thomaspaulin.me

Learning Fusion 360 in 30 Days

Motivation

Many moons ago I discovered programming when making mods for the game Morrowind. As part of this I briefly touched on 3D modelling in Blender and 3DS Max but never progressed beyond a basic level. Laters later a part of me wants to learn these skills once more only this time the reason is for 3D printing, designing other hardware focused projects, and to one day model aircraft and cars. First I need to learn how to use CAD software and with Fusion 360 being free for hobbyists it’s the natural starting point. In order to begin learning Fusion 360 I’ve decided to take Kevin Kennedy’s Learn Fusion 360 in 30 Days course, which is available on Skillshare or YouTube.

Why a 30-day challenge?

Small, consistent progress greatly helps with progression and learning and without obvious stepping stones I have a tendency to aim for overly ambitious projects which are unobtainable by a complete beginner in a reason timespan, thus wasting a significant amount of time and becoming demotivated as explained on the diagram below of challenge vs. ability.

Challenge vs. Ability in a diagram. High challenge coupled with high ability leads to a flow state, the state we are aiming for.

Why this course?

Kevin comes with many recommendations, prompting me to watch one of his beginner friendly videos. Kevin has a very clear and concise style where he walks you through every step covers most of the questions which might crop up as you watch. His projects are also real-world objects relevant to hobbyists or makers. This is in contrast with other practice exercises I found - these tended to be geometric shapes constructed by following plans, making the concepts that little bit harder to grasp.

Daily Logs

This section contains links to each daily log entry and will therefore evolve as the challenge progresses. Check back for updates.

30-Day Wrap Up

As with many things in life the primary takeaway was that you don’t know what you don’t know. Working through the projects chosen by someone with more experience allowed me to discover many different tools: their names, and uses. This brought an understanding of which situations they are each suited for. It is worth mentioning that these methods work for Kevin Kennedy, but they aren’t the only way to reach the same end.

More important than the Fusion 360 skills though, Kevin illustrated yet another reason for planning your design before even touching Fusion 360 - you can figure out and define the constraints ahead of time. As paper prototypes and wireframes allow us to rapidly iterate on software designs, so too does sketching engineering designs.

On the whole you can be productive in Fusion 360 once you have climbed even a fraction of the learning curve. In 30-days or fewer it is possible to learn enough to get you productive and working on your own projects.