 Hey, what's up folks welcome back to another layer by layer in today's tutorial. We're gonna take a look using external components in fusion 360 So I put together this project here It's just a piece of acrylic with three panel mounted components We got a feather an OLED display in the sensor and really it's a it's a fun way to look at how everything can be connected with the Stem acute D cable, but I put this together in fusion 360 and although it's a simple design I think it's a good exercise and how you can attach Components and panel mount them with sketches and joints. So that's what we're gonna do today. So I got this here That's the demo. I also 3d printed the stand here So the idea is that it sets up right like this and it's just kind of there to to see the The sensor values so here in fusion 360. I have that pretty much one-to-one representation of it You can see here We have components of the parts right and really without the components like it's kind of difficult to visualize what this would look like and If you're doing like an enclosure even more so you definitely want to start using external components So that's what kind of one-to-one I covered today, right? So using external components So where do you get these parts, right? So I've been making a catalog of parts and I've been storing them in our get hub repository You can search for this I also have a link in the description ate a fruit cad parts and the way to kind of browse through here is you can Of course search through it read through it But the numbers here are pertaining to the product ID or the PID here Every component every product from eight if it has a PID a product ID in this case It's 4741 for this OLED display. So if we wanted to find it here, you could type in 4741 4741 and there it is the OLED display when you click on that you have access to these three All the file types you want to use the fusion 360 file type and then there's a download button right here So you can click that and it'll download the source Or if you go to the product page a Lot of the times you have a learn guide for that product And if we have the learn guide go to the download section and then you can get the PCB file or the 3d models Which will take you to the length that I was just in so that's really cool So that's how we can get the parts and that's where I'm like kind of storing them all right So hopping back over to fusion 360 The way to bring them into fusion is this in your data panel. You got an upload button You can select where you want to store it So if you want to be a little bit tidy you can make a parts folder for example and store it in there and then bring it in So I'm gonna you know start from scratch right so I'm gonna make a new design and when you're doing external components You really want to save your design. You can't be an entitled document. So I'm gonna save this out I got a little layer-by-layer tutorials folder and this is the feather OLED BME 680 that's the sensor and then stand because it's a stand really Okay, cool. The next thing I want to get folks into the habit of like Storing their parts in a parts folder. So it's really important to make the folder before you start bringing in your parts So I have a hotkey S which is for bringing up shortcuts and then you can type in anything you want here. So components I want a new component. There you go. Let's name this parts or electronics because that's mainly what it is And then I can start bringing things in here You notice that it automatically activated a component. You really want to have it active before you bring it in So in your in your in your data panel here search for where you uploaded your parts in this case I got my OLED display here somewhere this one here So before I bring it in I want to kind of think about some things right? So how do I want this model to be well if we look at my original design the front You know the front face of our model is also the front face Of our view cube. I really like to have my models like be Relative to the view cube because I'm always orbiting it around it and the left should be the right and the right should be the right Back to the back top to the bottom that sort of thing So I'm keeping that in mind when I bring my component in I really need to be conscious of where it is Relative to the view cube. So in this case when I bring it in Keep your eye on the front of you and try to see like is that where I am? Am I facing the front is the front of the display, you know facing where it needs to so I'm going to bring it in by right-click Insert into current design and again making sure that my electronics folder or my parts folder or my component is It's activated. So I'll hit insert into current design. It doesn't face down. It's face down I'm looking at it from the front and 90s, and it's not the same instead of hitting okay, and then moving it around Let's move it around first before we hit okay So I'm going to use this handle to prop it up 90 degrees I'm still not facing the right way. So I have this other handle that I can rotate it around Let's do another 180 degrees like that Cool now looking at the front. It's now looking at the front Neat, so now I can kind of move this around here and To get a better idea of where I am relative to like the grid Let's look at the grid and you can right you can click on this little icon here the grid icon and click on layout grid You can see here that's where I am So I kind of want this to be up a little bit maybe move it this way here like that It doesn't have to be perfectly put place just so that it's like, you know Relative to our grid and our view cube. So that looks good now. I'm going to hit okay, okay Okay, okay next up. We're going to add the feather. So again Make sure that my electronics folder is selected right click on that insert into current doc into current design It's a little bit better to prop up where we want, but I kind of want the USB port facing up So I'm going to use this handle to rotate it 90 degrees and then the arrows to move it To the left side here to the right side And then move it up a little bit again. It doesn't have to be perfect just kind of Better Sorry about that and then head under Okay, so that's placed very well and then the next one the last one is the BME I got a lot of parts. So I'm going to use the search function under here I already searched for it BME fusion has like the last thing you typed in but there it is This is the BME sensor right click insert into current Design and this one is typically how my PCBs look. They're normally flat against the It's the