Trent Still
Elevate your design and manufacturing processes with Autodesk Fusion
Learn how to design furniture in Fusion 360 from start to finish in this recap of our recent week-long furniture design workshop.
Recently, we hosted an extensive, week-long workshop on designing furniture in Fusion 360. If you’ve been curious about how to take advantage of workflows that include parametric design and production automation — or even just want to learn the basics — read on because this article is for you. We’ll share each video in the series, along with a brief recap of what you’ll learn from watching. Let’s get started.
How to Design Furniture in Fusion 360: The Basics
The first video in this series covers solid modeling, joints, and basic parameters for use in jigs and fixtures at the workshop. We touch on topics that will help you day-to-day with tasks, such as project planning, floor layout, and jigs creation. Finally, we show you how to simulate it to be sure everything works as intended.
Parameters for Production
Next, we teach you how to use the Parameters tools in Fusion 360 to the fullest extent. Those working in the production fields or who have a product line occasionally see the need to change product dimensions based on clients’ feedback or requirements. Parameters take the back and forth out of your workflow and fully optimizes your time. The result is better margins, easier production runs, and better day-to-day operations. Follow along as we show you how to design, edit, and assemble built-ins, custom-sized furniture, and how to use parameters to streamline your business.
Industrial Design and Sculpting
Finding ways to model complex surfaces for furniture can be a massive hole of wasted time. In this portion of the series, we show you the best ways to deploy the sculpt environment in Fusion 360. The goal is for you to achieve more organic, flowing furniture for your practice. We cover what it’s like to use the Sculpt Environment and traditional industrial design workflows to build a furniture collection in Fusion 360. This video features a special guest: Professor Alex Lobos from the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Manufacturing for the Furniture Industry
Have you ever wanted to learn about manufacturing practices for the wood industry? If so, make sure to give this video a watch. Follow along as we teach you skills, such as how to build custom tool profiles for detail work or hard-to-machine parts and how to use our newest Nesting tools to help automate your panel fabrication. We discuss how to consider grain direction, optimized tool paths for tear-out, surface finish, and other tips and tricks to minimize your post-processing and get finish-ready parts from any CNC machine.
Collaboration and Drawings
Finally, taking any product to market requires the collaboration of many different fields, such as manufacturing, design, optimization, shipping, and more. See how the collaboration features and data tools built into Fusion 360 help you ship your best work. In the final episode of the workshop, we cover how to use Fusion Team and Drawings to ship products, collaborate with clients, and automate technical drawings for manufacturing documentation.
Are you looking for more resources on how to design furniture in Fusion 360? Check out the below articles to explore more ways to enhance your workflow in the workshop:
What Is Parametric Furniture Design, and How Is It Shaping the Industry?
Fusion 360 For Furniture Design: 10 Ways to Enhance Your Process
3D Modeling Software for Woodworking
