Congratulations to Neeraj, Robert and Siyao, the Model of the Month winners for March. The team used Fusion 360 to design the Roboleg 5000. Read on to learn more about the team and their experience using Fusion 360.

ABOUT US

We are a team of three students from Georgia Institute of Technology – Neeraj Rao (Masters in Industrial Design), Robert Lineberg (Undergraduate in Mechanical Engineering), Siyao Cai (Undergraduate Mechanical Engineering).

WHY WE STARTED USING FUSION 360

We became aware of Fusion 360 when we saw flyers for the Autodesk 24 hour design challenge at our university in January 2016. We decided to participate in the design challenge and attended the workshop held by Jeff Smith where we were introduced to the basics of Fusion 360. The design brief presented to us was to build a prosthetic leg.

WHAT WE LIKE ABOUT FUSION 360

24 hours! That’s all the time it took for us to get a good handle on the software. We liked the easy to use & intuitive interface which is different from the other 3D software tools in the market. The freeform modeling function of Fusion 360 was top notch and was key to our design form. It is very hard for other software programs such as SolidWorks or Inventor to do these types of surfaces. However, with Fusion 360, we found it very easy to build a model with arbitrary shapes. Additionally, the cloud based file sharing made communication so much easier and allowed us to work remotely as a team. Also, the quick rendering capabilities really made our design “pop.”

WHY WE MODELLED THE ROBOLEG 5000

The Roboleg 5000 was our design submission for the topic of the “knee down prosthetic.” We worked as a team to come up with the overall design. Once the design was decided upon, we divided the leg into three sections, top, middle, and bottom. Siyao was responsible for the top, Robert was responsible for the mid-section, and Neeraj the bottom section. It was a great experience and we won the competition which made it even better!

WHAT FUTURE PROJECTS WE HAVE PLANNED

We all have been using Fusion 360 extensively in our projects. Siyao is using it for his undergraduate work. Robert uses it for projects that require remote file sharing which is fairly common for school projects and Neeraj is using it as a rapid 3D ideation tool in his concept development work.

Keep your eye on the Gallery for some more of our designs!