I was thinking that’s dang good for a guy with a hole in his head! 
Nice work!
Devon,
Compared to the early days of 3d cad (mostly wireframe) we have come a long way. you can draw something, put dimensions on it and extrude a solid in no time at all. there are lots of other valuable tools available in the program for to you to try out. for most of what we do stay away from using surfaces until you have mastered the program you are using.
AL P.
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I can’t even imagine Al. I would be nowhere today if it were not for the near constant help Dan has and still does provide me. He has been an excellent teacher. I have no experience with any other program other than Fusion 360. Its what Dan recommended (because there is a free version). And he knows it inside and out. As he pointed out to me just the other day, you always can learn something new. I asked him how he would go about solving a particular problem. While waiting for his answer I figured it out. And I shared it with him. He came back and said I did it differently than he would have but got the same results and I did it in one less step. Proof that there are more than one way to get a job done.
While I never be dumb enough to say I have the program mastered, I do feel confident now that I have it down. I rarely have to ask him for help anymore unless its just something really unusual I am trying to do. But the best part of taking his advice to “Stick with it” is now I can pretty well design anything I would ever want to print. And it has truly become its own hobby. I find it just as enjoyable as I ever did scratch building the real thing. And there is just as much satisfaction for me seeing it come to life on the printer as I had when it came together on my work bench. Some may never find that joy I have discovered. And that’s fine. If it is never more than just a tool to make a part you need, then it is no different to me than using any other tool to create any other part we might have made.
Not sure what you mean by stay away from surfaces. Given you have vast more experience than I do since this is not only your hobby but your profession, I am not sure why you would offer that advice to the beginner. And it might be that I am not speaking your language. But I would argue that one of the very first things you should learn, at least with Fusion 360 (the only thing I know), is to create and manipulate surfaces. I would say 75% of what I do is done by manipulating surfaces. I make a sketch, extrude it into a surface. And then many time draw a new sketch on that surface and extrude it to give my original surface an appendage. If that makes any sense.
Devon,
i think you are confused on what i am calling surfaces. i have used fusion 360 but not for this purpose. to best describe surfaces they are used to connect geometry that cannot be connected to by other means.
this coach roof end is made up of several surfaces. you can see that they are currently not marred into the solid.
not sure what they are called if fusion 360.
Al .P
Okay I figured I was not speaking your language and I understand and agree. I still am not at a point where I am capable of none geometric more organic shapes and then marrying them into a solid piece. Thats is the new skills I am learning now.
When are Dan’s video tutorials coming out?
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Thats no joke. Dan is a patient generous teacher. He has taken a lot of personal time to help me. All the way to printed study guides. I think sometimes he gets annoyed with me because I won’t stop thanking him. I look at what I am able to accomplish today and none of it would have happened without his instruction and encouragement. I hope he is NOT the behind the scenes “unsung” hero in my work. He very much deserves at the very least a verse in my song.
That would be a great video series for LSC…
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Now, Devon, you know I would never get annoyed with you for being thankful. I actually appreciate it very much. Any teacher will tell you that they are only as good as their students. Devon has come along way in 3D modeling and most of the credit for that should go to him because he stayed with it and pushed his abilities with each model. Yes, I provided some tutoring behind the scenes, but he took on the challenges and now, as he has stated, it has become a hobby in and of itself.
For the beginner, the best advice I can give you is this:
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Get started, don’t be afraid to just jump in and draw something.
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Don’t think in 3D in the beginning. It can overwhelm you quickly. Think in 2D and extrude, push, pull into 3D. Once you have that concept down, it gets much easier. What is a box? It’s simply a square (2D, we can all draw a square) extruded or pushed/pulled into a box. Same with a cylinder. Its a circle extruded into a cylinder. We’ve all seen the collapsible waste baskets/laundry baskets. They are flat until you pull (extrude) into a useable cylinder.
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Don’t start with a ribbed sided caboose, Devon didn’t. If I recall, his first project was a simple smoke stack for one of his engines. Start simple and try to learn a new technique with each design and before you know it, you’ll be like Devon and teaching me new tricks.
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That’s very relevant advice for me. I played with SketchUp a bit and was doing OK, but then I tried to incorporate some photos into a drawing and was having a real hard time dealing in 3D space. So much so, that I dropped it and haven’t gone back. I am spatially challenged, which is odd for someone who fabricates for a living. Lots of times I need to build models of a project to figure out joinery, etc.
Jon,
I understand your frustrations with Sketchup… Although I’ve been using 2D CAD since college, wow, that was a long time ago, when I started dabbling in 3D I began with Sketchup. I got frustrated because it did not restrain you to a single plane at a time, you were drawing in a 3D space.
Fusion 360 requires you to draw, initially, on a defined 2D plane and then extrude into 3D. It’s much easier for the beginner to conceptualize what they are doing.
