Autodesk offers two flexible tools for 3D mechanical design and Digital Prototyping, Fusion 360TM and Inventor®. You can use these tools to create your designs in 3D, and extend those digital models for use in product simulations, tooling creation, and design communication. Both software packages are available for free to students and educators on the Autodesk Education Community.
Image courtesy of Dynamic Structures Ltd.
Autodesk Fusion 360 is a cloud-based 3D CAD, CAM, and CAE platform for product development. It combines industrial and mechanical design, simulation, collaboration, and machining in a single package. The tools in Fusion 360 enable fast and easy exploration of design ideas with an integrated concept-to-production toolset.
Autodesk Inventor Professional includes all of the core 3D mechanical design, CAD productivity, and design communication functionality of Autodesk Inventor plus extended capabilities for creating tooling for manufactureable plastic parts, complex routed systems design, and optimizing and validating the performance of a design. It also automates key aspects of the design of injection molds for plastic parts, complex tube and pipe runs, and electrical cable and harness designs.
Some links for learning the basics of Fusion 360 are:
- Fusion 360 – Learn - The Fusion 360 Learning portal provides an overview of all Fusion 360 functionalities including Modeling, Assembly, Simulation and CAM.
- Fusion 360 - How To - The How-to topics describe a series of actions/steps that you shall use to perform a desired action.
Some links for learning the basics of Inventor are:
- Inventor Basics – For the Autodesk Inventor Certified User Exam
- Autodesk WikiHelp - Tutorials for Autodesk Inventor 2012 (includes downloadable datasets).
- Inventor Skills for FIRST Robotics Students - This is a great series of videos that introduces both basic and advanced features of Inventor. The examples are from FIRST robotics.
- Thom Tremblay or John Helfen’s YouTube channel – Mechanical Engineering Education Solution Specialists
- CADLearning - Autodesk’s partner, 4D Technologies, is offering members of the Autodesk Education Community free and discounted online access to CADLearning tutorials and training.
Dive Deeper
Part Modeling in Fusion
Learn how to create geometry based on sketches. We'll be using a sketch of a mountain bike rocker arm to go through this lesson. At the end, you'll have it modelled!
Modeling Using the Sculpt Feature
Learn how to model geometry based on a sculpted body. Now that you've seen how to use model based on sketches, we'll take it one step further and go through how to take advantage of sketches and model geometry based on an existing sculpted body.
Autodesk Inventor File Management
Learn how Autodesk Inventor uses projects to identify folders that contain files unique to a design project and learn how to create a new project and how to make a project active.
Autodesk Inventor User Interface
Review the four base Autodesk Inventor environments, the various features of the user interface, and learn how to use the ViewCube and the Navigation Bar.
Part Modeling in Autodesk Inventor
Learn how to model parts using revolve and extrude. (From the Autodesk Digital STEAM Workshop).
Assembly Modeling in Inventor
In assembly modeling, you combine parts and subassemblies to form an assembly that functions as a single unit. Learn how to create and utilize assemblies here.