Joining the BIDC Fusion 360 Team

Fusion 360 is the CAD and CAM program used by BIDC. It is an easy-to-learn, cloud-based software. You do not need to make your CAD with Fusion 360, but your CAM must be made in Fusion to run on BIDC machines. 

Creating a Fusion 360 Account Through Purdue

Purdue offers free access to Fusion 360 for all students. Go to this webpage: https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/Support/KB/Docs/AutodeskFusion360 and go to “Personally Owned Systems.” Clicking on the link will take you to the Autodesk Educational Licence website. Then click “Select” for Fusion and follow the steps to sign up for an educational license.

Image showing how to gain access to the Fusion 360 team

There is a set of videos that you must watch prior to gaining access to the Fusion 360 Team. The first video in this playlist is a walkthrough from Autodesk on how to setup your Fusion 360 Education account. Use your Purdue Email for this, not a personal email. It is not a free trial, you should not have to pay for anything. Make sure you follow the steps correctly, or Autodesk may deny you access. Then it becomes much more difficult to prove your student status. Additionally, you will need to renew the license yearly.

Joining the BIDC Fusion 360 Team

After you have created your Fusion 360 account, there are a few more videos from that playlist that are mandatory viewing. They go over important information on how to get added to the BIDC Fusion Team, the rules for using it, and explain what preferences to set and how to do basic functions inside Fusion.

After you have watched the videos, take the quiz below. Watch the videos before you take the quiz. After you take the quiz and pass it, the BIDC Admin team will add you to the Fusion Team within 1-2 business days. The actual invite to the Fusion team from Fusion will most likely go to your spam folder, so the BIDC Admin team will email you directly as well to remind you to check your junk folder. After you click the link in the email, you will be added to the Fusion team.

Qr to form

Fusion 360 Preferences

When you open Fusion 360, you need to set a couple of required and helpful preferences. The following preferences will be found in the Preferences window. 

  • Enable Cloud Libraries: This gives you access to the cloud libraries that contain all of our tooling data, so you need to enable this.
    [General] -> [Manufacture] -> [Enable Cloud Libraries]
    Image showing how to enable Cloud Libraries in Fusion 360
  • Default Modeling Orientation to Z-up: This sets the Z-axis to be pointing upwards, instead of the default of the y-axis.
    [General] -> [Default Modelling Orientation] -> [Z up]
    Image showing how to set the Z-up preference in Fusion 360
  • Pan, Zoom, Orbit Shortcuts: You can adjust the view shortcuts of Fusion to be more like other CAD programs if you desire
    Image showing how to set the controls shortcuts in Fusion 360
  • Default Orbit Type to Free Orbit: Changing this makes rotating the view inside Fusion more intuitive and like other CAD programs
    [General] -> [Default Orbit Type] -> [Free Orbit]
    Image showing how to set the Free Orbit preference in Fusion 360

Nearly all of the tooling in the BIDC shop is imperial, not metric, and as such, we use imperial units. To change your units, open a blank Fusion file (Make sure it is in the “Design” workspace), expand the Document Settings dropdown, and then select “Change Active Units.” Set this to Inches and click “Set as Default” to save it permanently
Image showing how to set imperial units in Fusion 360

One final helpful preference is allowing Fusion to swap workholdings depending on what operation you are viewing in the CAM. To set this, make sure you are in the “Manufacture” workspace then click on the “Synchronize Active Setup” icon, and select “Sync visibility with active setup.”
Image showing how to set workholding visibility in Fusion 360

I’m on a student club, and they already added me to their Fusion project. Why don’t I have full access to the BIDC team?

If you have been invited to a particular project in the BIDC Fusion team, without having been added by the BIDC admin team, then you will have access to that particular project, but nothing else inside the BIDC Fusion team. This means you won’t have access to the workholding and tool libraries that are needed for CAM. Just because a team invited you to their Fusion project doesn’t mean you truly have access to the BIDC Fusion. So, make sure you do the above steps and take the quiz to get properly added. If you are a club leader and reading this, please don’t add your members to your project until they have been added to the BIDC Fusion team! It makes it more complicated on BIDC’s end and can cause confusion for members.