Congratulation to Hung Nguyen and his kayak – F1 model, winner of the Fusion 360 model of the month. Learn more about Hung, his use of Fusion 360 and the process he went through to bring the kayak to life!

About me

Hello! My name is Hung Nguyen from Canada – The Land of Love.  I currently work as an Industry Technical Consultant providing professional consulting services, training, implementation and technical support while continually developing my levels of expertise in all manufacturing focused products, BIM and Plant Implementation for SolidCAD Solutions, a Cansel company.

I am passionate about designing and making a wide variety of products. My work spans from small and midsize consumer products such as bikes, wooden toys, guitars and musical instruments to large moving structure, log houses, Architecture models, prefab housing/buildings, and oil production plants.

I am very proficient in SOLIDWORKS, CATIA, and many Autodesk products ranging from AutoCAD, Inventor, Revit, and Alias and to most of Simulation applications.

My Fusion 360 Usage

During a Design & Make Competition organized by Autodesk at Pier 9 in 2015, I was exposed to Fusion 360. Fusion 360 makes it fast and easy for me to explore design ideas with an integrated concept-to-production toolset. It is also extremely easy to learn. With background in solid modelling, it took me just half a day to start working and producing using Fusion 360.

Figure 1: Design & Make Competition at Autodesk Research Pier 9 – San Francisco, USA

Back in Vancouver (my beautiful City), I decided to spend more time working with Fusion 360. I worked on a project modeling and making a custom-fit Ironman suit with my son for Comic-Con International-San Diego. At the end of the project, I completely fell in love with Fusion. The video can be viewed here.

Figure 2: Ironman suit for Comic-Con International – San Diego

To further develop my skills, I looked for a practical project that involved free form design, surfacing, a bit of structure, small but fun to make, beautiful, and extremely useful. My search led me to Brian Schulz’s website.

The F1 Kayak

The decision to make the F1 Kayak with Brian, owner of Cape Falcon Kayak came from learning the origins of the kayak. These first kayaks were constructed from stitched seal or other animal skins stretched over a wood or whalebone skeleton frame. This amazing 17 feet (5.2 m) long by 20–22 inches (51–56 cm) wide by 7 inches (18 cm) deep floating device is a fascinating boat so I decided to model and build it! I drove down to Nehalem bay, Oregon to meet Brian for the lessons and the project ultimately took 7 days to build.

The F1 is Brian’s own kayak design. It is designed for the roughest conditions, but is also suited for peaceful flat water exploration. It is quick, stable, comfortable, and maneuverable. The remarkable thing about this boat is that it can be sized to the individual paddler so each kayak is unique.  For the F1 technical details and making, refer to this link.

Figure 3: The F1 Kayak is designed to face and surf the roughest water and most unforgiving conditions.

My design tools of choice for modeling the kayak was Fusion 360 and Alias. Making it with Brian during the day and recording every details to reconstruct the model with Fusion 360 at night was a challenging task, but very rewarding. It was one of my life’s best experiences!

Here are some photos from the 7 days of building a kayak:

The F1 has been with me for some years, and remains my first choice for every ocean exploration trip.

Figure 4: F1 Kayak with Fusion 360 Log house

My Personal View of Fusion 360

I’ve been teaching Fusion 360 across Canada and promoting the product as much as possible. My clients include product designers and industrial designers, but has expanded to architects and building technologists. In my view, Fusion 360 is not limited to being a tool for just product/industrial design or manufacturing, but also a great ‘design and build’ application for future architectural design where buildings can be quickly machined, fabricated or 3D printed.

I strongly believe that Fusion 360 is the Future of Making. If it isn’t I swear…I’ll jump off the 984-ft. cliff in Kings Grand Canyon, Australia. LOL!

If interested, please check out more of my work on the Gallery or GrabCAD.