MakerGear Forum

jsc wrote:And I'd like this opportunity to plug Fusion 360 or OnShape. Both have free for hobbyist tiers and are excellent parametric history based modelers. That means if you don't like the shape, you can just go back in time, adjust your sketch, and run it back forward to see your object with the new changes.

Playing with the parametric modeling now on the Fusion 360.........Yowsers!

That is some kind of handy! You can even type in full formulas for relationships that reference other parameters you've created. (By the way, parametric design is pretty much a requirement given the various nominal sizes for laser stock. So I'm back into a steep learning curve again for that Glowforge. )

I'm liking this mighty fine!

I second the Fusion 360. I got into the nitty gritty of Autodesk Inventor this past year for the class I taught and it was powerful, but too much for the hobbyist. Fusion offers all of the same features that I need, without over-doing it. It's a great piece of software for the competitive price of $0.

Matt_Sharkey wrote:I second the Fusion 360. I got into the nitty gritty of Autodesk Inventor this past year for the class I taught and it was powerful, but too much for the hobbyist. Fusion offers all of the same features that I need, without over-doing it. It's a great piece of software for the competitive price of $0.

The price is right!

You're a quick study, Jules. It took me some time to get the hang of Fusion, even after some time spent with Solidworks. I think a lot of the recent updates have made the UI a bit easier to pick up, though.

Let me know if you have any questions on how to model something, I've had a lot of time in the last year to pick up some of the tricks. This is probably the most involved modeling I attempted: https://gallery.autodesk.com/fusion360/ ... ottle-neck

Also, check out the sculpting workspace to access the T-splines integration for some awesome surfacing action.

jsc wrote:You're a quick study, Jules......

Hah! Don't be too terribly impressed.

I modeled a parametric table. A simple piece of wood on top of four legs with a kick plate around the top. And i had to redo that several times 'cause I'm not at all familiar with the limits of the various functions, and changing a parameter here and there was causing some very interesting results!

But I can sure see the potential for this thing - it's a very powerful program.

I finally got the table set up correctly though, so maybe i can move on to something a bit more challenging. It needs a lot more attention before I can get comfortable with it.
I'm ashamed to say how long that table took.

That's a sweet job on the bottle neck.....maybe one day.