Fusion 360 Generative Phone Stand

In week5 assignment, we are going to create a generative design using a new tool Fusion 360. Following the tutorials provided by Professor Jacob and some online sourses like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSSt8wswNJQ, I created phone stand design.

Fusion 360, Rhinoceros, Cura3D, 3D Printer

Fusion 360 has a very different interface compared to Rhinoceros, and I spent lots of time trying just to draw very basic shapes in multiple planes. After extrusion these shapes in different directions into bodies, I got the fundamental design of my phone stand. The body marked in blue is used in the generative design section, which will be designed in the next step.

Following the tutorial from Professor Jacobs, I explored the functionalities in the generative design interface. All these functionalities are crucial in successfully generating a design that agrees with the users' intentions.

Firstly, a study of generative design is created. Then, for the perserved geometry, I selected the bodies that forms the fundament of the phone stand, which are shown in green. I then selected the obstacle geometry marked in red, which means I do not want any solid bodies within the range of this obstacle geometry. This obstacle geometry represents the phone resting on this stand. After this step, I set the four feet as the structural constraints to fix them to the floor. The next step is to set the structural loads. As shown in the picture, besides gravity, I set two sources of force on the geometry. One is the vertical force from the weight of the phone, which I input 2 Newton (My IPhone weighs 175g); Another one is the force that is perpendicular to the back of the phone stand, which I set to 0.5 Newton. For the design objectives, I selected minimize mass in order to accelerate my printing procedure. The next option is the design material, and I used PLA provided in the Fusion360 Library. These steps concluded the process of specifying user's expectation, and is ready to feed to the software to make generative designs.

Since it was my first time using generative design, I was not sure if my specification were correct. In the preview option, I got a very weird geometry that seems to wrap my design. I just skipped it, and went directly to generating geometries, and got some results.

One thing I do not like Fusion 360 is that it does not provide precise estimation of processing time. I waited for almost an hour in generating the design, and saw some progress in the intermediate geometries, but the progress bar did not move at all. I just left it to work on cloud for one night, and got the results in the next morning. In the aesthetic perspective, I think the last two are better, since they have a larger extent in variation in the side bars; Considering its usefulness, I think the first design has a geometry that can fix the phone more steadily, and can be more functional as a phone stand.

These designs were not useful or failed in some perspective, but I found them interesting. I would never think of the design of the first twos, and they let me consider that there needs to be way more high level parameters that user needs to specify to really get expected results. These two designs definetly satisfy my input parameters, but as a useful phone stand, users need to be able to see the screen while placing the phone onto the stand. The first two geometries failed to do that. The third design looks like a semi-finished product, but somehow it appears in the recommended outcomes.