A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO 3D MODELING by Cameron Coward

• 3D printing technologies have revolutionized the engineering world.
• We can categorize today’s 3D modeling software into two broad types: parametric modeling and mesh modeling.
• In mesh modeling software, you push and pull a virtual mesh to create a 3D model like a sculptor.
• In contrast, parametric modeling software like SolidWorks, Creo, Inventor, and Fusion 360 (which we’ll use in this book) rely on parameters,
• Virtually all modern CAD software is parameter based (though many include some mesh modeling capabilities), and in most cases it’s the best option for designing real physical parts.
• The single most important part of the drafting profession is the ability to create drawings that can be interpreted in only one way.
• Fusion 360 is a fully featured parametric CAD program that has nearly all of the features one would find in costly professional CAD software.
• The key to understanding how parametric modeling software works is in its name: with parametric modeling, you define every single feature by a collection of characteristics called parameters.
• The building blocks of parametric modeling are called features.
• Individual features are often just primitive polygons—basic shapes that you put together with other features to end up with a complex part.
• One of the fundamental skills you’ll learn as a designer is how to break the complex part you envision into a series of basic features.
• One of the major factors that holds hobbyists back from jumping into computer-aided design (CAD) is the complexity of the software.
• A 2D plane can only exist as either a surface or as reference geometry, which means it isn’t part of the solid model.
• This is because a 2D model has no thickness, so it isn’t physically possible to create in the real world.
• A fillet (pronounced “fill-it”) is a frequently-used tool for rounding a sketch’s corner.
• Creating a cube is like the “Hello, World!” of 3D modeling.
• The most direct way to produce parametric 3D objects is through manipulating 2D sketches.
• You should leave a 0.5 mm gap between the edge of the lip and the box, because when you’re designing parts that mate together, it’s important to think about how they’ll actually fit in the real world.
• In engineering terms, the room you allow for some error is called tolerance.
• Formal drafting has hundreds of rules about everything from the thickness of different lines to the typefaces used for text. Luckily, in the real world, few people care about the vast majority of those rules.
• Scale, or the relationship between the size of your drawing and the size of the object, is one of the most crucial details of a technical drawing—and one that many novices overlook.
• A tolerance tells the manufacturer how precisely it needs to adhere to the dimensions shown on your drawing (called nominal dimensions).
• There are two kinds of technical drawings: part drawings, which show the specific dimensions of an individual part, and assembly drawings, which show how multiple parts fit together.
• Rendering is the process by which your computer converts a 3D model into a 2D image that displays on a screen.