Designing a Lasercut Laptop Stand with Fusion 360 

having taught myself fusion 360, this is a very fresh look at how designing can be done, and makes my design method look primitive. Excellent video, love your voice and presentation style.

I think I learned more in this 20 minutes than I did in 4 years of high school

Thank you for such a clean, useful tutorial. no BS, no gimmicks; just useful information.

just starting with laser cutting and looking for tutorials and thank you, you have the best, simplest and easy to follow tutorial that teaches not just how to make this but the most important concepts and tricks that we can use to create many more items. Thank you so much

Thank you for including shots of the product produced from the model!

This is without doubt one of the best F360 videos I've seen. Nice work Taylor! So many good tips and tricks. I haven't use Fusion for a while so I didn't know about user-defined parameters, but they look super useful. Thanks again!

Thank you! This is probably the best primer on the topic I've seen so far. Most others always make things more complicated than necessary.

After using F360 for two years I learned so much. Thank you

This video seriously highlights the abilities of Fusion 360. That being said, what we all need now for those of us beginning our first drawings in the program is a video of all of the nomenclature that you just used in the creation of this Laptop Stand. I will probably spend as much time creating a basic drawing as you've spent describing your actions.

What a phenomenal tutorial. I had a little bit of trouble since the interface has changed between when this was created and now, but it's still a very clear, concise, thorough guide that holds up extremely well.

Absolutely brilliant. Thought this process would be a real hassle. You nailed it in 20 minutes with a sprinkle of F360 top tips, couldn't really ask for anything better.

What a brilliant tutorial simple, but covering all the relevant items and even the setup for laser cutting.

For laser cutting, I know some people don't mind it but the cutout where you subtract from a part is a useful resource to save time, however, during assembly, they don't usually fit tight, there is a kerf on the laser itself and the models won't fit tight to hold themselves together. Like I said, a lot of people won't mind using glue but in my future designs, I will add at least 0.005" overlap for the laser cutting.

I know this is old, but it is gold. I'm early on my Fusion journey and embarrassed to say that I've been relying on cut and paste, and good old drag-and-drop to try and design all the symmetry.

You explaining is very good but is there also the same explanation for the current version of fusion?

I use Inventor for design, and Fution 360 for CAM, but after this tutorial, my mind have changed. good work!!!

Do you not have to worry about the kerf for the connecting parts?

Really great tutorial, you showed me everything I wanted to learn and some more!

This took me hours to watch working along with you. I could have done it in 20 min. in Sketchup but it would not have been parametric. I really appreciate the videos.

For me, it's an excellent tutorial that I've just reviewed. This time I tried to well assimilate the functions used. I understood the method , which allowed me to detect a bug at 6'50" of the video. The top edge of the top is referenced at 12mm from the top edge of the leg. Later a fillet is applied on this same edge. As this little edge is replaced by a fillet, this changes the position of the top. I modified the sketch of the top, and it works now just fine even when i modify the fillets.

Great tutorial. Covers so much in a short space of time. Thanks and subbed!

I love the features in fusion360 but the company I intern for, and my school use solid works. And I’ve grown so fond of solid works that it’s all natural at this point.

I too am self taught and have picked up a few good tips, very clear, thanks

I am going to do it with rectangular hole in legs so that i can grab it and take it around my room.... your tutorials are engaging to watch...helped a lot...thanks!!

Nice Job. Adjusting the material thickness is very helpful especially for plexiglass. It typically runs less than .25 and the entire drawing would have to be updated. This workflow is awesome! Thanks

amazing, I'm impressed. You make everything so fast and easy.

great workflow, gave me a fresh look. great piece of work.

This was an excellent tutorial!

WOW. Just wow. What a great tutorial.

Nice project :) thanks for explaining

Is there any compensation needed to allow for the kerf created by the laser to ensure the stand is secure and stable?

I just started learning F360. Awesome video. I really like this software. It is so easy to make a sketch and make it into a real 3d object and then do the CAM!

Hey, this is great! your videos have been really helpful, thanks a million

I enjoy the flat pack design stuff. I am new to making parts that interlock. I sometimes I forget to use parametric until the part is fully modeled. I like that that you include the parametric as a critical step in the videos. Also, the tips and tricks you prove. Great videos!

You do the best tutorials Taylor - and no mistakes on this one... :-)

Great work! my confidence increased by working on u r video

Thank! Learned a bunch from this video.

As a 3D printing aficionado I was a little surprised you didn't offset adjoining faces for tolerance figure perhaps laser cut wood is more forgiving? Anyways nice workflow enjoyed that (if anyone is tempted to do similar with an FDM printer rather than laser cutting I'd try offseting the adjoining sdgss by circa 0.1mm each side (to create about 0.2mm tolerance) but will depend upon how dialed in your printer is.

