Early Saturday morning, 40 New Yorkers braved the icy temperatures and three flights of stairs to the light warm safety of Projective Space 1 for the first 3D Hubs New York meetup of 2015 - Fusion 360 3D Design Workshop - lead by Erica Nwankwo, the Autodesk Education Evangelist.
Karen Kaun (CEO of Makeosity) kicked off the workshop introducing us to Shekeena and Allie, her middle school students who have been using Autodesk Fusion 360 to conceptualize and fabricate their very own energy generating scooter. As the girls, gaining confidence with the crowd, showed off the scooter explaining how they had worked with Erica (from Autodesk) who had taught them to 3D model using Fusion 360, my confidence grew.
Over our coffee break the selection of Marvin keychains, which NY Hub, Sylvia & Scott, had printed for us to take home, did the rounds. Scott shared tips and tricks on printing with the Carbon Fibre filament from Proto-Pasta.
A coffee, a bagel and a demo of 123D later began the real challenge. The Fusion 360 workshop, where we had the opportunity to explore and learn the to use the software by designing our own Energy Scooter.
Erica had created a base model of the scooter, which we copied section-by-section into a new design design window, making modifications like adding groves to the handlebars, along the way. About 10 minutes in that my bubble of confidence began to deflate and I had to face the truth; like most things getting good at 3D modeling requires practice. I was not going to be a pro user the first time I opened Fusion 360, but I was going to learn loads and take my first towards a solid design.
Faced with an audience whose experience ranged from seasoned in 3D modelers to folk like me who were… much less experienced, Erica did a sterling job taking us through the workshop at a steady pace. Expert facilitators, Allie and Shekeena, moved around the tables offering assistance to those who needed it and cooing praises for those, who advanced more quickly.
Despite not completing my scooter design it was so good to have an actual model as a goal to work towards and Erica did a super job of leaving us with some great follow up resources and tutorials to keep building on the skills we’d gained during the 2 hour session on Saturday.
Two things I learnt:
- Doing a workshop rather than going it alone is more fun and you learn from other attendees by getting and giving peer-to-peer assistance
- Fusion 360 is fantastic, persevere to improve
Thank you to all of you who attended, Erica & Autodesk for sharing their knowledge, Allie and Shekeena for showing us how its done, and Projective Space for hosting!
Our next NY event is live! You can check out the details here: 3D Hubs Colorfabb Filament Workshop NY
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Feb '15last reply
Feb '15- 4
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