Send Your Tinkercad Design to Fusion 360

Tinkercad is a free and user-friendly online 3D design software that offers a range of design options. However, if you want to take your design skills to the next level, you can turn to Autodesk Fusion 360. This cloud-based CAD platform is free for students and educators and is specifically designed for career readiness.

With Tinkercad, you can easily send your design directly to Fusion 360. Once in the Fusion 360 workspace, you can use a powerful set of tools to modify your design. You have precise control over shapes and can create rounded corners, hollow models, and add threading. Applying materials to your model allows you to see what it would look like in real life and you can even create realistic renderings and animations. When you are ready to produce your design, Fusion 360 provides advanced manufacturing tools that allow you to make highly accurate 3D printed parts, send your file to a CNC mill, or create technical drawings for manufacturing.

Follow along to learn how easy it is to send your Tinkercad model over to Fusion 360 and begin your journey.

To get started you will need an Autodesk education account, which will allow to you access Fusion 360.

• Create an Autodesk account
• Download Fusion 360 for the desktop
• Access Fusion 360 online with your web browser

Check out the steps below or watch the video to learn how to easily send your designs from Tinkercad to Fusion 360

I decided to follow along with StumpChunkman's tutorial to design a Balloon Powered Car and then added some extra fun details to it.

Try to stick to the Basic Shapes when making your design, as this works best when sending models to Fusion 360. Avoid any imported shapes or complex shapes from other sections of the Shapes Panel. The Scribble Shape and the Text Shape will send to Fusion 360.

I also recommend not grouping everything together. It is best to group only want you want connected. This will make some edits, including adding appearances to your model, easier.

NOTE: If you think you are going to want to fillet the edges, make sure to leave room and not have your decorations go right to the edge you are going to want filleted. Your decorations could end up floating in mid-air as the edge near it is curved in.

Make sure you have Fusion 360 already installed on your computer. To make things easier, I recommend opening Fusion 360 and making sure you're logged in and ready to go.

Once your design is ready, click on Send To to bring up a popup.

In here you'll see the option to Send to Fusion. If you don't want to send everything on your workplane to Fusion 360, please make sure to select it before clicking this.

Continue on to open your design in the Fusion 360 app and skip to step 5 to open in the browser.

Once you click to Send to Fusion 360, you'll get a full screen popup that verifies if you want to send just what you've selected or everything on your workplane.

• Click Send in the bottom right corner.
• Click Open in Local Desktop when that option appears.
• Give it time to load.
• It will take you back to the Tinkercad workplane but with the option to open Fusion 360.
• Click to open Fusion 360.

You've done it! Your Tinkercad design is now open in Fusion and the colors will currently match your original model.

The process for opening your Tinkercad design in the browser version of Fusion 360 starts the same with clicking on Send to > Send to Fusion. (You can also check out this blog post to learn more.)

It can help to open Fusion 360 in your browser now.

Read along with the following steps or check out the video here.

You will get on the same screen as previously shown that allows you to decide what to send to Fusion 360 (everything or selected shapes only).

• Click on the second option Team, Select a project.
• Choose your Team.
• Choose your folder.
• Click to Select this Project Folder.

This will take you back to the Send to Fusion Screen. You can now click Open and choose View on Fusion Team which will take you to the Fusion Teams page.

On the Fusion Teams page, you can navigate to the folder you stored your file in in the last step.

You can click to view the design in 3D or leave comments.

When you are ready, navigate to Fusion 360 in your browser.

Once in Fusion 360, click on the Show Data Panel icon in the very top left corner of the screen. You can navigate to the folder you stored your design and double click on it to open it.

Congrats!

You've opened your model in Fusion 360 and can make any edits you want.

Want to do more?

Render your design to add a variety of realistic appearances to it.