How to 3D Design a Mug - Fusion 360 for Beginners

1. Introduction: Hi there and welcome to this beginner's class on how to 3D design a Mug in Fusion 360. This class is for anyone who wants to learn more about 3D designing using surfaces whilst finding your own unique style and way of working within the software. In this class, you'll be learning how to create a 3D design by sculpting it and also working with both a solid and surface 3D model. At first glance, when you're starting out sculpting a form may seem a little bit overwhelming, but I'll be giving you some great tips and tricks to help you become confident in your designing. Working with surfaces gives you great flexibility when you're creating your 3D designs. Hi, my name is Hendrien Horn and I'm a 3D designer and Ceramic artist from South Africa. When I started 3D designing, some of the first things I designed where pottery items such as mugs and vases, which was obviously the inspiration for this class. It gave me a sense of familiarity because starting out in 3D design was quite daunting for me in the beginning. There were so many options and tools to choose from within the software. And trying to figure out how to build up my knowledge skill set was quite difficult and frustrating for me at times. And that is why I want to make it easier for you as a 3D beginner designer to ensure that you start the right way and not have the struggles that I did. Just a little tip. If you'd like to practice 3D designing and modeling, use products and objects from your everyday life. You are familiar with these and understand the design of the item better. It also makes it a lot easier than coming up with something to design when you are still trying to figure out your preferred process of 3D designing. All that you will need for this class is a computer, a mouse, the Fusion 360 software installed, and as a beginner, you need to know the basics of the Fusion 360 layout and how to use the mouse. If this is your first class, I would suggest rather go have a look at my Beginner's Guide to 3D design. This will help you with regards to understanding all that you need to know. Because today we're jumping straight into making the 3D model. And I won't be going over how to use the basics of the mouse and the layout. Hi, my name's Hendrien, and welcome to this class. 2. Project: Firstly, you'll need to go and grab a mug out of the cupboard. We're going to be taking a photo of it and then uploading it to our computer. I will show you how to insert the photo into Fusion 360 so that you have an accurate reference image to work from. You will then proceed to 3D modelling your mug by creating the form and adjusting it according to the look of your image. We will be jumping from the solid environment to the surface environment. Where we'll be patching and stitching the model. All of this 3D design lingo will be explained in the class. The final look of your mug will depend on what is your favorite beverage. What do you enjoy drinking out of your mug, for example, do you enjoy coffee? Cappuccinos. I'm a big fan of a cappuccino. But do you enjoy tea, hot chocolate, chai tea, latte? The list goes on and on and on. So you need to pick which is your favorite beverage. Then I will show you how to add text to your mug and we'll decorate it a little, so you can have a lot of fun with it. We will then be adding some color and appearance to our mug, finishing off our design in style. I would like to encourage you to share your 3D model with the rest of the class, as I'll be showing you how to capture an image of your model within the software. While with all of that said, go grab your mug and let's get to class. 3. Taking Photo & Settings: We just have to make sure that the mug is facing the front and that we can see the handle. I can be on the left-hand side or the right-hand side. It doesn't really matter. Let's make this Mug look good and take a nice snapshot. And then you're going to upload the image to your computer. Let's just double-check that everything is set according to how you want it. Here on the left-hand side on document settings, you can click the Arrow. My unit of measurement is set to millimeters. But if you'd like to change that, you can click here on the pencil and paper. And here on the drop-down on the right, you can click centimeter, meter, inches depending on what type of unit of measurement you would like. But I'm going to keep mine to millimeters and say Cancel. Next. Let's go down here to the bottom to display settings. Click on the arrow, and let's go up to Visual style mine is set to shaded with visible edges. Yours might be on shaded. I would suggest selecting shaded with visible edges because as a beginner, it's a lot easier to work with a model when you can see the edges clearly. Next, let's go to