How to place these components in one plane for CAM development? Automatically or manual. I mean i'd like to put them down in one plywood sheet stock, choose tools, make toolpath etc

Great tutorial. This tutorial is convincing me to use Fusion over Blender. Thank you for measuring this quantum state.

Great tutorial, but tell me what the "activate" action does, what's the difference between activated and inactivated?

Nice sketching ! One question tho,what does Activate on 4:15 does ? I didn't fully understand it.

What a terrific tutorial! Thanks so much for your clear descriptions. The tip about setting constraints is a very good one and something that really helps when thinking about the design process. I'm still a little unclear about the "color change" on the lines when the feature is constrained, but I will research this and figure it out. Looking forward to seeing more of your instructionals!

This is awesome thanks, would really love it if you could update it sometime to the new Fusion layout to show my students.

Thanks for your excellent work on this vid. As a beginner I had to repeat it an embarrassing number of times to get my model to match. Problems included sketch colors not activated by default in my install (buried in preferences), so they wouldn't turn black when fully constrained. Dimensioning existing features or changing existing dimensions is often problematic, in that the dimension line I seek is often not selectable for reasons I'm still trying to decipher. One design element I might suggest changing is the selection of lines & angles you chose to fully constrain your initial leg sketch. I made all of those changeable parameters in my design, but found changing the tilt degree (fixed 22 degrees in your design) really messed up the design due to the fixed back height (155 mm?) in your initial constrained sketch. If you constrained the leg sketch front lip dimensions and left the back height as the unfixed, moveable dimension, lowering the tilt angle would produce a more consistent look as it moved. Thanks again for the fine tutorial. Dan D.

Great video.... how do u install a laser cutting machine on fusion 360? Thank you

Hi, is there still a possibility to select all edges at once, like at 4:01 in the current Fusion version?

Hi Taylor Great Tutorial. I am only a beginner, so good to see your thought processes and how easy it is to create some fairly complicated joints. (Well for me anyway). Please keep your informative videos coming! Big Thumbs UP!

I'm curious, how do you manage kerf? Because on some joint both pieces are subject to kerf, and sometime only one of the two pieces(when the other is perpendicular and has its thickness that doesn't change).

4:48 if i try to do joint i can’t select anything. The component becomes invisible. What can i do about that?

Very nice and easy to follow tutorial. I completed it without problems. Although I don't understand what the projection was for and what it did, and it left some strange patterns in my version, but they don't show up in the final sketches to be lazered so I guess i'm ok.

I think this is the best video I've seen for a basic getting started with Fusion 360. Thanks.

Excellent. More tutorials like this please.

Здравствуйте. Есть ли возможность восстановить проекты? Пришлось переустанавливать программу через время. Ранее слева на вкладке отображались все созданные проекты, теперь там пусто...Учётная запись та же

Great video for a newbie such as myself. Question.. Why not use the CAM of Fusion360 to generate the G-code to send to the laser?

Excellent. The main question for me is whether there's a better way for dealing with a large number of pieces. I have a project that may consist of 300+ pieces, so imagining this could take 300+ minutes (5 hours). Hope I don't make a mistake! The parametrics are particularly helpful. I was doing some parameters using the first angle then set other = d1. But, I like it for the material thickness. I have 2 cases. 1) I don't know the actual (or best) thickness to use of the material; it comes in different thicknesses and it's flexible, so I'm not sure if I need to design it slightly thinner to make everything fit tighter and 2) I have an outer layer of plastic that I want to test with 2 different thicknesses, and I'll have a lot to adjust (to make molds for thermoforming) if the thickness of that outer material changes; or I would have a different interior dimension to fit the smaller outside, which is more likely to avoid making a second mold.)

Great Video

Great Video ! Learned something new again ! Thanks Chris

This tutorial is awsome show me so much usefull tipp about the simple sketching:)

I'm wondering is there a way to offset the legs from a fixed center point? That way when you change legwidth both move an equal distance from that fixed center point.

What king of wood have you used? how do you get nominal dimensions and don't have problems with the tolerances of the laser cut machine?

What would your approach be to get a good snug fit with laser cut materials like wood since the cutters take away a bit of material - typically between 0.1mm to 0.25mm. I know you mention wood glue, but what if that's not an option. Would there be an easy way to make small 2-3mm long and 0.2mm tall 2-point arcs where the parts are touching, maybe?

@4:00 I can't seem to get this to work with the latest fusion360. Something must have changed

Excellent! One of the best Fusion 360 tutorials I've seen. I like how you use components to structure things from the start (like in your CNC router stool video). Lots of good tips in here. I didn't know about interference checking. I also haven't been using Project Intersection. I wonder if it isn't worth mentioning that the color coding of fully constrained lines is an option that has to be turned on explicitly (or has it finally become the default?). Also - although it's outside the scope of this tutorial - it's worth your viewers noting that Adobe Illustrator (a common next step) requires you to explicitly set the scale of the DXF when importing. eg: 1 unit = 1 mm

my leaser cutter needs Red and Black colour to ingrave or cut, how can I get this done?

