Fusion Browser Explanation for a beginner ???

[frugalguido]

What I still don't understand is on your example, your adjustable bar has the bearing indented in the browser tree, where in mine the bearing and the screw are all inline in the tree. I will try and create a new component.

Thanks

 

[Just for fun]

Well, I gotta say I picked up a big pointer from this thread and that is to start with a new component. Man does that make things easier, along with naming the sketches and bodies, it sure has made getting around in my last design a lot easier. Here is a screen shot of my lasted design. And another screen shot of the browser with the sketches expanded.

 

[JimDawson]

The design tab bar is at the top (circled in blue)

 

[dbb-the-bruce]

What I still don't understand is on your example, your adjustable bar has the bearing indented in the browser tree, where in mine the bearing and the screw are all inline in the tree. I will try and create a new component.

Thanks

It's a sub-component. The "adjustable bar" component was selected (activated in Fusion terms) when I inserted the ball bearing. So the ball bearing became a subcomponent of the bar. With in the design, you can move the components around the tree along with copying them etc.
Copies can be linked (change one they all change) or duplicated as independent componets.

It's all just good design structure stuff. You can have as many bodies, or components as you want, structured however you want. Designs are MUCH easier to work with once you start grouping things hierarchically in a sensible assembly tree fashion. The "designs" are just file like collections of components. When a design gets too big or when it's just plain useful to split up you create multiple designs of sub-assembles and then combine them in a top level design. This is also the only way to have a team of designers and engineers work on a big or complete project.

For instance, someone that works on the outer appearance or shell etc. needs to pull in the guts to make sure the casing works. If the folks working on the guts need to change something it shows up for the case designer because the design was "included" and linked.

The size of the project or team does not matter.

 

[Ischgl99]

You don't need to be too fixated on when to save the design, you can save it at any point. The one caveat is if your computer crashed and you didn't save your design, you will lose everything since fusion does not have recovery files that I have found. I learned that the hard way. That might be why the videos you saw all say to save it right away.

The way I set things up, take a lathe for example, a new design would be the lathe, the parts of the lathe would be the components. You can group the components in an hierarchical way. Take the headstock, that could be one component with the bearings, spindle, gears, etc as sub components. The carriage could be a component with the cross slide parts as components underneath it. The tail stock could be a component with all its parts as sub-component. Something like a motor that could be used elsewhere would be it's own component so that you can save that to use in other designs. How to do that is for another day when you are more familiar with the program.

Something I like to go is group my hardware under a hardware component so that they are all in the same place. My top level component would be named hardware, and each screw, nut, etc would be a sub component within that hardware component. For things that might be used in multiple places, that helps keep them organized. I use the McMaster-Carr menu item to add the hardware, bearings, etc to my models, it doesn’t matter if that is where you will actually buy the parts, the important part of that is if you create a diagram of off the parts in the complete assembly, you will know how many of what to order.

Once you have your model designed, then you can create drawings of each component (part) you are going to make. It might seem overwhelming at first, but once you get used to it, it’s very powerful. When I started using Fusion, I followed along with a series of videos that goes step by step by Arnold Rowntree and was able to get proficient very quickly. Lars Christiansen is another good one to follow as has already been recommended, but I think he changed jobs and stopped making new videos. Even though some of the videos are a bit older, the ideas are the same, but you might need to search a bit more since the menus may have changed somewhat.

 

[Just for fun]

You don't need to be too fixated on when to save the design, you can save it at any point. The one caveat is if your computer crashed and you didn't save your design, you will lose everything since fusion does not have recovery files that I have found. I learned that the hard way. That might be why the videos you saw all say to save it right away.

The way I set things up, take a lathe for example, a new design would be the lathe, the parts of the lathe would be the components. You can group the components in an hierarchical way. Take the headstock, that could be one component with the bearings, spindle, gears, etc as sub components. The carriage could be a component with the cross slide parts as components underneath it. The tail stock could be a component with all its parts as sub-component. Something like a motor that could be used elsewhere would be it's own component so that you can save that to use in other designs. How to do that is for another day when you are more familiar with the program.

Something I like to go is group my hardware under a hardware component so that they are all in the same place. My top level component would be named hardware, and each screw, nut, etc would be a sub component within that hardware component. For things that might be used in multiple places, that helps keep them organized. I use the McMaster-Carr menu item to add the hardware, bearings, etc to my models, it doesn’t matter if that is where you will actually buy the parts, the important part of that is if you create a diagram of off the parts in the complete assembly, you will know how many of what to order.

Once you have your model designed, then you can create drawings of each component (part) you are going to make. It might seem overwhelming at first, but once you get used to it, it’s very powerful. When I started using Fusion, I followed along with a series of videos that goes step by step by Arnold Rowntree and was able to get proficient very quickly. Lars Christiansen is another good one to follow as has already been recommended, but I think he changed jobs and stopped making new videos. Even though some of the videos are a bit older, the ideas are the same, but you might need to search a bit more since the menus may have changed somewhat.

Not to distract from @frugalguido question as I am learning several things here also. But I have a question about the hardware. In my enclosure design I downloaded a screw from McMaster-Carr, but I needed four of them, so I copy and pasted. So now I have four in my component tree, is that the right way of doing that? I'm thinking there is a better way, what if me design called for 15 or 20 of the same fasteners?

 

[JimDawson]

Not to distract from @frugalguido question as I am learning several things here also. But I have a question about the hardware. In my enclosure design I downloaded a screw from McMaster-Carr, but I needed four of them, so I copy and pasted. So now I have four in my component tree, is that the right way of doing that? I'm thinking there is a better way, what if me design called for 15 or 20 of the same fasteners?

Yup, copy & paste. If you had 15 or 20 you would do the same thing, but you could select several at a time using the shift key. Not sure how that would look on the screen, you would have to separate them because I think they would be stacked in the same X/Y position.

 

[frugalguido]

Been messing with this for hours, just don't get it. The mc master-carr imported items sometimes are not solid, but transparent in appearance. Then when a click on the screw to make it active, the bearing shows up at the same time. The more time I mess with this component thing the more I get confused.

 

[Ischgl99]

Not to distract from @frugalguido question as I am learning several things here also. But I have a question about the hardware. In my enclosure design I downloaded a screw from McMaster-Carr, but I needed four of them, so I copy and pasted. So now I have four in my component tree, is that the right way of doing that? I'm thinking there is a better way, what if me design called for 15 or 20 of the same fasteners?

You can also use the pattern tool. Select one screw after it is inserted, do a linear pattern of 15 screws and then use the align function to place them where you want them.

 

[JimDawson]

Been messing with this for hours, just don't get it. The mc master-carr imported items sometimes are not solid, but transparent in appearance. Then when a click on the screw to make it active, the bearing shows up at the same time. The more time I mess with this component thing the more I get confused.

They may be transparent until you place them.

Is the bearing a component in the screw design?