Fusion 360 cheat sheet for importing/scaling .obj, .svg

I’ve seen in several threads where folks are having issues with importing surface based geometry into fusion when they want to work with the solid modeler. Below is a cheat sheet I found on the web a couple years back and I keep it handy because it does help in working with the imported geometry.

It doesn’t always work, sometimes the mesh it too dense for fusion to handle (sometimes fixable by reducing in meshmixer) or it may fail for some other reason. But in many cases this has worked for me.

Note also some of fusion’s UI has changed since this was written (e.g., surface/patch workspace is at the top tool bar, not in a drop down menu), but the basic operation remains the same.

I hope it helps you as well.

1. Create a new empty design
2. Optional. Click the Create New Component. (This ensures that if you add any more meshes and objects, they are all organized correctly in an assembly). Give your nonexistent component a name and press OK.
3. Under the Create drop-down, select Create Base Feature. For some reason, certain features in Fusion 360 are unavailable in parametric modeling mode, which is the default for a new design. Everything done to a base feature isn’t captured on the timeline, which means that several hidden options are available.
4. Under the Insert drop-down, select Insert Mesh
5. Right-click your mesh and select Mesh to BRrep. Make sure the Operation in the drop-down is New Body, then press OK.
6. Head over to the Patch workspace (drop down menu at the top left).
7. Select the Merge option in the Modify drop down menu.
8. Select two triangles on the same plane and click OK. If there remain any inconsistencies, just repeat this step with two problematic faces that are on the same plane. Do not merge any faces that make curves. Make sure the Select Chain check-box is not checked. I’m not sure what it does, but it can cause problems.
9. Head back to the modeling workspace.
10. Select Finish Base Feature
11. Head to the Scale option under the Modify drop-down. Select any point on your part, then type in the scale factor you need. If you need to go from 400 mm to 93 mm, I would type in 93/400 (yes, you can type in fractions).
12. From here, you can edit to your heart’s content. If you need to re-export the part as an stl, right click the component in the assembly hierarchy on the left and select save as stl.
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