environment. You'll see mine is on Photo booth. This is this white background. If you'd like to change it, you are welcome to select another option. This is Grey room. Let's go back to environment. Or if you'd like Tranquility blue. So depending on which background you'd like to work with, you welcome to change it here. I'm just going to change mine back to Photo booth. I like the white background. Lastly, let's just. Go down here to Grid and snaps. If you go up to layout grid and you tick that box, your background might actually look like this with this grid in the background, but I prefer to have this unticked. The grid will automatically appear once I'm sketching. So that wouldn't be a problem at all. I just prefer not to have a permanent grid in the background, but that's my personal preference. So you're welcome to keep yours on if you'd like. 4. Inserting Canvas: Now let's insert the photo that we just took. We'll go up here and click on Insert. Next we'll click on Canvas. And we'll be inserting it from My Computer here on the bottom left. And I've saved it in my Downloads folder. I'll just double-click on it. Now, in this pop-up box that has appeared, it's asking us which face would we like to put the photo on. I'll be choosing this ZX, plane this front plane. And there it's put it in, just zoom in a little, while I click on the Cube here and just look at it from the front. Zoom in a bit more. Here in this Canvas section, make sure that your opacity is set a little bit lower. So if it's at a 100 percent, maybe just bring it down a little - 50% is usually fine. As long as you can see through the picture. Also make sure that this Display Through tick box has been ticked. This is for if you have any solid geometry in front of your Canvas, you'll be able to see straight through it. We're going to go Ok. Usually the height of a mug is between 10 and 12 centimeters. You are welcome to go and measure your mug or you can just make an estimation. Because if you remember, we've actually zoomed in. If we put on our origin here on the left-hand side, you'll see that our picture's actually quite small. So we want to make sure that it's the correct height. And how we do that is if you go here to the left-hand side, click on the arrow for the Canvas. And if you go to your mug photo, right-click on it and say Calibrate. We can zoom in again. I'm just going to go here to the middle of the mug. It doesn't have to be a 100 percent precise. We just want a little bit of accuracy. So I'm going to click in the middle and go down and left-click in the bottom. And you'll see the estimation here is approximately 8 millimeters. Now I'm going to change that to a 120 and that's 12 centimeters. And enter. You'll see the mug is a lot larger now. I'm just going to zoom out. Now to make creating the mug a little bit easier, I'm just going to move it up to the origin. And how we do that is here on the left-hand side, on the mug, right-click on it again and we're just gonna say Edit Canvas. And here on the arrows we're just going to move it up. Zoom in a bit, make sure it's there- then play around until you get it approximately in the middle. It does not have to be perfect. That looks about right, and we can go, OK. Now one more thing before we start sketching. I just want to check the distance between these two points at the bottom. So I'm going to go here to the mug again. Right-click - Calibrate. And let's just click on the one-point release, click on the other. And that's approximately 60 millimeters. Okay, just press Escape and we're ready to start making our model. 5. 3D Model Form: Now we'll start by creating a form. And you can go here to the left-hand side. You can go to Create, create form. Or you can click here on the shortcut at the top. If you ever get confused, remember to check the icons at the top, you'll see they're all purple. Then you know we're in the right workspace. Next, let's go to Create, create sketch. Now let's work on this XY, plane, this one at the bottom. And it flattens out for you. Now we need to start by creating the mug from the bottom. And we need to create a circle. So we're going to create a center diameter circle. So the shortcut for that is C on your keyboard. Click on the origin and drag out. And if I remember correctly, when I looked at the mug, the bottom of it was approximately 60 millimeters. I'm just going to say 60 and enter. And we can go finish sketch on the right-hand side. Now if I flip it around, look at it from the front, there's our sketch. The next step is to extrude the shape up so we can start creating a surface. Go to Create - Extrude. Here on the right-hand side, the profile we're going to select is the circle. Inside of the circle. The faces. Let's just bring this down to six. You'll see now what happens. Take the arrow