grid like that So I'm going to prop this prop this up Similar to the display. I prop it up by 90 degrees and then I'll use the arrows to manipulate and move it around Now in my design, I actually don't have it this way. I have it propped up this way Because of the way I I think the cabling Is sorted out better and connects better Uh this way So if we look at I hit okay the other way because I that's the that's where I wanted to be If I if I go back over to the overhead here, you can see Um, if the if this was mounted, you know, you would have very The cable would probably stress out. So I really like having it in this position I think it aesthetically looks better and it functionally it works better like that So that's the reason behind the the choice On on that so back over to fusion Now we have our parts placed and we're ready to start creating our our panel Whether it's acrylic or 3d printed. It doesn't matter. We're just going to start making it so What I want to show is uh If you notice I actually have this at an angle Right here Right, so it's not flat. It's at an angle and the uh the trick here is that I drew it as a profile to the side view like this So if you look over to the overhead, you'll notice that that's that's kind of how I'm drawing it I want to make it so that this whole panel is is able to pivot or adjust Uh to this bottom here. So that's what I wanted to do when I designed it So what I'm going to do is I'm going to make a profile of the panel already at an angle And that way I can adjust the angle of degree here So that's what we're going to do. So let's see how to do that right Back into fusion I'm going to make a new component in the right design the blank one And I need to make the component outside of the electronics folder So I'm going to select the root of the document And then create a new component I'll bring up this design shortcuts window with the s key and type a new component There it is and then I'll name it to the panel Cool. So now I have it activated and I've created it The next thing I want to do is uh, why is that active? It shouldn't be like that. That is super weird All right, so with the panel selected I'll create a new sketch But I'm going to draw it here on the side panel not the front but the side like that And the idea is to create the side profile of that acrylic like we did here So to do that I'm going to create some user parameters Um, so that way we can adjust the the length and the width of it So the first thing I want to do is like the thickness of the acrylic of the panel So I'm going to type in thickness here for the name and then I'll add three because that's how thick my acrylic is Next thing I'll do is make the panel length How long is it? I want it to be 110 millimeters long and then how wide is it? Um, I want it to be panel Uh, wide width and then I'll make this like 90 degrees hit. Okay. That's really what we need right now. So hit. Okay And I'll start drawing my my rectangle here. So I'm going to start with a line And I want the line To just kind of go straight out like that. Okay I hit the okay button there and that's it. Next thing I'm going to do is make another line And as I start drawing it, you'll see that I'll get this parallel icon here those two lines those little two icons that show up there Let me know that that is going to be a Uh, a parallel line Now I'm going to do is now with the second line I actually want to make this connect But I can't quite yet because I want to make this line perpendicular with the line that I'm connecting to So you can see that it shows up there in the corner So I'm just going to click And then hit the escape key to exit the line tool Now what I can do is I can select and then hold down the shift key and then select those two Dots and then connect them together with a coincident constraint So with the s key I can either type that in or have it saved here in my little window here Coincident you just type it in you can see it here and then I you can add it with this icon here right now. It's an x But when it's not there you can add it like that So that's coincident and that'll connect those two together. Excellent Now I just need to create a line that connects these two dots together, right? So pretty similar. I'll uh Roll over onto that dot and that square lets me know it's going to connect to it with a coincident And then as I move around you can see I can get the perpendicular constraint now I can't connect to it quite yet. So Doing that same method. I'll just make sure that I get that perpendicular constraint click hit escape select these two lines With the shift they're both selected and then do a coincident and now I have my rectangle here So what's important about doing that is that it's already at an angle, right? you know, I can do is um add a Thickness dimension to this line here because really that's the thickness, right? And you can see here as I move The the the cursor it's going into different directions. I really want the direction to be Parallel with those lines. So right here now it's set to 11 point whatever doesn't matter I'm going to put in the thickness value here that use a parameter and hit enter And now that is set there. The last thing is I can pick one of these two lines. They're both the same so I'm just going to click on I just click on one of them and then add that dimension with the d-key And then for here, this is what's going to be our our width our panel width And there you go. Excellent. So now what I want to do is I want to place this Right into the center right here and when I place that That allows me uh to Pivot this around right? So that's what I want. I want that behavior there So I have it there and now it's locked in there with one of these constraints So if I want to move it outside of that I'd have to delete this constraint But right now actually that's what I want The next thing I'm going to do is I need a reference line so that I can apply a dimension A degree so I'll make my line and I'll start uh from the center Make sure I click on that center and then drag it out here And then I'll hit escape now the length of it doesn't really matter But I want to add a length anyway. Let's go ahead and make it the the width of the panel And then what I want to do is select that line and hit the x key because that'll make it a construction line So it won't intersect anything if we if we make something there All right, so now the last thing we can do to to actually make this At the right angle is to select both of those lines and then hit the d key and then you get this dimension for the degree