Friday, October 9, 2015

Stock Save and Conversion in Fusion 360

Okay, so this post is for you fusion users who would want to save stock out and use it in a part and have it as a stock option.  or to just load it during a simulation of different operations.

So, select a CAM setup and run it through the whole simulation.  Once done right click in the graphics view, and at the bottom you will see Stock.  Hover over that and then select the Save Stock option.



It saves it as an STL file so you will have to do some modifications to it, but we will get to that in a minute.
Save it to a location that is easy to get to and make sure to remember the name.


Now, that you have it saved you can use the .stl file in other simulations by reloading it.
this can be done by right clicking in the simulation graphics window and hovering over Stock and selecting "Load Stock".


We now have an .stl file of our saved stock now what?
If you try to import it right now to Fusion you won't be able to do anything with it because it has too many vertices and triangles in the mesh.  So, now what?
Have you ever heard of Meshmixer?  It is a free software from Autodesk.
meshmixer.com/

Download and install this program and then move on to the rest of the post.
Once you have the program open pick the import button in the main screen.  Then path to the .stl file that you saved out of your stock.
When the import is done hit Ctrl+A, to select the object.


Once selected and you get the menu on the left; hover over "Edit" and pick on Reduce.

Now, the fun part change the percentage to around 80%; then pick on accept and instantly go from 15K+ vertices to a little over 3,000.  We can now save and export this object out as an object file.
To do this go to File -> Export
path to where you want to store it for uploading to Fusion.


Now, go into Fusion and upload the object file that you just saved out.  Once uploaded open it up in Fusion.  When you first open up the imported object file you will notice that it imports as a mesh body.  To convert it to an actual solid that can be used expand the bodies folder and right click on the mesh body.
In the menu you will find an option called "Mesh to BRep".  Left pick on that option and then on the dialog that pops up hit okay and poof!  you have a new solid body.

This solid body is like all the rest you can sketch on it and create features if needed and such.

have fun playing around with this!



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