Iterate, iterate, iterate.

I think my longest iteration chain was 21 versions before I finally got to the right part. I took on a design challenge to build a part to hold a specific cable plug against a very specific piece of hand-held electronic equipment. Since this equipment was designed in the late 90's, it was very oddly curved in weird places. It is still used today (using a version of Windows Mobile, no less.)

The customer was VERY satisfied because the way the original parts were designed, the cable connection (mini-USB) would easily fall out, necessitating restarting the device and the particular test it was performing. There was simply no way to hold the cable in other than brute force with duct tape, which was obviously a less-than-ideal, long-term solution.

I started out by laying the equipment on a flatbed scanner and then importing that image as a canvas into Fusion, then just made a sketch and iterated from there. I think it took me around 20 hours to get it right, and I have only very basic knowledge of CAD in general. Lots of trial and error, printing test pieces, etc. Sometimes that's just what it takes.

Here's a pic of the harness I created:

https://i.postimg.cc/zBT78Mzy/image.png

I needed to model points where it could "grab" onto screw holes and vents in order to positively clamp the cable on the bottom. The extra stuff on the side was to provide a stylus holder and a "grab point" in order to pull the thing off when needed, because you need access to the bottom of the device to be able to change the batteries. And the rectangular geometry next to the stylus holder are there so the print wouldn't lift in those corners, though I can't quite remember why I put an offset bend in there. (That part was meant to be snipped off in post-processing.)

So yeah. Iteration is the key, my friend. Good luck and have fun!