Skip to main content

Fusion in This Class

The practical side of using Fusion for class work — access, files, units, and handoff. For how the software itself works, see Fusion Training, which curates Autodesk's own video lessons.

Getting access​

Fusion is free for you as a student through Autodesk's education program. Full instructions are on the Autodesk software page — follow those rather than the steps a random tutorial gives you, since the education sign-up path is specific to schools.

Two things worth knowing up front:

  • Sign in with your @universityprep.org email. If you use a personal Autodesk account, your files won't be where you expect them next class and you'll lose the education license.
  • The education license renews annually. If Fusion suddenly asks you to subscribe partway through the year, that's the renewal coming due, not a broken install. Let June know rather than trying to re-verify it yourself.

Where your files live​

Fusion saves to Autodesk's cloud by default, not to your laptop. That's a good thing here: your files follow you between your laptop and the shop computer, and you can't lose a project to a dead hard drive the night before a milestone.

  • Save often, and give the save a comment. Every save creates a version you can go back to. That comment ("added cable notch," "shrank tabs to 3mm") is what makes the version history useful three weeks later.
  • Don't rely on the local recovery cache. If Fusion crashes before you've ever saved, there may be nothing to recover. Save as soon as you have a sketch, not once you're done.
  • Name files so someone else can find them. Include the project and your name or team — vr-shelf-team3-jpeters beats Untitled (17). This matters most when you're handing a file off for machine time.

Units​

Fusion lets you set the unit type per design, and mixing them up is one of the most common ways a part comes out at the wrong scale.

  • 3D printing is a millimeter world. Bambu Studio, filament diameters, and nozzle sizes are all specified in millimeters.
  • Plywood and hardware are sold in inches. A "1/2 inch" sheet is nominally 12.7 mm — and, as Designing for the CNC covers, it's usually not actually that thick.
  • Pick one unit for a design and stay in it. If you need to work across both, measure in the unit your material is sold in and let Fusion do the conversion, rather than converting in your head partway through a sketch.

Handing a file to someone else​

Which format you send depends on what the other person needs to do with it — see Exporting Your Design for the full table. The short version:

  • A teammate who needs to keep modeling it — send the Fusion design itself (share the cloud project, or export an .f3d). Never send an STL for this; an STL throws away your sketches, parameters, and history, and there's no way to get them back.
  • A teammate or June who just needs to check dimensions or cut it — a STEP file, or the DXF/3MF the machine actually needs.

Questions​

For license trouble, ask June Peters (jpeters@universityprep.org). For how a Fusion tool works, check Fusion Training or Autodesk's own Fusion learning collection first — it's searchable and it's the source of truth.