Over the past couple of months, as using the Glowforge has forced me to learn how to become more efficient in my workflows, I have spent hours and hours and hours in trying to learn how to build more practical, parametric designs in Fusion360. Things that I designed in the past for the 3D printer or the CNC were often designed with specific use cases in mind, and I found that they were very fragile; often resulting in me designing things from scratch when necessary.
With the ease of use of the Glowforge, I have found that something as simple as a box will be reused over and over again in different ways, with different dimensions. I have also seen many people in the forum struggle with the same problems that I have in the past. So, while I am no Fusion360 expert, I have started a Youtube channel to share my ideas and designs.
I am focusing on practical designs with F360 and other software. I am not trying to teach all of the ins and outs of the software. Right now I’m starting with GF focused designs, since it’s stolen me away from my 3D printers and CNCs, but I want to eventually expand into those areas as well.
Any feedback is appreciated. If folks find these useful, then I will continue with more projects. The next video that I plan to do is the workflow that I use to kerf adjust models and get them into Illustrator.
Finished watching, great job on them! I’d been using the sketch rectangular patterns, but didn’t realize we had the ability to do that with features too…that is going to save a boatload of time when I’m setting up fully morphing box designs.
Learning to take advantage of features over sketches made a huge difference. I went from taking 6-8 hours designing things completely with sketches to less than an hour for more complicated designs. I keep sketches as simple as possible, and use multiple sketches when necessary instead of having too many features drawn in a single sketch.
@jbpa, these are great! Thanks so much. I’ve had F360 installed for a year now and haven’t found the time to start monkeying with it. These vids were just what I needed to get started! I completed my first project today by following along with your instruction. Keep it up!
For anyone interested, I’ve created a new version of the box that I posted in my videos; combining the two different types (adjustable fingers, and consistent-width fingers). I’ve also allowed for the possibility where you may want fingers of different sizes on the length, width and height.
I’m not going to create yet another video to create a simple box–since I think that would be boring–but, I’m attaching an F3D export from Fusion 360 for anyone that wants to be able to use it as a template for their own projects. I’m happy to answer any questions that anyone has after looking at it.
EDIT: I found some situations where this model breaks because of the way that Fusion360 recalculates it when dimensions and finger sizes change. It’s relatively straightforward to fix when it happens, but I’m trying to work through a version that is reusable without these problems.