center, we're now moving in plane.
03:56
In this case, the X Z plane,
03:58
if we select this manipulator here, we're gonna be scaling vertically.
04:02
However, if we select the corner, we're gonna be scaling in plain,
04:07
there's also a manipulator right in the center that
04:09
allows us to scale in all three directions,
04:12
you can toggle on different transform modes
04:15
to focus your attention on just translation,
04:17
just rotation or just scale.
04:20
But once you get comfortable using the multi manipulator can be extremely helpful.
04:25
Now that we've taken a look at just the basics of working with a single face.
04:29
Let's also talk about our other selection options.
04:32
We have edges and vertices that we can work with in here.
04:36
If I double click, an edge, it'll automatically grab the edge loop.
04:40
This is true in the center of the design where it goes all the way through.
04:43
However, if we select an edge, it's going to stop at a corner,
04:47
this corner is considered a star point
04:50
any time that we don't have four edges intersecting.
04:53
In this case, we've got three or if we have more,
04:56
it's going to stop the tang agency or continuity of that edge.
04:60
This doesn't mean that we can't select additional edges.
05:02
We just need to hold down the shift or control key.
05:06
We can also make selections between edges.
05:09
For example, if we select our starting edge,
05:11
hold down the control key and double click and our ending edge,
05:14
it'll fill in the gap between those
05:17
we can use tools like scale.
05:18
In this case, we can scale these up and down based on the relative position
05:22
we can use our rotation
05:25
or we can move the edge around
05:29
working with this selection options such as using edges faces or vertices.
05:35
And using the multi
05:36
transform mode for transforming rotating and scaling
05:40
can be an extremely quick way for us to model.
05:43
Let's take one more look at using vertices in the selection process
05:48
here. I'm going to select these vertices.
05:50
I'm gonna begin scaling and enter zero in the dialogue.
05:54
This is going to scale all those vertices zero or flat relative to each other.
05:59
We also have an option when we're using our selection dialog box
06:03
to change our pivot point.
06:05
When we select set pivot,
06:07
we can move this around to another location
06:09
and then this will be the center of our scale rotation or translation.
06:14
This can be extremely helpful when modifying your designs as it
06:18
helps keep some consistency in the location of that pivot.
06:22
Now that we've seen those basic options,
06:24
let's take a look at just a few more before we
06:26
move on to taking a look at our Alcoa bracket.
06:30
Inside of here, we also have something called soft modification.
06:34
Soft modification will allow us to make selections on our design
06:38
and then it'll vary the influence radiating away from that selection.
06:42
For example, if I select a single vertex, you can see that we've got red vertices,
06:47
pink vertices and white vertices.
06:49
This is driven by the extent type as well as the distance.
06:54
As I reduce this to 25 we can see that only these two vertices are within that range.
06:60
Now, this means as I begin to manipulate this,
07:02
it's going to move my selection more than the surrounding vertices.
07:07
And once it gets outside of that range,
07:09
the rest of the vertices,
07:10
edges and faces will be maintained in their current position,
07:15
we also have additional options for things like selection.
07:18
This can easily allow us to select larger areas by growing loops,
07:24
increasing or decreasing our selection
07:26
or by even inverting our selection.
07:29
Grabbing only the things that are currently deselected.
07:32
It is also important to note that your selection
07:34
dropdown options for filters is different than it is.
07:38
When you're not using this tool,
07:40
it will filter down just to our available T
07:43
spline options which are the names for the edges,
07:45
faces and vertices based on the T spline functionality.
07:51
Let's also take a look at a handful of other
07:53
tools that can be helpful when working in forms.
07:56
Under the modify menu. We have the insertion of edges and points.
08:01
If we use insert edge and I double click an edge.
08:03
This allows me to put another edge in my design
08:07
at a varying distance between the selected edge and the next edge of my design,
08:12
we have multiple insertion modes.
08:14
A simple insertion mode will place the edge exactly where I say
08:17
and it will have an overall effect on the geometry.
08:20
The exact insertion mode will divide the
08:23
surrounding geometry up to maintain the shape.
08:25
So in this case,
08:26
let's go ahead and do simple and note that there was a change in my design.
08:31
If I double click this edge and use the insert edge option
08:34
and use exact,
08:36
it's going to insert an edge.
08:37
But you'll notice that it divided up more of my design based
08:41
on the fact that I wanted it to preserve the shape.
08:44
This is also true when we use the insert point option.
08:47
However,
08:48
insert point can be done by creating our own edges depending
08:52
on where we want them to be in our design.
08:54
And this also brings us to the point that we have what are called T points and
08:58
T points are where we have an edge that ends at another edge in our design.
09:03
I'm gonna go into my smooth display to
09:05
better see this using Alton three on the keyboard
09:08
in this design.
