Sketch fundamentals: Start from origin - Fusion 360 Tutorial

- [Instructor] In this video, we're going to be drawing a sketch for the front triangle of a bicycle frame. Since this is the beginning of a brand new project, I just want to make sure that my document settings are correct. So if we go to the left side of the screen here and select the arrow for the document settings, I just want to make sure my unit is millimeters. It is, so we look to be good. Just close that. The next thing I really want to do is I just want to change the view that I'm in so that I can be in the left view. So we're going to go over here to the right side of the screen, and we're going to select on the view cube so we can kind of move around and go to the left side. Now, I like to be on the left side when designing a bicycle frame, since we're looking at the drive side where the chain rings and chain are. So I want that to be my left view. So we are ready to create our sketch now. So let's go back over to the left side of the screen and select the create sketch tool. Now you'll see that this has highlighted the origin of the part, of the model. And so this center point right here is zero, zero, zero. So we can go ahead and select this construction plane, which is our Y Z plane. One of the things I always like to do, and why I like to select from the origin is to allow the origin of the model to be essentially the center of the model that we're building. So I can use that origin construction planes to bisect the part, if I needed to, if I was for instance, making a mold. I could also create symmetry on a three dimensional part from the left and right side, referencing an origin. I could also create a mirrored plane, mirrored components, referencing the origin. It just makes a life really easy down the road. So we're going to go ahead and create the bottom bracket as the origin, and we're going to create the seat tube first. So, let's go back over here to the left, and we're going to select that the line tool up here. We're going to go ahead and select the origin. And then you'll see, once we start creating this line, we get two dimensions that it gives us. So we get a length and an angle. So for the length, we're going to do 555 millimeters. We're then going to use the tab key and go over to the angle and do 73.5, hit enter. You'll see that we can't see the whole line, so we want to zoom out. We can simply use the scroll key to do that. And then to pan, and we can also use the scroll key. If you just hit the scroll key, which is the center button, we can then pan and see our entire line. The next thing we're going to do is we're going to create another line that's going to represent the top tube. In this case, we're going to use the keyboard shortcut to pull up the line tool, and that's just simply L. And then we're going to select along this line and you'll see, once we start drawing the line, it automatically snaps here. Since we're really close to being parallel to the Z axis, it snaps to that. So we're going to let it do that so that it's parallel to the ground. We are then going to give it a value of 555 millimeters. Now, I don't like where this dimension value is. It just bothers me. So I want to go ahead and move that. I just select it and I can move it. I can do that also with these down here and with this angle as well. We can also change these dimensions. So if you double click, you can go to 560 millimeters, which makes a little longer, and go back to 555. The next thing we're going to do is draw the center line of the wheels. So we're going to go ahead and pick a point in space over here, and another one over here. Again, we're going to make this snap to parallel to the Z axis, or ground axis. And then I don't need to continue drawing, which the line tool allows you to do if you select two points. So I'm just going to go here to this check mark and hit that. And I still have the line tool active. I'm just not continually drawing. Now, this line is very important to the bicycle because this is the center of where the front and rear wheel are. This is a reference line that's really important because we reference how high the bottom bracket is from the ground, which we reference by the center line of the wheels, and we also use this as a reference point for the fork of the bicycle and the head tube angle. There's many things that reference this line. So it's very important. We're then going to come up here to the top tube and select the end point. We're then going to go ahead and snap that over to this center line that we built. Now, you'll see, as soon as I did that, it actually shades in the shape. And that's really important because when it shades it in, it means that it's a sealed object, it's a sealed shape. So we could use this in an extrusion to extrude a 3D box from it, we could do it to create a surface if we wanted to. So it's just very important to know that it's a fully sealed shape. We're then going to come over here and select on this line again, and we're going to bring up back to this head tube line and stop that. This is going to represent the fork. So this is where the fork connects to the front wheel. And then this is where the crown of the fork connects to the head tube of the bike. Now I'm just going to zoom in a little bit and I'm going to just create a line. It doesn't matter where it is just above this head tube line so that I can extend this line to that line. So I'm going to go up here to the modify and I'm going to do extend. I'm going to simply just select this head tube line and let that extend up. Now I don't need to do any other extensions, so I'm going to hit the escape key so I'm out of the tool, and then just simply select this line and delete it. All right, I'm going to go ahead and zoom out and kind of just square me up here. Now I have pretty much everything done for the front triangle, I just got to do the down tube. So we're going to select the fit points blind tool, and we're going to select that to the origin bottom bracket. And we're going to put a couple of points in here. Now, you'll see, I'm not really focusing on putting these anywhere in particular. I'm just kind of getting them in the rough shape of where they should be. Now I'm done, click the check. Again, I'm in the spline, I want to be out of it. So hit escape. Now I can come in here and move any of those control points that I put in previously. So just kind of move this around, get this in the right shape. That looks to be pretty good. Now you'll notice I can also, if I select on a point, I can adjust the radius of that curve and I can adjust the angle of that curve. This is actually a very powerful tool to use. Now that we have that done, we are all set with the front triangle of the bicycle frame.