So here's where I'm going to put 70 right because 90 minus 30 is 70 And that's the degrees that I want to tilt it by 30 degrees. So now I have that So I'm gonna that's pretty much the profile. That's all we need to do to make our acrylic at an angle I'll hit finish sketch and then to extrude it. You can use the hot key e And because it's just a single square rectangle Fusion knows to select it automatically. So right here under direction I want that to be symmetric because we're going to start pulling it out And then for the measurement, I want to change it from half length to the whole length now for the distance I'm going to put The length of the panel panel length and then you can see here that uh, it's making that that panel length Hit okay So now if we open up that uh, the folder and then look down into the sketch You can right click on the sketch and say show dimensions And this is so critical for me a lot of the times I'm always showing the dimension because now I don't have to jump and edit the sketch like to go into edit mode because if I do that Well, my extrude disappears because I'm going back in time before I create an extrude So it's cool to finish the sketch Modify your sketch well after the fact after you know in in forward in time in current time So I can change the 70 to 45 and it updates that extrude right away So if we have Things attached to the surface We should be able to Move the parts as well along uh as well as the surface because it'll be tied to it So that's the idea that we're doing So now that's created I am going to create a sketch on this surface right on top of this panel Okay, so with that selected I'll create a new sketch Right and now you'll notice that the grid is now flush with the surface But my components are still in place there because I am now at this angle And just for reference, let's let's draw a rectangle. There's the basic rectangle Don't even add any dimensions to it and hit stop sketch right finish sketch Now if I bring that that that first sketch open you'll see the dimensions are still there I can still modify watch what happens when I make this like 45 The rectangle goes with it. This lets you know that okay my anything that I draw in the sketch will get updated Whenever the extrude gets updated whenever any of these sketches get updated, which is really nice That's awesome So now what I'm going to do with this rectangle is to use that rectangle and add Circles to the corners because I need to create some circles some holes in order for this For these for these mounting holes on the pcb to get secured to the acrylic panel I need to create these holes and we need to measure these holes. So I'm going to go into that rectangle I'm going to hide sketch one just just for sanity's sake and I'm going to apply dimensions to To this line And to this line and I'm not even going to Whatever number is fine at this point because we're going to edit them and hit finish sketch Similarly to the sketch number one. I'm going to right click and say show dimensions So now I can modify these dimensions without having to jump into the sketch Now what I need to do is I need to measure these holes I'm going to activate the main component like the main root of the document that way everything is not grayed out And I'm going to use the measurement tool to measure the length the distances between the mounting holes The mounting holes are parallel. So that's that's helpful So I'll do the first set from this hole to this hole You know across and then from this hole to this hole going down. So I need to measure those So again under the inspect there is a measure tool. There's also a hot key for that tool It's the letter I think of inspect as I so I want to inspect that hole. I'll click on this hole here And then the second hole right there and then you get this distance We want to do distance and not minimum distance. We want the distance So I'm going to double click on that and by double clicking on that that copies that value to your clipboard And I'll hit escape key to get out of the measurement and then I'm going to Double click on that sketch there the the the dimension and then just paste in what was in my clipboard There you go. Let's do the same thing but for the the opposite end So I'll do I again for your measure. I'll measure this bottom hole to the top hole here And then there here's the distance double click We'll copy it to your To your clipboard and then double click to change that That sketch dimension paste hit enter. So now we have um a rectangle That is the exact measurements for the distance of our holes And now I need to add the hole so to add the hole. I actually do have to go back to the sketch I'll go back into the sketch And before I add the holes I'm going to double click on any of these lines and that'll select the whole rectangle Now what I can do here is hit the x key and that way it'll create a construction line So let me hit the x key again And that'll bring it out of construction mode and watch what happens when I add a circle So when I add a circle to this corner and I want to make sure that the The icon turns into the square that lets me know it's going to be constrained to that Coincidentally, so I'll make a thing. I didn't create my mounting hole user parameter yet I really do want to create one. So right now I'm just going to put 3.2 Hit enter Hit the hot key to bring up the user parameter and create a new one. So I'll call this one mounting hole And I'll put 3.2 because that's the hole I want and I hit okay now inside here. I will change this to uh the mounting hole Great now if you look at when I select the circle, you'll see that that rectangle is intersecting it now That's why I want to double click that line and hit the x key That stops the intersection from happening I just need this to be referenced so I can create some sketches the dimensions not to actually cut anything away So that's that's what what construction is for Now I have one hole instead of drawing Three more I can mirror this one hole that way if I want to change the hole Um, it'll just change for me. I only have to change it in one spot Right, I tend to like to do this you could just add a hole here and then say uh mounting hole which you know what is probably easier So I'm going to go ahead and do that just add holes here and say mounting hole And then another one here at this corner It's kind of hard to see hide the electronics And then uh right here hole mounting hole There you go. So there's your holes Uh, I was going to mirror them But this is easier to do because it kind of is a