Initial Impressions
The process was really difficult, it did not make a lot of sense. I felt like I was struggling to do the most basic of tasks. I had to constantly have Google open so that I could keep searching up how to do things. A lot of times, it did not work. It’s a shame because certain elements of the program felt intuitive, but there were just too many things that didn’t make sense.
Complaints
The first major issue I ran into was that I couldn’t rotate the chap stick. I kept clicking and it wanted to rotate the cylinder in a way that wouldn’t make it look any different. Why would I rotate a cylinder in a circle? I wanted to change the axis of rotation but it didn’t let me, I clicked everywhere. I used a different rotation tool and it started deforming my chapstick, so I just accepted that I couldn’t rotate it. The issue was that I was working in an incorrect orientation and the app assumes when you are moving the camera, you want to revolve it in a certain way. It was all messed up so I didn’t have good control of the camera. I found a weird tool that lets me extrude the edge, it looked funky, but luckily, I found the correct tool for it and it allowed me to delete the extrusion. That way, I was able to get the rounded bit from the cap of the chapstick. Next, I tried to split the object into 2 pieces, that way I can have a different color for the lid of the chapstick and the body of it, but I ran into issues. The tool wasn’t letting me split it, it said compute error, I kept clicking where I wanted to split it. I read online that you can split it by making a sketch and then slicing an object with the sketch. I created my rectangle in 2d, but when I went to move it, I selected the “sketch” option but it did not let me move the sketch, I couldn’t even click it. I can’t understand why I am clicking a sketch with the sketch selection tool and it just refuses to interact with the object. I figured I wouldn’t be able to make use of the rectangular sketch, so I tried to delete it but I ran into a problem. It let me click on the sketch but I kept clicking the delete key and it did not work. That was especially frustrating because just earlier, I had been able to click on the extrusion of the 3D shape and delete it without an issue. When I went to take my final pictures, I was having a lot of issues rotating it because of the orientation issues I had earlier. Another complaint I have with the program is that there are very obviously hotkeys that exist, but hovering over things like “undo” don’t name the hotkey like it would in literally any other program I have used. I clicked Control Z to undo but Control Shift Z (like in a lot of programs I use) was not “redoing” whatever I had undid. This program was honestly so frustrating to use and I was not happy with the result. I felt like I was close to getting an object that I wanted, I even knew how to set the color I wanted, I just couldn’t get the simpler things together. I had made some compromises, by working in a strange orientation, for example. Honestly, most compromises I made hurt the end product.
Outlook
I do think Fusion is a powerful tool and can have humanistic uses if you have a lot of expertise with the program. When I was in high school, we used 3DS Max and it made more sense to use, but at the same time, we spent half of the school year learning how to use it. I can’t pick up a new program that is even less intuitive (to me) and expect to create something half-decent. It isn’t realistic, but I gave it a good effort.
My biggest tip is to use Google.
Process
I made the base cylinder.
I initially made this extrusion. It looked funky but I didn’t know how to do it right for the cap of the chapstick. I fixed it later on.
The little rotation part at the bottom of the chapstick, I used a tool to extand it with a rim. I realized at some point that it was way too large but I could never fix it. On the image it says (select surface edges to extend). I kept clicking because I wanted to extend it by a negative value (to do the opposite of extending) but I couldn’t even click on it, it wasn’t letting me. Basically meant that I couldn’t do it.
I got the round bit from the cap, I was very happy with how this turned out!
I was trying to split but I kept getting an error message.
Since I kept getting an error message, I used Google and found out I can create a sketch and use it as a plane to split the object. I wanted to split it in order to differentiate the cap and the base of the chapstick. That way, I could also assign it separate colors. I selected the move tool and had it set to move sketches, but it physically didn’t let me click it.
In my final images, I kept the rectangle because I did not have any other choice, it did not let me delete it. As you can see (and what was mentioned in the earlier complaints), the orientation is really messed up. I couldn’t rotate it because of the issues I listed in the complaints section.
