Dive Into Fusion 360: Design Your Own 7 Segment Display

Today, I'm doing a Fusion 360 tutorial. I'll do a deep dive into the modeling of the multi-material 7-Segment display control panel I showed last week. I'll talk about the modeling process, sketch projections, lofts, the combine feature, and more.

Tools used in this video:
*This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

00:00 Intro
00:51 All Hail the SpaceMouse
01:44 Creating the Master Sketch
09:42 Projecting and Extruding Geometry
13:34 Multiplying the Digits
15:14 Making a Panel
18:59 Modeling the Lenses
22:29 Modeling the Diffusers
24:40 Making the Block Diffuser
27:07 Outputting Files for 3D Printing
29:00 Conclusion

[TradeWorksLLC]

I’ve often thought you could have gone the tutorial route and solely make videos around Fusion360. I’m 100% confident you rank in the top 5 for 3D Cad Tutorials on YouTube which is saying something since your focus is more on what you’re making which happens to include a play by play of the steps you’re taking (with the occasional explanation for why).

No matter the focus or the topic, I have nothing but respect + admiration for the level of quality and professionalism you bring to your published content. You really do kill it James 👍.

[Tekzel]

James, you've basically become my Bob Ross. I watch your videos and I find them extremely soothing. Plus I get to learn something too. Thanks!

[thebrakshow]

Its crazy how simple this is watching someone walk you though it. I would have over complicated this 100 times over doing it by myself.
Fantastic set of videos!

[MooCowX]

Wow… I think you just doubled my Fusion360 game in 30 minutes watching this…

[Voidmonster]

I come from entirely the wrong side of the 3d tracks (VFX and game dev), so the decades I've spent pushing polygons around are actually kind of a liability working with Fusion, so I really appreciate the help here especially in an application that's a lot closer to relevant to the stuff I do (unlike quite a lot of other Fusion stuff I see). Thanks!

[Rob_]

One of the best Fusion 360 "follow along" tutorials available 👍
I have over 15 years experience with SolidWorks and am using Fusion360 for 3 or 4 years and I still pick up some new ideas from these tutorials.

[danmooney]

Watching you do this programing amazes me, as far as my understanding what you're doing, you might as well be speaking Greek but it's fascinating to watch!

[MattysWorkshop]

Gday James, this was really interesting, I have the hobby version of fusion360 and learnt by watching others on YT, it’s a really handy tool to have that’s for sure, great video mate, cheers

[sergeb]

Found out my F360 process for getting from concept to finished product is very similar to yours. Especially, most of the times where there were several options for a given step I would have gone the same way. Feeling reassured. Thanks James

[bolaumann]

You make it look so easy 😉I learned a LOT - thank you!

[Festivejelly]

Really great use of the multi material of that machine. Its crazy what we can make at home and in our workshops these days!

[rednwhitecooper]

All of your Fusion videos have taught me more than any “learn Fusion in x amount of time” tutorial video ever has.

[michaelgleason]

I feel like you should teach Fusion 360. I don't know why, but the way you explained everything just made sense. I usually struggle to follow along with other fusion 360 tutorials.

[PaulMorley]

James, Fantastic content. I always learn new things by watching your process for going about designing and organizing your Fusion models. Thanks

[no-page]

Great follow-up to last week's video. I was especially curious to see how you made the "wells" to shield the LEDs from each other. As I watched you fast-forward through the selection of 56 lens segments at 19:42, I think I would have hidden the case body then window-selected the lenses all at once. When making the diffusers at 22:45, I would have switched to an end view and window-selected the back faces of the lenses rather than doing them one at a time. I'm just lazy.

[zaprodk]

I loved seeing this, and learned a couple of new tricks. Thanks for sharing!

[KentHansson]

Love these deep dives, always learning something new everytime. Nice work!

[yellowcrescent]

Awesome. Have been waiting for this one to see how you handled those segments & light pipes. I wonder if originally creating multiple sketches on the same plane would have been cleaner/easier than projecting to other sketches later-- although I feel like sometimes when there are circular dependencies between multiple sketches, Fusion can have a hard time finding a solution when you make parameter changes... but maybe that's due to errors on my part. Anyway, I can always learn more about Fusion 360 and others' design processes, so enjoy these videos.

Also: Autodesk is currently running a 33% off promo for a commercial 1 year Fusion 360 subscription until the end of Oct 30, 2023 if anyone was thinking about getting it or want to renew early to save money.

[robindeputy]

Fascinating workflow. I hope you make more of these kinds of videos. I have barely scratched the surface of the capabilities of Fusion 360 in my own projects. This tutorial will help me a lot! Thanks for the time you put into this.

[hardiebotha]

Thank you for this level of detail - it is very educational to see and understand someone else's approach to a problem and it often presents techniques that could be applied in other similar models. I especially like the 2 different options for the diffusers. I'm leaning toward the small separate diffusers, I suspect the single diffuser might cause light to bleed to adjacent digits.
Great video!