little extra step So now I have this and I want to make this In the center of this panel forever whenever things change I want this to always be in the center and the way to do that was just construction lines So I'm going to pull one of these edges. I want this left edge from the panel So I'll bring it in with the projection tool Um, the hot key for that is is p or you can just type in the s key and then type in project And that'll project that in right This here is telling you that you have a link to the projection. So you want that turned on That way anytime the extrude updates the the uh this this edge will update as well So just leave that checked and if it's not checked check it So hit okay. It's a purple line that lets you know it is a projected edge So now what I can do with this projected edge is create a line that is midpoint constraint So as I roll over I get the middle by seeing that there is a a triangle That is the icon for the midpoint constraint So I click there and I'm going to click And join to the midpoint of one of those edges right here one of those lines here So now I have a midpoint constraint now All I really really want to do is make this line perfectly straight and to do that is with a horizontal or vertical constraint So that'll always be straight going across or straight going up and down Same thing with this line. I want to select it hit the x key that way it doesn't chop anything Now that we have it constrained Vertically we need to constrain it. I mean now that we have a constrained horizontally. We need to constrain it vertically. So same thing Instead of projecting an edge though I can just use the bottom here the bottom is already in the center because I've drew it in the center of our grid So I can say I want a line here. It doesn't need to be midpoint It just needs to coincidentally connect to that But the next one needs to we needs to be a midpoint constraint. So right here. That's a midpoint constraint And now the same thing that we did with the left with this line We need to apply a horizontal vertical constraint to that and now that is vertically constrained You notice that everything is white now. That's fully constrained So I can select this line hit the x key and now it is uh It is now that so all we have here is lines So hit finish sketch Yeah, let's play around with it. Let me uh Bring up the user parameter window A lot what happens when I change the height I'll change the 60 you can see here that it's now always in the center Those holes will always remain in the center Same thing with the length of the panel if it changes to 50 It doesn't move because it's already in the center because of the way it was extruded, right? So I'll put this back to 110 and then this one back to 90 And there we go and the real fun thing is to change the angle And they're sketch number one. So here let's say 45 you can see that sketch is forever Awesome, right? So now what we got to do at this point is attach our component our display to one of these mounting holes So let's bring this back to 70 and then we'll hide sketch one So even without making holes you can attach the screen Uh to features in a sketch like this one. So let's bring up the electronics in the way to attach This screen to that hole is with the joint under assemble There's a joint here. You can use the hotkey j And what I want to do is to select the hole the mounting hole in the back here Because this is actually the surface that we're going to mount to so that hole To this hole you want to keep it consistent, right? So there it is you see here that it's perfectly flushed with it But in reality we can't actually do that because there's components on the on the back of the pcb So what we need to do is we need to offset it and really the offset is like how long is your Is your standoffs my standoffs are six millimeters long and those can change You know eight ten twelve however long you want to be but for mine I'm going to make it six and we can change that we can make it use a parameter as well But I'm going to make it a hardcore value of six Hard-coded not hardcore So now we have it nicely offset there you can see here the uh stemma connector the capacitors and everything Plenty of clearances for all those components So now that that's locked in place You can you can play with it you can you can go 45 degrees and your screen will update with it Put it back to 70 it updates with it. Let's go ahead and change the height of it Go from 90 to 70 you see it's always in the center That is really the whole Technique on how I built this project. I think just showing the display is enough to be like, okay This is how to do it. So now you can apply that same thing Create a rectangle measure your mounting holes and then apply a joint to it. That's how I was able to create this this thing here And that's pretty much it I want I can run through the whole thing But I think that's enough to share because I really wanted to step through the whole procedure Or release the procedure of getting to this point and then you can apply the same techniques to the rest of the components Um at this point it's like well where my holes? Well, we can just hit extrude select these holes And one of the tricks I like to use is to say the extent to objects and then select the back of the thing That way if you ever change the thickness It'll always change because it's always looking for the back Surface as opposed to the front surface or a hard-coded value So now I got that I can hide all the sketches I can hide the joint too because it looks messy and then here's the holes Here's the the screen So, uh, I'll bring I'll bring uh So now that's looking better. There's still a joint. I need to hide right there Oh, I accidentally added that to the timeline. Let's delete that because I was wondering is like Why is my panel now inside my electronics? It's because I somehow added it in But there you go And then you would make another component sketch on top create the standoffs if you want add screws from McMaster car do all that fun stuff Um, so that is that is how I'm able to do this I'm as opposed to attaching your joints to a hole or a feature in your solid body I find it really nice to attach it to a sketch And uh, and this is why really So hopefully that shows folks a good insight on how to work with external components and how to like Position them with sketches and joints All right, that's gonna do it for this one. Thank you guys so much for watching I hope you guys are doing good and I'll see you in the next one. But until then remember to Make a great day. Bye folks