3D YETI – My Experience

My experience gaining educational access to Autodesk so I could actually use Fusion 360 was pretty terrible; it took all weekend and I wasn’t able to start my modeling until Monday the 9th. That being said, I actually had quite a bit of fun toying around with Fusion and making both my dice recreation, and the above model of my YETI Rambler water bottle. It wasn’t an easy process, but it was definitely fun and thought-provoking.

The basic Fusion 360 functions (making shapes, sizing them, etc.) weren’t the hardest to understand, but the trouble I ran into was combining them. Especially with my YETI model, I had a particularly hard time creating the small, brushed stainless steel cylinder at the bottom of the bottle, with a separate, large, matte black cylinder stacked on top of it. Every time I tried to add another cylinder, it would combine them into one large one, or remove both altogether. As you might imagine, I was getting a little frustrated and quite confused as to why this wasn’t working how I wanted it to. I then noticed the ability to add a new solid in the pop-up box when I was extruding the bottom cylinder. This solved all my problems and I was able to move forward more smoothly.

I reached another problem with my YETI model when I reached the handle. For the life of me, and it felt like a lifetime of trying, I was completely unable to create the handle that stands on top of the black, slanted cap. Even as I write this now, I couldn’t even begin to describe to someone how they could try to do this. I’m sure I will learn soon enough, and I’m sure it’s not even that hard of a task, but my mind got the better of me and I figured it was more worth it to export what I had instead of spending more time on something I so clearly couldn’t grasp.

The lack of a handle is the primary compromise I had to make, but there are 2 others I think are worth sharing. The first is when I began modeling the bottle, I accidentally had it in the wrong plane and somehow didn’t realize until after exporting when I could see the drop-shadow. Ideally, the water bottle would be standing upright and the shadow would be cast longer. Second, I just wish there were more materials to choose from in the “appearance” box [A]. The black material making up the body and top cap of the YETI is currently matte plastic black, when in reality the material is metal. There was no ability to turn the plastic into metal, but I wonder how it would affect the final look of the model (because of the imaginary light source).

After using Fusion 360 for the first time, I think there are many uses for the program in the fields of research and teaching. I think in an increasingly digital world, it’s more important than ever to pass along this kind of knowledge so future generations can continue the work that’s been started. Less philosophically speaking, the program could definitely be used for modeling different body prosthetics, new automobiles, and other material goods that could benefit people’s lives. To share a tip for novices in this field (I still consider myself a novice), I would say it’s very useful to know about the appearance window [A]. You have a lot of power over the model once it’s in its final form, and adding those materials and colors to the objects you create helps them come to life in front of your eyes.