view the rest of the comments
3DPrinting
3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.
The r/functionalprint community is now located at: !functionalprint@kbin.social or !functionalprint@fedia.io
There are CAD communities available at: !cad@lemmy.world or !freecad@lemmy.ml
Rules
-
No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct.
-
Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.
-
No porn (NSFW prints are acceptable but must be marked NSFW)
-
No Ads / Spamming / Guerrilla Marketing
-
Do not create links to reddit
-
If you see an issue please flag it
-
No guns
-
No injury gore posts
If you need an easy way to host pictures, https://catbox.moe may be an option. Be ethical about what you post and donate if you are able or use this a lot. It is just an individual hosting content, not a company. The image embedding syntax for Lemmy is ![](URL)
Moderation policy: Light, mostly invisible
lemme just shotgun some advice I was given with F360... the best way to learn is to keep asking (plenty of videos. plenty of help on the F360 forums, too,)
First, is to create a master component. Especially for more complicated parts. So, first thing you do is create a component, this top level is the whole thing you're making. For your box example, this would be both the box and the lid itself, both set as sub components to the master. I would also consider importing a .step file... which you can then reference. instead of reverse engineering your Uno. (well, double check and make sure it's accurate, most will be.) you can also import .stls, but there's a few more steps there- you'd have to slice the mesh and then define what all the features are.
Second is try to use master sketches- but don't try too hard to get all the odds and ends into one profile. if it starts getting too cluttered, hard to follow and such, time for a fresh sketch. If you were going to make something that has a few differing profiles, all extruded on top of each other, you can use one sketch for that entire process, and change where you start the extrusion from in the extrusion menu. Adding onto this, starting and finishing "at object" will let you start or finish an extrusion at a face or body. This is great if you want to punch oddly shaped holes into a wall, but not opposite wall. or pillars to connect things.
Then... learn to love parametric designs. There's a ton of videos on how to do that with f360, but under the 'modify' drop down menu, there's the 'change parameters' thing. that opens up a pop up menu to see every dimension you create in a given file. From there, you can also see the ID tags of every dimension in the design. if you created a few in a sketch and want to reuse them across multiple other places; you can. Just hit the "favorite" star and name it something easy to follow. Or you can create your own to start with. just plug in the name you give it or the tag created by f360 (d3, d45).
You can also do some fairly complex math (including trig, bleh.), but for example, if you want the get the Uno to float 1/3 above the bottom, you can define the box's depth, reference the boxes depth as multiplied by 1/3, to create the lower stand offs, and then on the lid, reference the depth again, multiplying it by 2/3's. And then you print it and discover you forgot to account for the thickness of the arduino, so you go back and subtract half the thickness of board from each side. (something we've all done. this is part of why I suggested importing- or creating- a rough stand-in for external parts. it lets you sanity check things before you find out you forgot something)
Finally... have patience. F360 is incredibly useful and powerful. It's great. but it has steep learning curve.
Thank you! I really appreciate the advice.
More than welcome. By the way, auto desk forums have a lot of people that help if you have a specific how-to question and they also have a fair amount of tutorial videos,