It was a fun experience learning Fusion360 and I made a die!
The software is a bit complicated with so many functions, so it took a while to figure out where everything is. However, once I became familiar with the tool, the process got faster and smoother. Since the die was regular, many actions such as making the circles were repeated.
There are two elements that bogged me down. First, the die has round edges instead of sharp ones. It was hard to achieve through extrusion. However, I found a function called Fillet under the section Modify. It rounds the edges, and the users could adjust the radius. Secondly, the circles on the die are not cylinders but closer to spheres. Again, wasn’t able to do so through extrusion. I figured that I could create a sphere object and cut it on the die, leaving a cave with its shape. However, I didn’t find out how to adjust the coordinates of the sphere other than having its center on the die. So I have to compromise and cut deeper than I hoped.
A tip I want to share on how to change the texture of the object: 1. Go to the Render section in the upper left corner and select appearance (circled in red in figure 4) 2. a list of materials will pop up on the right, and drag the material you want onto the object. Simply clicking on the material doesn’t work!
Given the preciseness and power of the tool, I could envision many objects being visualized for humanistic use. For example, clay vessels can be modeled in the discipline of archeology or art history. An object can be represented in detail and with multiple perspectives, and shared around the world. Thus, scholars could cooperate remotely when doing research. For education, more students will have access to objects they are studying to help them better understand the content.