and pull it up. Just approximately 10 millimeters. Let me zoom in. You can see here there's six faces, 123456. A good tip for when you're starting out with designing. Remember the less faces you have, the easier it is to design. My distance, here is 10 millimeters. I'm not gonna change the angle for now and keep it on New body and say, Ok. Now the next thing we want to do is to start editing the surface and dragging it up. So we're going to right-click - here on the right click edit form. And this pop-up box appears. Just make sure yours looks like mine. If I zoom in, the part we'll be concentrating on today is the selection filter. If I click on the points, I can drag it up or down. Ctrll Z. Or I can do just the lines, one line. If I double-click the entire line, you can move it around. This one is the face. You'll see it's moving around. And this one that I'm using at the moment is All, that's the one you must keep it on. That just means that we can edit points, we can edit lines, we can edit faces all at the same time. Now what I'd like to do is just move this entire surface area a little bit to the left. If you double-click on the surface, you'll see it lights up. And this arrow, we can just move it to the left. Now the only toggles you'll be using all the up and down arrows. And this toggle in the middle, this one over here. Now the toggle in the middle, if I double-click at the bottom, and I use that little toggle. I can drag it in a little, drag it out. So depending on the shape of your mug at the bottom, you can shape it that way. Now we need to start moving it up so we'll double-click on the line. Hold in Alt on your computer. And while you're holding in Alt, you're going to click on the arrow and drag up just about 10 millimeters and release. Now you can use the toggle to change the mug according to what yours looks like. And let's go again. Hold in Alt, click on the arrow, drag up, release, and edit your form. Now I'm quickly going to do this one all the way up. Now what's great about this option is that you can change quite a lot of your mug. So you can experiment a little and have some fun with it. I like the classic shape, so I'm going to stick with that. And there - the surface of our Mug is done. You'll see the surface here. It's very thin. It's not a solid body yet, I will say, Ok. And the first part of the mike is done. 6. 3D Model Handle: For now. here on the left-hand side, I'm just going to put the surface body off so we can see the handle properly. And the handle is not in the center, like the body of the mug, it's to the side. And we need to construct an offset plane to start sketching here on the right-hand side or on the left-hand side, depending on which side you're handle is. We'll go up here to construct. Click on offset plane. The plane we'll be moving, is this ZY plane. Let's drag it to the right. Now, don't drag it all the way out. We want to keep it a little bit to the left of where the mug ends and say, Ok. Next to go to Create, Create Sketch. And the plane we'll be selecting is this plane that we just created and it flattens out. Now we might not necessarily be able to see where the handle is for now it doesn't matter. Just look at it from the side. And we're going to create a Center diameter circle on this middle line here. So we'll click c for center diameter circle, and just hover over the line here, we're going to click. let's drag out, lets make it approximately 10 millimeters - and enter. It doesn't matter where on the line it is for now, Let's turn. See, it's quite far off, but that's okay. We just say Finish Sketch. Now let's create this surface we'll go to Create. Once again, we'll press extrude. The profile we would like to select the circle, the faces. Let's take it down to 6 and we can pull out the arrow. Let's make it 3 and say, Ok. Let's make sure we're looking at it from the front. And now we just need to move it up a bit. I'm going to right-click i, Edit Form, double-click on it, It's select the entire form because it's in blue. See this arrow, let's drag it up a little. I can see that it's not necessarily as big as I would like. To scale it. I can use this toggle here on the right-hand side. Just move it up. But now remember, if I turn it around, you'll see it's actually made more of an ellipse and it's not a perfect circle. And this is quite nice because you don't necessarily have to have a perfect circle for the handle. You might want to make a circle or an ellipse, it doesn't matter. So depending on what you'd like, I prefer to have a little bit of an ellipse. It gives it a nice shape. And now I'm going to start dragging this up again just like we did with the bottom of the Mug. Let's double-click the line. So it's selected the entire top. I don't necessarily have to use these arrows. I can also