This what Devon has been talking about with his models. Its very easy to build a model, even 1:1, in Fusion or other modeling software in order to work out joinery, fit, sizing, etc. and then go build it using whatever method you choose. I think a lot of people see 3D modeling and 3D printing as one and the same and they are not. you can certainly create 3D models for other purposes than 3D printing. I generate a 3D model of all of my woodworking projects to work out the details on the computer before I go cu an expensive piece of wood. You can do the same thing in our hobby. Devon is creating a 3D model of his caboose and intends to 3D print it, but he just as well use the model to scratchbuild it using traditional, old school modeling techniques.
3D modeling is just another tool just like pencil, paper and a straightedge.
Thanks Dan. Fusion 360 sure sounds easier. I’m an old Visio 2D guy. Got pretty good with the early versions and used it until I upgraded my PC to Win 10 and it wouldn’t go. I got a recent version and am slowly finding where they moved all the familiar stuff to.
Although my workload is way down, it might help me at work to be able to draw things up in 3D CAD. Even though I took several years of mechanical drawing in High School I still have a hard time sketching in more than one plane. Thus my need for physical models.
Dan hit the nail on the head. One of the main reasons I love 3D modeling (not printing, he right there is a difference) is i can see a completed project, see hows it going to go together. Visualize the process and catch potential pitfalls.
Old school, start cutting and fitting, then throw whole mess away when parts don’t do what they are supposed to do , or fit like the 3 measurements say they would fit!
Jon, I’ve seen some of your drawings in Visio. If you can produce that quality of drawing in Visio, you can tackle Fusion with no problem. In the beginning, I had the same issue with being able to visualize and draw in 3D. I still can’t draw a simple cube on a piece of paper and have it come out square. Look at some of my past napkin drawings for the Mik Challenge. I cannot “draw” in 3D, but I can sure as heck draw in 2D and extrude into 3D.
I’m certain if you ever sat down with Fusion and started drawing simple models, you will pick it up and it will definitely help you at work. You can even add fasteners, bearings, springs, hinges as a matter of fact, if McMaster Carr sells it, you can download the 3D model from them for free right in Fusion. Fusion has an import/insert function that opens McMaster Carr’s website inside Fusion so there is no need to model the hardware yourself unless you just want to do it for fun…
Give it a try, you might surprise yourself.
Dan,
Are you serious about the McMaster Carr thing. I just got dont drawing the rivet nut I bought from them to add to the caboose.
Had no idea
Yep McCaster Carr has stl files for just about everything. I’m still trying to figure out how to import stl files into Onshape but that’s a whole different issue…
Absolutely. If you click Insert on the ribbon a little over halfway down you’ll see Insert McMaster Carr Component. I would suggest going to the website and finding it first simply because the box that comes up in Fusion is a little small and it easier to navigate if you know where you are going.
Easy, peasy 
Well, ya talked me into downloading Fusion 360 Personal. I already had an Autodesk account. For the life of me I can’t remember why. Probably needed a reader to open CAD files when I worked in the office.
For starters, the little orientation cube in the corner is great. I’ll play with it when I’m more awake.
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Dan, that’s just stupid. Its only stupid because I didn’t know about it. That will be a great tool. I buy quite a bit from them.
Jon, your gonna be happy you did. I hated sketchup with a passion. No matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t get the results I wanted. As soon as I switch to Fusion, which is a true CAD program and not a 3D modeling program I instantly was producing basic things easily that I couldn’t seem to manage in sketchup.
Now it could be that I had someone holding my hand for Fusion where I didn’t with sketchup. That is fair. But Fusion, even the free personal version, is a powerful CAD program. Outside of modeling, one of my best friends is a professional draftsman. He uses solidworks. But i want his company to CNC machine some parts for my sailboat. I was able to design them and save them as a STEP file and his CNC operator took them straight to his machine and said they were perfect and all I needed to do was give him some metal.
So its a program well worth learning and for us hobbyists its free and does a bang up job. And as Dan helped me, I am more than happy to help when you get stuck.
On that note, get in the habit of exporting Fusion Archive Files. I often send Dan my fusion files and that not only let’s him examine it but he can go back in the timeline and actually look at the process I used to get there.
My last piece of advice as you begin. On the left you have a drop down menu. It shows the bodies you are creating, those are the individual pieces you are making. It shows you the sketches you used to make them, and it shows the construction planes you created to place those 2D sketches. Dan jumped my case because I deleted sketches and construction planes. This does a lot of things and none are good. Now not only do I not delete them but I have started to get in the habit of naming them.
For example, let’s say you make a wheel with an axel. You label that sketch as “wheel” let’s say. And 100 operations later you need to rotate that wheel on its axel. You can go in and open that sketch back up and with a little work, you can draw an line through the center of the axel and re save that sketch and now you can rotate the wheel on its axis. Prior to getting in this habit I would have to make an all new sketch.
And as Dan pointed out to me you can fix mistakes by finding the sketch and fixing it instead if having to start new or try and fix the part at a later point in the time line. By fixing it where it originated it carries that fix through the entire timeline.
Now that’s not really beginner info. But what is the beginner info is to get into the habit immediately to label your sketches.
What I have found in practice is I now have far fewer sketches because I am reusing and reworking previous ones instead of making a whole string of new ones.