The Fusion 360 model of the lens cap holder. So I designed it including some parameters and relationships that could be used for making changes, first by manually modifying their values, and later on through some kind of automation.

When I created the CAD file for this design, I knew there would be a point in the future when we would need to make variations of it. Making a Parametric CAD model on Fusion 360

Ideally, anyone could go to the store and order a lens cap holder of any size. That became more important when we decided to open our store on Vulkaza, and include the Lens Cap holder as one of the listed designs. But soon it started to become tedious, and I wanted to find a way to automate making several versions of the model and exporting them, see we could publish all possible sizes at once. Initially, I would do the modifications and export the files manually, since the design was made on Fusion 360, and there were just two parameters to modify to get an adjusted version. Since we published the files online last year, we’ve regularly received requests from people who asked very nicely if we could make a design variation to fit a different size of lens or camera strap. In this case, it was a design for a lens cap holder, which we shared on, and recently included in the store on Vulkaza's marketplace. Generating multiple STL files from Fusion 360 using a Python script Why exporting STL files automatically?Īs you may know, TwoThingies is a project I started with Uri last year, and we have been sharing all sorts of useful files for 3d printing online. Whether you're a young maker just starting out with 3D printing or an experienced designer looking to take your skills to the next level through automation, this post is for you. This case is really simple, since it includes only two parameters, and can be helpful to understand what’s needed. If you have any physical product idea that would require making changes to its geometry based on a series of parameters, you may certainly benefit from doing something like this. We'll be breaking down the code and explaining each section, so you can understand how it works and how you can use it for your own projects. I was amazed by how simple it was to make this, so I wanted to share it with you.

I wrote a script that uses the Autodesk Fusion 360 API to change the dimensions of a CAD model, and then exports each variation as an STL file that you can slice for 3d printing.

Today I want to share how I used a Python script to automate the process of creating multiple variations of a file for 3d printing. Easily automate CAD file variations using Fusion 360's API

Using fusion 360 for 3d printing