CATICS 3D02_06
- Breno Cruz
- 56 minutes ago
- 2 min read
In this CAD tutorial we'll use the features:
1. Extrude
Everything starts here. You draw the footprint of your mechanism's housing and pull it into a solid 3D block. This creates the primary raw material volume you will be working with.
2. Shell
Instead of modeling the inside walls manually, you use Shell to instantly hollow out that solid block, removing the top face and leaving a uniform wall thickness. You now have a basic open box or casing.
3. Press Pull
This is a highly versatile, direct-modeling tool (especially prominent in Fusion 360).
The Magic: Unlike a standard extrude, Press Pull detects what you select and adapts. If you select a face, it offsets it (making the box wider or taller without changing the original sketch). If you select an edge, it automatically turns into a Fillet. If you select a hole, it changes the radius.
Workflow: It is incredibly useful for making rapid, on-the-fly tweaks to the shell’s dimensions to ensure internal clearances are just right.
4. Offset Plane
Now that the box is hollowed out, you need to add internal structures. You use an Offset Plane to create a sketching surface that floats somewhere inside the housing—perhaps at the exact height where a motor or gear shaft needs to be mounted.
5. Rib
Using that new Offset Plane, you sketch simple 2D lines and use the Rib command.
Function: This shoots material down to the floor and walls of the shell, creating thin, strong support gussets. This reinforces the housing without adding the massive weight of a solid block of plastic or metal.
6. Mirror
If your housing is symmetrical, there is no need to model the ribs or mounting bosses on both sides. You model them on the left half, then use the Mirror command across the center plane to perfectly duplicate them to the right half.
7. Combine
In top-down design, you often model multiple separate "bodies" in the same file to ensure they fit together perfectly.
Function: Combine is the ultimate Boolean tool. You can use it to Join intersecting bodies into one solid piece, or, more importantly, use one body to Cut into another. For example, if you modeled a complex gear inside the housing, you could use Combine (Cut) to automatically subtract the gear's exact volume from the housing, creating a perfect clearance pocket.
8. Fillet
Finally, you apply Fillets to the sharp internal corners of your ribs for stress relief, and to the outer edges of the housing so it is smooth and ergonomic to handle. Doing this last keeps your timeline clean and prevents the fillets from interfering with the Shell or Combine tools earlier in the process.
All dimensions are in mm/g/s/ISO
3D Sketch
Exercise 121 - 3D practice drawing for all CAD software ( AutoCAD, SolidWorks, 3DS Max, Autodesk Inventor, Fusion 360, CATIA, Creo Parametric, SolidEdge etc.)
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Tutorial In Autodesk Fusion: https://youtu.be/bpNG0bUkeOM
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