Fusion 360 Mini-Review and Remote Shifter Design

I know things have been quiet around here, but that’s not for lack of work! Kurt Janish has finished up the changes to our rear axle and Todd has been hard at work cutting out the wheel wells and making room for the big radial slicks that we’re going to try next year! More info to follow in a separate post on those projects!

In the meantime, I’ve been working on a few side projects to address some things with the car we wanted modified and also trying out some new software.

In the past, all of my 3D CAD work has been in Alibre Designs, a nice piece of software that works very similarly to SolidWorks which I learned in college. With a change in computers this fall and the difficulty in getting my license transferred (the company has changed hands since I originally bought it), I was on the lookout for an alternate 3D modeling software that was affordable.

I stumbled across , software which was touted to be the next step in 3D modeling. It differs from the usual CAD programs in that a lot of the work is done in the “cloud” which minimizes the power of the PC you need and also let’s you access your files from anywhere.

I won’t go in-depth review wise because I haven’t used it all that extensively yet, but it is functional and serves my purposes well! Some key features that really sold it for me – fully featured and FREE for hobby users, SolidWorks part compatibility which let’s me use a wider variety of inputs compared to Alibre (which was a non-standard format), and it has drawing functionality (though less advanced than Alibre’s).

My first project in it was a design for a remote shifter. If you’ll recall from some time back, when we relocated the seat in the Camaro, it caused a need to extend the shifter handle far back. This had the negative effect of lengthening the throws and it just looked horrible.

This design is similar to a remote shifter that Mustang’s Plus put together, the Speedshifter. No longer available, I figured I could design something similar.

I think the end result should work pretty well, fingers crossed. This will also be my first trial of using an online machine shop, The Online Machinist. I’ll post back here how that works out!

Stay tuned for some more updates in the coming weeks as the car gets re-assembled!

Tags: 3d modeling

Oversteer Garage