use this little square in the middle. So I'm going to hold in Alt and pull on a square, drag it up quite a bit. And if I let go of Alt, I can actually drag it up even more if I like. We can rotate it a little, use the toggle to bring it in. You'll see us doing it on both sides. So it's even. Let's hold in Alt again, drag up. Remember to rotate. Now ensure that these lines that you've created do not intersect. If they intersect - once we finish the form here on the right-hand side, you won't be able to make a solid body. So it's very important to ensure these vertices do not intersect. I'm quickly just going to finish this body, drag it all the way up. You can change it a little. It doesn't have to look exactly like your handle. You'll see this is quite a sharp turning edge here. I'm doing it in little short spurts to ensure that I don't intersect any of these linez and that they don't overlap. Now here I just want to bring this out a little. I'm just double-checking that there's not a center line. because if I only select one side, I also have to select the other because I'd like both sides to do the same thing. I'm going to put my body on just to see what the overall look is like. When you're happy with your final overall look, just press OK. And now we're ready to move on to our next step. 7. Patch, Stitch & Shell: Now our mug is technically still just a surface. So we need to actually patch and stitch all of these open surface areas. And how we do that is we're going to say finish form. The inside has turned this golden color. And here on the top left-hand side, we're going to move from the solid environment and click on the surface environment. The first thing we're going to do is just patch all of the surfaces. So we'll go to Create - Patch. Zoom in, let's select this bottom part here. If you zoom in, you'll see it's closed it up. You can say, Ok. Let's right-click, Repeat patch. Let's click this surface over here. Let's close that up. I can actually put the canvas off for now here on the left-hand side. Now you can see a lot better that it's closed. Next, let's move on to the bottom and top of the mug. Right-click, Repeat Patch at the top. Start at the bottom, next the top. Now technically these are all still surfaces, so we need to stitch them altogether. We go to Modify - Stitch. Now from the right- I'm going to left-click and drag the box around it. And all the areas will show up in green. If it's red, it means there's something wrong with that surface and maybe there's some intersecting lines there. You might need to go back and fix them. But if they're all green, you can say, Ok. Now I'm going to switch back to the solid environment. Now because this is a solid area inside, we just need to Shell it because a Mug, it's obviously not solid inside. So let's go to modify - Shell. Going to click on this top surface and the inner thickness, let's make it 2 millimeters, maybe 3. And the direction is on the inside. If you were to put outside, it actually adds an extra layer on the outside and that's not what you want. So say inside and say, Ok. There is our mug from the inside. But these, we just need to get rid of these in the middle. And that's easy to fix. We go to Modify - split body. The body we want to split is this handle. If we look here, the splitting tools we want to use is the body of this mug. And that will split this handle into three parts. Say, Ok. Now that the bodies are split, we can actually just remove these. I will right-click and say remove and never click, Delete, always say remove. There you go, they have been removed. 8. Adding Text: Now let's have some fun with our mug depending on your beverage of choice. For example, I absolutely love coffee and cappuccinos. So I'd like to write on my mug, I love coffee, and I'll be doing text and using some sketch tools to make the heart. And we can maybe look at some other decorations. So let's start with the text. Let's go to create, and we're going to create another sketch. Let's choose this front plane. Now, I don't want to sketch with this mug here because I'd like to sketch on the background. So let's quickly remove this body, but I'm going to hit P for project. And make sure here on the right-hand side it's on this one. It says bodies. Let's click on the front of the mug and say, Ok, here on the left, let's put the body off. And there's the outline of the mug. By hitting project, it just makes it a lot easier to do sketches so you don't have to look through the Mug and struggle to see the lines. So first let's start with a line through the center of our sketch. Let's push L on the keyboard for line. Click on the origin and drag up 90 degrees. Click the green tick box. And approximately in the middle, I'm going to create a heart. I'll be using the Fit point spline tool. And anywhere