Hey, did you hear? We’re running the first ever Fusion 360 Academy in the USA! We saw what our team mates did in Japan last year and thought “well, why don’t we do that in America?” So we did!

The Fusion 360 Academy is going to be an incredible 2 days event in Portland, OR, with 3 tracks covering classes for all levels in Mechanical Engineering, Manufacturing, and Industrial Design! There’s going to be some incredible speakers from the community, and Autodesk, showing you all those shiny new features we’re adding, and sharing journeys and experiences of using Fusion 360 to make things better, faster, and with less! You might even spot a few of your favorite users and staff in attendance!

We want to have our first academy be a real event to remember, so there’s a lot of stuff packed in! Not just the classes and talks, but we’re going to run the Fusion 360 Design Slam for the first time ever outside of AU! We even partnered up with our friends at Makerbot to get some really sweet prizes for the slam winners, including the brand new Makerbot Method, which if you haven’t had a chance to play with yet, is an absolute beast of a machine!

Win a Free Trip!

If you’re buying a ticket to attend the event, you’ll be able to enter yourself to be considered to take part in the Design Slam! We’ll be running knockout rounds, grouping to compete based on secret criteria (gotta keep you on your toes!) If you’ve never attended one of the Design Slams, they’re an absolute blast! You’ll see the best of the best going head to head in Fusion 360! They’ll be modeling something they’ve had no chance to practice ahead of time, leaning purely on their knowledge and abilities with Fusion 360. Oh, and they need  to model the best version of whatever we come up with in less than 10 minutes!

Of course, we don’t want to leave anyone out in the lurch. If you want to attend the Academy, but can’t afford it, don’t worry, we gotcha! We’ve developed 4 brand new design challenges, in partnership with Makerbot to give you a chance to win flights, hotel, tickets, and automatic entry into our design slam. Now that’s one spicy meatball.

Design Challenges

We’re really psyched on these 4 challenges we’ve come up with! They’ll  give you a chance to stretch your design legs, engineering legs, or machining legs (that’s a lot of legs!). Show us why you’re the best, and deserve to come out to the academy based purely on your ability as a user! We’ve got 3 challenges in partnership with Makerbot, AND (drum-roll please) the Machining challenge is back!! I’ve personally come up with a challenging machine path for you to take part in to give your machining chops a run for its money (overhangs anyone?).  We’re always so psyched to see what the machining community does with the parts we provide!

So, want to know more about those challenges? We’ve got some basic info here, but don’t forget to check out the academy website and Makerbot’s website to register for challenge!!

Machining Challenge- ARE YOU WORTHY

As always, when you go to your Workshops & Event project in fusion 360, you’ll find the part we’ve designed to be machined, and will be looking to Instagram for the submissions, so don’t forget to tag your submissions with #Fusion360camchallenge so we can find it and see if you’re worthy.

Machinists when they haven’t made a tool path in a while and nail it first time. (image source)

Ok, so the machinists know what to do, what about the designers and engineers? Well, y’all got options, because we know creativity is never limited to just one thing!

Challenge 1 – SAFETY FIRST

Design a wearable to keep someone safe while commuting. The wearable must include a way to communicate directly to a guardian or the police, without becoming an additional target to any potential aggressors. The wearable must include considerations for extended use, easy charging, and integrate into daily life.

Challenge 2 – DO NOT DISTURB

Design a desktop notification device, used to quietly communicate social media notifications, new email, or urgent personal errands.  Eliminate the need for an individual to constantly check their phone and break their workflow.

Challenge 3 – WORK SMART, NOT HARD

Design a transforming office desk organizer for compact work spaces. The design must include at least 1 moving part and show consideration for how one would use the moving mechanisms. Do this without requiring to move the entire thing around the desk. This submission will be judged on the efficacy and intelligence of the moving mechanisms and change of volume from compacted to expanded.

Oh and, act fast!! Deadlines for submissions for the design challenges are May 31st!!

Will we see you there? Are you entering the challenges? Are you psyched for the slam? Sound off in the comments below, we love hearing from you!