3D Exercise 126
- Breno Cruz
- 1 hour ago
- 2 min read
In this CAD tutorial we'll use the features:
1. Surface Patch
When you are building complex organic shapes, you often end up with gaps or open boundaries between different surface bodies.
Function: The Patch tool acts as the digital "Bondo." You select the edges of the hole, and the software generates a surface to seamlessly fill the void, giving you control over how smoothly it transitions (tangent or curvature continuous) into the surrounding faces.
2. Stitch
Once you have patched all the holes, you still just have a collection of separate, zero-thickness faces floating next to each other.
Function: Stitch acts as the glue. It mathematically sews those adjacent surface edges together into a single, continuous "quilt."
3. Thicken
Now that you have a single, beautifully contoured surface body, you need to give it physical reality so it can be manufactured.
Function: You select the stitched surface and assign a wall thickness. The software offsets the complex geometry and fills the gap, instantly converting your zero-thickness skin into a workable Solid Body.
4. Offset Plane
With your organic solid body created, you often need to start adding standard mechanical features (like mounting bosses or cutouts) that don't align perfectly with the curved faces.
Function: You use an Offset Plane to create a flat, predictable sketching surface floating at an exact distance away from the origin or another flat face.
5. Extrude
Using the sketch drawn on that Offset Plane, you use Extrude.
Function: In this hybrid workflow, you are typically using Extrude here to drive a solid shape into your newly thickened organic body (using the "Cut" boolean) or projecting a mounting standoff away from it.
6. Combine
If you used that Extrude to create a completely separate, new solid body (a "multi-body" workflow), you now need to manage how they interact.
Function: Combine lets you merge that new extrusion and your thickened organic shape into one single part (Join), or use one to carve a perfect cavity out of the other (Cut).
7. Press Pull
This is the ultimate detailing and direct-modeling cleanup tool.
Function: Once the heavy lifting of the surfacing and boolean operations is done, you might realize a wall is slightly too thin, or a clearance hole is too tight. Instead of digging back through your complex surface timeline, you use Press Pull to grab a specific face and intuitively offset it, or grab an edge and instantly apply a fillet.
All dimensions are in mm/g/s/ISO
3D Sketch
Exercise 126 - 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/eLRnpnqCemg