09:09
We've got a T point that intersects with this edge and we've got another one here.
09:13
These are allowed inside of free form modeling in Fusion 3 60
09:18
but they are something that we should pay close attention to.
09:21
If we want to make adjustments.
09:22
For example, if we want to remove edges, we can always select them and hit delete
09:27
and Fusion 3 60 will automatically update our geometry.
09:31
We can do this with faces as well.
09:33
However, when you delete a face,
09:34
you might be taking a closed free form model to an open free form model.
09:39
When it's open. During the finished form process, it'll be converted to a surface.
09:43
If it's closed, it'll be converted to a solid.
09:47
That is a very basic overview of the forms functionality.
09:50
So let's take a quick look at our Alcoa bracket.
09:53
This design was created using generative design and we're going
09:56
to begin by editing the organic feature in our timeline
09:59
here.
09:60
You can see that we have a free form body that
10:02
has all the functionality that we saw in our previous example.
10:05
One of the main differences that we see here is that the edges are blue
10:09
using what's called the freeze option
10:12
underneath freeze, those edges are frozen, preventing them from being moved.
10:17
One way that fusion 3 60 generative design outcomes work
10:20
is by overlapping these surfaces with our solid preserved regions.
10:24
So maintaining these frozen edges is an important aspect of the design.
10:28
We can remove that frozen edge by going to modify freeze and unfreeze.
10:34
Now, however,
10:35
using the unfreeze option means that we might
10:37
have issues downstream when using boundary fill.
10:40
So pay close attention to where those edges are located in your design
10:45
under the modify menu. We also have a handful of tools such as smooth
10:49
and solidify that can be extremely handy with our generative designs
10:53
when we use solidify, we can find these pipes or stems in our design
10:57
by double clicking, it automatically identifies them
11:00
and using the cylindrical tool will turn them into more of a cylinder.
11:06
If we use the modified tool for smooth,
11:09
this allows us to select faces on the free form body.
11:12
In this case, we're gonna make some selections around this slightly creased corner
11:18
and we can use the manipulator on screen to
11:20
average out their positions smoothing out that geometry.
11:24
These two methods can be a great way to work
11:27
with your free form outcomes from your generative designs.
11:31
There is one last area that I do want to mention and that's going to be our repair body
11:36
using repair body will identify any potential problems in the free form design.
11:41
We can see all of these yellow stars, these are called star points.
11:45
When they are displayed in red on the design,
11:48
there will be an error star and that will be something that needs to be addressed.
11:53
In this case, if there are any problems, we can use auto repair and we can say, OK,
11:57
and then we can finish our free form
11:59
and get back to our design.
12:02
You'll notice that the combine is failed here. We can roll previous to that feature,
12:07
go to our bodies folder and hide all of our obstacles
12:10
and take a look at just our organic free form model.
12:15
At this point, we can continue to play around with this design.
12:17
But those are the basic tools that you'll need to understand,
12:20
to work with your free form outcomes.
12:22
Once you're done playing around with these tools,
12:24
let's make sure that we do save before moving on.
Video transcript
00:02
Create and modify freeform parts.
00:05
After completing this video, you'll be able to
00:08
create and manipulate basic form bodies,
00:10
use form tools to remove and patch geometry and
00:13
use form utilities to repair and smooth form bodies.
00:19
In fusion. 360 we want to get started with the supply dataset outcome one Alcoa
00:24
bracket dot F 3d.
00:26
If you use component color cycling.
00:27
In the previous example,
00:29
you can toggle that off by going to inspect and display component colors.
00:33
This will put back the default material appearance inside of your design.
00:38
When creating a design from fusion three sixtys generative design,
00:42
you're likely presented with a free form body as the result.
00:46
If you're using something such as two
00:48
axis cutting or 2.5 axis cam, then you likely have a two D extruded profile.
00:53
However, for most of the manufacturing methods,
00:56
you will be working with a free form body
00:59
in order to better understand those. Let's begin by creating a new design
01:03
and start by creating a new form.
01:06
Once we create a new form,
01:07
we're presented with a handful of options for primitives that can be created
01:11
boxes, planes, cylinder sphere torus quad ball and pipe are just a few.
01:18
Each of these has a benefit to using it as the basis for your design.
01:23
For example, using the quad ball will give you a spherical design
01:27
that has really good geometry to start for round parts.
01:31
Let's go ahead and select, cancel and start with the box,
01:34
which is one of the defaults that I use all the time.
01:37
Once we create a box form,
01:39
notice the dialog box on the right hand side allows us to make
01:42
direct adjustments to things like the number of faces in each direction,
01:46
the size and length as well as toggling on symmetry.
01:51
It is important to note that once we OK, this dialog box, we cannot get back to it
01:56
working in the forms environment is a direct modeling approach which
01:60
means anything that we do is not captured in the timeline.
