3D Exercise 119
- Breno Cruz
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
In this CAD tutorial we'll use the features:
1. Extrude with Taper Angle (Draft)
Instead of just pulling a sketch straight out, adding a taper angle builds a slope into the side walls of your extrusion as it generates.
The "Why": If you are designing a part for injection molding or metal casting, the walls cannot be perfectly vertical, or the part will get stuck in the mold. The taper (draft angle) allows the part to be ejected easily.
Efficiency: Doing this inside the extrude command saves you from having to add a separate "Draft" feature later in your design tree.
2. Offset Plane
This is a foundational reference geometry tool used when you need to sketch somewhere floating in space, away from the standard Top, Front, or Right planes.
Function: It creates a new, invisible flat surface parallel to an existing face or plane, at a specific distance you define.
Usage: You might use an offset plane to sketch the top profile of a tapered boss, or as the starting point for a secondary feature that sits 50mm above your main body.
3. Fillet
While we touched on fillets rounding sharp edges earlier, in this specific workflow—especially right before a "Shell" command—they serve a critical manufacturing purpose.
The Rule of Order: If you fillet the outside edges of a solid block before you shell it, the software will automatically offset those fillets to the inside as well. This guarantees perfectly uniform wall thickness through the corners, which is a golden rule for preventing sink marks or warping in molded plastics.
4. Shell
The Shell command is the fastest way to hollow out a solid block to turn it into a lightweight, thin-walled enclosure or bracket.
Function: You select one or more faces to "remove" (like the top of a box), and the software scoops out all the internal volume, leaving behind a constant wall thickness that you specify (e.g., 2mm).
Advanced Hollowing: You can also shell a part without removing any faces, creating a completely hollow, closed object with a specified wall thickness.
5. Circular Pattern
Once you have your core geometry set up, you use this to duplicate features radially around a central axis.
Function: Instead of sketching and extruding 12 individual bolt holes or gear teeth, you create just one. You then use the Circular Pattern tool to copy that single feature evenly around a cylindrical face or axis.
Mechanism Design: This is arguably one of the most important commands when modeling mechanical mechanisms, as it is used for everything from creating coaxial propeller blades to planetary gear systems and mounting flanges.
All dimensions are in mm/g/s/ISO
3D Sketch
Exercise 119 - 3D practice drawing for all CAD software ( AutoCAD, SolidWorks, 3DS Max, Autodesk Inventor, Fusion 360, CATIA, Creo Parametric, SolidEdge etc.)
Tip: Subscribe to the channel for more tutorials like this.
Tutorial In Autodesk Fusion: https://youtu.be/Ybher1sGJ68
Comments