Shannon McGarry
Elevate your design and manufacturing processes with Autodesk Fusion
Each month the designs on the Gallery keep getting better and better and never cease to amaze us! The team just couldn’t pick one design for April, so we decided to declare a tie. Congratulations to Mark Rogers and Alex Lobos – the winners of the Fusion 360 Model of the Month for April.
Mark’s story
I am an entrepreneur and run a small company under the name ARCLOCK that specializes in conceptual design. I take on almost any project my clients can throw at me for the love of the challenge.
A client came to me and asked me to design a steam engine, sharing with me that it was for a short film he was kicking around. He explained it would only be in the background as a prop. I was given no parameters and was told to design it how I thought it should be. I was so excited to work on this project because steam engines have always fascinated me. Every time I see one I can only think of them as art pieces. 
Despite the fact that this steam engine was just a prop I took it upon myself to go to the nth degree to make sure every part could move and perform its function. The animation feature really drove the evolution of this piece and brought it to life.
While working on this project, I remember thinking how fortunate I was to have tripped over Fusion 360 a year and a half ago when searching for a CAD program. I remember the first time I worked on it and how my excitement became exponential as I started to understand the power of Fusion 360 and the endless possibilities of what I could design. It is like a one-stop shop for all my CAD needs. The one thing I really like about Fusion 360 is how all the tools are intuitive so I can spend more time designing and less time trying to figure out how to work the tools. I am also really excited about how quickly the Fusion 360 team is continually adding new features to the program to fit the user’s needs. Fusion 360 made creating this steam engine from scratch such an enjoyable process.
Alex’s Story
I’m professor of industrial design at Rochester Institute of Technology, in upstate New York. I work on sustainability, emotional attachment and CAD methods. I’m also part of the Advisory Council for Autodesk University and Expert Elite for Fusion 360.
Most of the work that I do with Fusion 360 is with organic shapes that tend to be free-forming. I wanted to work more on mechanical design, as well as figure out assemblies and joints within the program. I thought that a drum set would be a perfect way of putting together basic designs that would be adjusted and copied in a large assembly. I’m a 
drummer myself so I was fairly familiar with how the drums and hardware are setup. The drums are designed so that I can go back to them and simply change the width and diameter or a new size while Fusion 360 takes care of updating all the components. For the hardware, all the pieces are connected as joints so the stands can expand and collapse as in real life.
I find that Fusion 360 is very intuitive for any type of design. While I do most of my work in direct modeling (which I call modeling in real time), I was very happy to discover how easy and fast it is to put together more precise components and complex assemblies. Rendering in Fusion 360 is also great. I was able to create fairly realistic renderings with great detail for metals and wood grain. This project took about 40 hours from initial modeling to assembly and rendering.
Congratulations again Mark & Alex! We look forward to seeing more of your beautiful designs.