02:03
And once we're finished making our adjustments,
02:05
we can finish the form and that'll take
02:06
us back into the design workspace where our design
02:09
will be converted to a solid or a surface depending on if it's closed or open.
02:14
Let's take a look at some of the basic tools that
02:15
we need to understand how to work with our forms.
02:19
The first thing that we should understand is in the utilities menu
02:22
is that the display mode will toggle on box display mode.
02:26
Our control frame display
02:28
or our smooth display,
02:31
our control is going to be a box that is outside of our design.
02:35
And that box is gonna determine the tang agency direction of each face.
02:40
Understanding this box display or viewing it as the control frame display
02:44
will help us better understand how we can work
02:46
with and manipulate our forms and get good quality geometry
02:50
toggling back and forth between these can be done with shortcut keys,
02:53
alt and 12 or three.
02:55
If you're on a windows machine,
02:58
let's go ahead and leave it on the control frame display for now.
03:01
Next, we want to take a look at our modify menu.
03:04
These are gonna be all the tools that we can use to modify or design.
03:08
There are many different tools that we can explore,
03:10
but we're gonna only take a look at a few of them
03:12
at the basic level. Edit form is going to be the tool that gets used. The most
03:17
edit form allows us to translate, rotate or scale our selections.
03:23
First, let's take a look at working with just a face.
03:26
If we select an individual face,
03:28
the manipulator that comes up on the screen is going to be the multi
03:32
manipulator.
03:33
This allows us to use the transform options
03:36
allows us to use the rotation options
03:40
as well as the scale options.
03:43
Each of these is going to represent moving,
03:45
rotating or scaling in a different direction or plane.
03:49
For example, here we're moving only in Z.
03:51
However, if we select this box in the center, we're now moving in plane.
03:56
In this case, the X Z plane,
03:58
if we select this manipulator here, we're gonna be scaling vertically.
04:02
However, if we select the corner, we're gonna be scaling in plain,
04:07
there's also a manipulator right in the center that
04:09
allows us to scale in all three directions,
04:12
you can toggle on different transform modes
04:15
to focus your attention on just translation,
04:17
just rotation or just scale.
04:20
But once you get comfortable using the multi manipulator can be extremely helpful.
04:25
Now that we've taken a look at just the basics of working with a single face.
04:29
Let's also talk about our other selection options.
04:32
We have edges and vertices that we can work with in here.
04:36
If I double click, an edge, it'll automatically grab the edge loop.
04:40
This is true in the center of the design where it goes all the way through.
04:43
However, if we select an edge, it's going to stop at a corner,
04:47
this corner is considered a star point
04:50
any time that we don't have four edges intersecting.
04:53
In this case, we've got three or if we have more,
04:56
it's going to stop the tang agency or continuity of that edge.
04:60
This doesn't mean that we can't select additional edges.
05:02
We just need to hold down the shift or control key.
05:06
We can also make selections between edges.
05:09
For example, if we select our starting edge,
05:11
hold down the control key and double click and our ending edge,
05:14
it'll fill in the gap between those
05:17
we can use tools like scale.
05:18
In this case, we can scale these up and down based on the relative position
05:22
we can use our rotation
05:25
or we can move the edge around
05:29
working with this selection options such as using edges faces or vertices.
05:35
And using the multi
05:36
transform mode for transforming rotating and scaling
05:40
can be an extremely quick way for us to model.
05:43
Let's take one more look at using vertices in the selection process
05:48
here. I'm going to select these vertices.
05:50
I'm gonna begin scaling and enter zero in the dialogue.
05:54
This is going to scale all those vertices zero or flat relative to each other.
05:59
We also have an option when we're using our selection dialog box
06:03
to change our pivot point.
06:05
When we select set pivot,
06:07
we can move this around to another location
06:09
and then this will be the center of our scale rotation or translation.
06:14
This can be extremely helpful when modifying your designs as it
06:18
helps keep some consistency in the location of that pivot.
06:22
Now that we've seen those basic options,
06:24
let's take a look at just a few more before we
06:26
move on to taking a look at our Alcoa bracket.
06:30
Inside of here, we also have something called soft modification.
06:34
Soft modification will allow us to make selections on our design
06:38
and then it'll vary the influence radiating away from that selection.
06:42
For example, if I select a single vertex, you can see that we've got red vertices,
06:47
pink vertices and white vertices.
06:49
This is driven by the extent type as well as the distance.
06:54
As I reduce this to 25 we can see that only these two vertices are within that range.
06:60
Now, this means as I begin to manipulate this,
07:02
it's going to move my selection more than the surrounding vertices.
07:07
And once it gets outside of that range,
07:09
the rest of the vertices,
07:10
edges and faces will be maintained in their current position,
07:15
we also have additional options for things like selection.