Got a question Taylor, at around the 13:45 mark, where you are creating the braces, I'm following your steps for learning, and for some reason I can't seem to get the overlap parts to select for extrusion. Not sure what I'm doing/have done wrong. Any tricky parts here you make look easy I should know about?

Lots of great info. Thanks

Is there a way to un-mirror and keep the mirrored component?, I want to start a design like this one but after all the similar features are added I want for example add a fan on one side and electrical components on the other side, so both components will become different, how can I do this?. Thank you in advance, I am only 3 days using a CAD Software.

I tried using the doggone filet F360 add in to prepare this project for cutting on a CNC. I could not get the add in to work when selecting an entire body, but was finally able to get it to work when selecting vertical inside edges singly. Any ideas why this is so?

Awesome video, getting me up to speed on Fusion 360 quickly. Great explanation of parametric drawing and good practices. I'm trying to get ready for a Shaper Origin I ordered, which should arrive sometime beginning September!!

I'm only able to export a .dxf from the sketch itself. How are you exporting the sides after the combine operation to cut on a laser cutter?

Excellent. One (important question) : when you create your slots, they are *exactly* the thickness of the material. What would be the simplest way to make those holes a fraction bigger?

So useful thanks.

Hey, thanks for your tutorial! That helped a LOT! One more thing, that I could use some help with: how do you cut out all pieces in one pass on the cnc? When I want to set up the CAM process, fusion always wants to create the "assembled" laptop stand out of one solid piece - just the way it is shown in the CAD part. Did I make my problem clear :D ??

Hello very nice proyect!, can you tell how i can put a joint with the exterior distance of lenght like a parameter? I see that the distance you use is the interior distance like lenght

Great Tutorial! It seems like a good first project for beginners.

I want to lay all the parts out on one flat plane so that I can arrange and cut them all at the same time. I've followed some tutorials and they don't seem to work for this design. How do we use the built in CAM functions so I can generate GCode with Fusion360? Any help here?

How would you compensate for the laser kerf?

Big thanks for this video !

Great tutorial, thank you very much!

What color did you use to make it look like wood?

Amazing Tutorial :D thankyou

Great video Taylor! Keep them coming. Can this be converted to a CNC Machine rather than a Laser Cutter?

How do I join several parts without touching the sides, i.e. they are separated so that they become a part only in Fusion 360 ?

At 4.01, I can only get the model to select faces+edges (rather than just the desired edges only) despite my selection window being exactly the same as described in the video (right to upper left, crossing over the vertical edges but not the horizontal edges). Have googled the heck out of this with no solution found. What am I doing wrong?

nice tutorial. i wish to know how was it possible for the top to inherit the legwidth parameters. When you changed the legwidth , the top also adjust . i was expecting only the legwidth distance to change and not the top.

Excellent video for what I'm trying to accomplish. Question though: do I need to remake those DXF sketches when the parameters change?

Hi Taylor! Great video. Not just this one, but all of them! Quick questions. How do you do about the clearance? Did you add any or was the result okay after production?

Awesome! Thank you so much for this!

Hello . Great job ! I would take out a doubt , how do I generate a DXF scaled to a prototype before cutting the final piece ? tks

what is a good free or open source piece of software to use for laser cut?

G'day mate, I am pretty new to all this, I was wondering if you could help me out? I have made an odd geometric design that I want to cut out on the CNC but my problem is I dont know how to nest all the faces onto one plane? I have tried a nesting script but it comes up with errors. I also thought of just converting it to a drawing and then recreating the face shapes in the CNC program but when I convert it to a drawing all the measurements are off because of the whole perspective thing... Any advice??

Question: How is it that you from the very first extrusion your objects have a wood texture to them? Did I miss a step?

Awesome video tut! Is there a way to make some nest operation like in RhinoNest, when you can get all your parts placed over sheets of plywood, so you dont't have to spent some more time placing them by your hands?

After you complete the extrudes on each component they appear in the wood finish without you changing the physical material, how did you do this?

The waterjet/laser/plasma CAM operation in Fusion can take into account the laser kerf.

This video is crasy goood !!!!!

Is there any chance you can show a simple export of DXF file from fusion, I'm always having problems with the scaling of the file. Thank you

After getting this model done, what's the common practice to get it to the laser cutter? Save as DXF, import, and print? or is there another layout tool to get it into properly sized full sheets?

Where you highlight the top of the legs for sketch and projection, mine won't highlight. What am I doing wrong?