One thing is for sure (and I would know, I tried and failed): one cannot just launch Fusion360 and “figure it out” without learning a bit about the concepts and how it approaches the design workflow in a specific way.
Me, it all clicked after I watched that video tutorial:
which is not even about the CAM side of things, but it does explain the approach of the CAD part, and then for the CAM part a few videos about the basics got me a long way.
For the toolpaths, I have found that:
- when the toolpaths cannot be generated and you end up with errors, even though the error messages are cryptic, it often boils down to
- using a tool that is too large for some of the features to be milled, or a material entry strategy (e.g. helical ramping) that combined with the tool diameter does not allow to mill the small sections of the model. I often have to reduce the helical ramping diameter for the tool to fit and the toolpath to be generated successfully.
- something wrong about the various heights being defined. The error messages are relatively clear in that case.
- many of the options matter, and there are many in the various tabs of the toolpath menu. I usually go through the tabs one by one and top to bottom (much faster once you get comfortable) to make sure I have everything covered. The pop-up help windows when you hover your mouse over any of the options are often quite helpful to remember what they do.
- sometimes the tricky part is to select the right contours
- I very often find myself creating a new sketch, projecting geometry of interest onto it, and using that sketch for toolpath contours selection.
- the algorithm to pick up the features to be selected on the screen is quite smart, but sometimes you just go crazy trying to select something and it will pick up something else you don’t want. More often than not, this is because there is a transparent sketch “in the way”. I very often make all sketches but one invisible (and possible hide the modeled objects too) when selecting contours, to reduce ambiguity and user errors.
- when selecting complex 3D contours, it is often very efficient to just pick a single edge (long click on it), Fusion will then let you select any of the connected edges, rinse and repeat until you have selected all edges of a tortuous 3D path, and finally click on the “+” to accept the selection.
Not trying to make a case that Fusion360 is easy to use (wait, why did I write a long post about this?), but if you are willing to invest 10-20 hours of learning it (and accept that it may not behave like other software), I think the design approach is actually brilliant and quite efficient (CAM included). As in all things, your mileage may vary.