07:18
This can easily allow us to select larger areas by growing loops,
07:24
increasing or decreasing our selection
07:26
or by even inverting our selection.
07:29
Grabbing only the things that are currently deselected.
07:32
It is also important to note that your selection
07:34
dropdown options for filters is different than it is.
07:38
When you're not using this tool,
07:40
it will filter down just to our available T
07:43
spline options which are the names for the edges,
07:45
faces and vertices based on the T spline functionality.
07:51
Let's also take a look at a handful of other
07:53
tools that can be helpful when working in forms.
07:56
Under the modify menu. We have the insertion of edges and points.
08:01
If we use insert edge and I double click an edge.
08:03
This allows me to put another edge in my design
08:07
at a varying distance between the selected edge and the next edge of my design,
08:12
we have multiple insertion modes.
08:14
A simple insertion mode will place the edge exactly where I say
08:17
and it will have an overall effect on the geometry.
08:20
The exact insertion mode will divide the
08:23
surrounding geometry up to maintain the shape.
08:25
So in this case,
08:26
let's go ahead and do simple and note that there was a change in my design.
08:31
If I double click this edge and use the insert edge option
08:34
and use exact,
08:36
it's going to insert an edge.
08:37
But you'll notice that it divided up more of my design based
08:41
on the fact that I wanted it to preserve the shape.
08:44
This is also true when we use the insert point option.
08:47
However,
08:48
insert point can be done by creating our own edges depending
08:52
on where we want them to be in our design.
08:54
And this also brings us to the point that we have what are called T points and
08:58
T points are where we have an edge that ends at another edge in our design.
09:03
I'm gonna go into my smooth display to
09:05
better see this using Alton three on the keyboard
09:08
in this design.
09:09
We've got a T point that intersects with this edge and we've got another one here.
09:13
These are allowed inside of free form modeling in Fusion 3 60
09:18
but they are something that we should pay close attention to.
09:21
If we want to make adjustments.
09:22
For example, if we want to remove edges, we can always select them and hit delete
09:27
and Fusion 3 60 will automatically update our geometry.
09:31
We can do this with faces as well.
09:33
However, when you delete a face,
09:34
you might be taking a closed free form model to an open free form model.
09:39
When it's open. During the finished form process, it'll be converted to a surface.
09:43
If it's closed, it'll be converted to a solid.
09:47
That is a very basic overview of the forms functionality.
09:50
So let's take a quick look at our Alcoa bracket.
09:53
This design was created using generative design and we're going
09:56
to begin by editing the organic feature in our timeline
09:59
here.
09:60
You can see that we have a free form body that
10:02
has all the functionality that we saw in our previous example.
10:05
One of the main differences that we see here is that the edges are blue
10:09
using what's called the freeze option
10:12
underneath freeze, those edges are frozen, preventing them from being moved.
10:17
One way that fusion 3 60 generative design outcomes work
10:20
is by overlapping these surfaces with our solid preserved regions.
10:24
So maintaining these frozen edges is an important aspect of the design.
10:28
We can remove that frozen edge by going to modify freeze and unfreeze.
10:34
Now, however,
10:35
using the unfreeze option means that we might
10:37
have issues downstream when using boundary fill.
10:40
So pay close attention to where those edges are located in your design
10:45
under the modify menu. We also have a handful of tools such as smooth
10:49
and solidify that can be extremely handy with our generative designs
10:53
when we use solidify, we can find these pipes or stems in our design
10:57
by double clicking, it automatically identifies them
11:00
and using the cylindrical tool will turn them into more of a cylinder.
11:06
If we use the modified tool for smooth,
11:09
this allows us to select faces on the free form body.
11:12
In this case, we're gonna make some selections around this slightly creased corner
11:18
and we can use the manipulator on screen to
11:20
average out their positions smoothing out that geometry.
11:24
These two methods can be a great way to work
11:27
with your free form outcomes from your generative designs.
11:31
There is one last area that I do want to mention and that's going to be our repair body
11:36
using repair body will identify any potential problems in the free form design.
11:41
We can see all of these yellow stars, these are called star points.
11:45
When they are displayed in red on the design,
11:48
there will be an error star and that will be something that needs to be addressed.
11:53
In this case, if there are any problems, we can use auto repair and we can say, OK,
11:57
and then we can finish our free form
11:59
and get back to our design.
12:02
You'll notice that the combine is failed here. We can roll previous to that feature,
12:07
go to our bodies folder and hide all of our obstacles
12:10
and take a look at just our organic free form model.
12:15
At this point, we can continue to play around with this design.
12:17
But those are the basic tools that you'll need to understand,
12:20
to work with your free form outcomes.
12:22
Once you're done playing around with these tools,
12:24
let's make sure that we do save before moving on.
Step-by-step guide
How to buy
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