on the line. Just gonna make three points. Click on the tick. I'm going to press Escape. And I can click on these points and adjust them a little. If I Click on them, these anchor points, I can move it around. Now I'd like to mirror it to the other side because I might not necessarily get the exact same shape. I can click on the shortcut mirror. The object is this line. The mirror line is the center line we just drew. Say, Ok, and there's my heart. Now let's add some text. Let's go to create - text. Now we're going to create a text box. So we'll left-click and you can drag the text box out to the right and click again. And here on the left you can say what you'd like to say. I'm going to say I, you can choose the size here at the bottom. Minds in bold, I've set it to, Arial Rounded. You can change your font to wherever you'd like. Maybe make this a little bit bigger. Keep it in the center. And ok. You can always move it down. I'm going to right-click, Repeat Text. And let's do another text box here at the bottom. I'm going to say coffee, I heart coffee. Let's make the text a little bit smaller, looks a bit big. Everything's the same. Centered and ok. It's not necessarily in the middle. I can always move it to the middle. Now if you'd like to add some other patterns to your mug, you're welcome to, for example, I'd like to have a line here at the bottom. So I'll press L on my keyboard for line. If I zoom in, I can click on the purple line here, drag it to the left, click there. And at the top. You may want to experiment with some splines and make other patterns. Or you may want to do center diameter circles or make another ellipse. So depending on what you'd like to do, you can play around with the shapes inside of your mug. But I'd like to keep mine nice and simple. But you can do quite a lot, especially with the spline tool, If you do different angles, I know this is looking quite messy right now, but, you can make nice lines going through the mug. I'm just going to undo all of this by pressing Ctrl Z. And I just like to trim this middle line away since I no longer actually need it. So I'll press T on my keyboard for Trim. And trim the top, there we go. It's all trimmed away. Now we're going to say Finish Sketch. And we can put our Body back on. 9. Split, Extrude & Fillet: Now I'd like to have these lines come up because obviously if I put my sketches off, everything disappears. So let's start with the top and bottom line. I'm going to go to Modify. Split face. The face I wanted to split is this body of the mug. The splitting tools is this line here at the top. You'll see it's cutting it. And say, OK, and it's split it at the top. Next I'd like to do the bottom one. Let's put the sketch back on. Modify, Split Face. Click this front body. Let's select this bottom line. I know it's cutting. Say, Ok. For some reason it doesn't want to split it right now. If you do have that error, just for now, go to Modify, say Split Body. Select the body. And you're splitting tools, you can select the sketch line at the bottom. You'll see it's cutting it and say, Ok, and there it is. It's just actually created an extra body at the bottom. But if you are experiencing that problem, that's alright, just for now, there's another way to do it like that. Instead of splitting the surface. Next, I want to extrude the I Heart coffee to the front of the mug. How to do that is we go to Create Extrude. Now let's select the profiles. I'm going to put the body or 4. Now, remember to select the center of your heart and the text. But the body back on. And over here the direction is on one side. If you say two sides or symmetric, it might take it to both. If you'd like. I just want it on one side. The distance we'll say is To object and is asking you the object. We'll select this part of the body. Now here at the bottom you'll see it's cutting it. That's why it's coming up in red. Change it to new body. Because if you're cutting it, you're cutting a hole straight through your mug. Now, if you see here, you'll see it's extended it to the mug, but it's not actually coming out the way I'd like it to. Which means here on the offset, I'm just going to change it from 0 to 2. Let's see how far it comes out. That's quite nice. That looks good to me to say, Ok, let's put the sketches off. And there is our mug. Now these edges are quite sharp. You can choose to keep the edges sharp or you can soften them if you'd like. For example here the top of the mug, I'd like to soften it. So I'm going to press F for Fillet, click on the outside line, drag it in a bit, just make it 1 millimeter. Say, Ok. Going to right-click. Say repeat fillet and click on the inside and make it 1 millimeter as well. And that's nicely soften the curve because a mug at the top is not sharp. Now here at the bottom. You might also want to fillet this bottom edge if it's to sharp for you. So let's go right-click, repeat, Fillet. Take it in a little and say, Ok. Now obviously from making all of this text, we've got this part inside that we need to get rid of. And luckily we've done that before. So we'll just do it again by splitting the bodies. So we're going to modify split body. The body we want to split is the I, the heart, and coffee. The splitting tools is the Mug. Say Ok, and it's added all of these bodies at the bottom. Now to make it a little bit easier, I'm just going to put the main parts of the body off. So now let's just make sure that we select right bodies. The heart, say right-click, remove, and just go and remove all of them. Let's put our bodies back on. And there is our mug, beautifully clean in the middle. The origin off. Let's close that up. And I'm quite happy with that. 10. Adding Appearance: Now we can finally move on to changing some of the colors and materials of our mug. We'll start by going up here to modify. Click on appearance. And here if you scroll through all the different types of materials, you'll see there is fabric, gloss, different types of metal. I'm going to start down here in the paint folder under glossy. So I'd like to make the handle white. I'm going to click on the handle. make sure it's selected. Left-click on the color, drag and drop it in. If I'd like to edit this color, if we zoom in, I can right-click on the color here on the top, click on edit, and I can change the color. I'm also able to change the roughness if I don't want it to reflect so much. And the reflectiveness. When you are happy, say done. Now the next thing is, I'd like to make this heart red, but I'd like to have the same roughness and reflectiveness of this handle. But if I drag and drop this red over here, but it won't be the same. To fix this, all I need to do is go here to the top, right click on the color and say Duplicate. Then I right-click on the color again and say Edit. And now I can change the color. Let's make a little bit more red. Say done. And there we go. And I can click on the heart, take the color, drag and drop it in. If I zoom in, you'll see here with the heart, the sides of the heart are not necessarily red. So when selecting your faces, you just need to be sure that you've selected the entire part of it. Say replace. Next. If I drag and drop a color like this, yellow and I don't necessarily like it. All you need to do is go to the top here, right-click on it and say an Unassign and delete, It's taken the color away. Because sometimes you can over populate your colors in this section and it can get quite confusing. So if you're not using it, just unassign and deleted. I think I may actually make my mug out of bronze. So I'm going to play around with some of the bronze colors. But I'm going to leave it to your own devices and have fun decorating your mug. If, for example, you've pressed something wrong or gone Ctrl Z and the window has accidentally closed. All you need to do is go back to modify, click on appearance, and all your colors will be there again. When you're finished designing, you can go down here to display settings, go to visual style, and you can say shaded. And all the black lines are gone. now you can have a nice look at your mug. And Let's close here. 11. Save & Capture Image: Now let's quickly save our mug. We'll go to File - Save. And I'm just going to say coffee mug. And in the location, I need to find my Skillshare folder. Here it is. Double-click, and say Save. Now let's quickly capture an image of our mug so we can share it with the class. So we go to File - Capture image. You can select your file size here. Make sure that transparent background is unchecked. That'll just make it easier for when you upload it for us to see your mug. Because otherwise the background will be black. Will say, OK, I'm just going to save it to our computer quickly. Save it to my download folder and say Save. 12. Finishing Up: I am so excited to see your final 3D designed mugs and also to see which hot beverage will come out on top. Please remember to share your image with the rest of the class in the discussion section. I know in the beginning to share your creativity with others is a scary experience. But please don't be shy. If you would like to share your images on Instagram, you are welcome to tag me. My handle is Hendrien Horn. If perhaps you find yourself in a little bit of a bind or if you're a little bit stuck, you're also welcome to drop me a message in the discussion section and I'll get back to you. Or if you have any ideas for things I could possibly model in the future. You're also welcome to let me know in the discussion section. But thank you so much for joining me. I hope you've enjoyed this class and I'll see you next time.