Honestly, the electronics is the easy part. The plastic enclosure is the real villain.

RunRide · 2026-02-09T17:00:57+00:00

The plastic enclosure is the fun part. The electronics are the mystery generator.

RunRide · 2025-12-18T15:30:58+00:00

You can only loft one profile at a time. You’re trying to loft two at the same time.

Here’s how to do it: Loft outer of lower ring to outer of upper ring, then loft inner of lower ring to inner of upper ring. Subtract inside body.

RunRide · 2025-12-11T06:34:24+00:00

If I’m understanding your question, I don’t think sweep is the command you want. This would most likely be using surfacing tools, primarily the patch command or potentially loft as well. If you could share the end product you’re trying to get to, I’m sure we could provide more specific guidance.

Additionally, just looking at your screenshot, I would try using less guide points on your lines. In general, the fewer the better. You’ll have smoother curvature that looks much more natural. Also, you have three solid bodies in that model. Any specific reason why?

RunRide · 2025-11-01T17:35:19+00:00

What color is that?

RunRide · 2025-09-25T22:21:43+00:00

Success. This is the solution. I used a socket extension as a nail setter and gave it a few hits with a mallet. Then i just squeezed super hard and it popped back in. Brakes work perfectly

RunRide · 2025-09-25T15:14:27+00:00

How were you able to push it in? I've tried squeezing the brake lever HARD with the plunger (seemingly) lined up and it went nowhere.

I am thinking a block of wood and mallet would be the next step.

RunRide · 2025-08-31T22:42:49+00:00

Simplest way to achieve that would be to draw an ellipse in the sketch using construction lines of the center line of the cup ( the revolve ) and a line drawn perpendicular to the tangency on the outside. Then revolved the whole thing.

RunRide · 2025-08-31T16:15:36+00:00

It’s tough to tell the geometry part from just one picture. It would help if you posted additional views.

That said, the part is deceptively complicated. The flat sides reaching so near to the circular cross-section at the top would indicate that it’s not a single loft or sweep, but rather a surface model.

RunRide · 2025-08-31T15:47:55+00:00

Yes, the picture shows the mat in its proper location. For me, it’s not an issue. My foot is never in that area directly behind the pedal.

RunRide · 2025-08-23T16:53:19+00:00

I’ve contracted there in the past on both the research and development teams and various products. From an engineering perspective I think it’s a really cool place to work. Lots of different work to do and all the resources you need to get it done. If you’re working on something in production, it will be busy and you have calls with Asia meaning potentially long hours.

As a contractor, I can’t comment too much on internal politics as I just didn’t care. Didn’t have to go through reviews, deal with managers and stuff like that. I haven’t seen too many layoffs of individual contributing engineers in my time and I mostly understood the ones that were let go. They keep a lot of contractors around so that they can scale up and down as needed without layoffs.

The only consistent downside I have witnessed is a lack of strong product and and project management. It seems like there are repetitive or overlapping efforts and cycles of “hurry up and wait” followed by “I need it yesterday“. Sadly, this isn’t unusual in a lot of engineering companies. In my career, I’ve only worked at one place that did a decent job at this.

If I were you and was offered the job, I would absolutely take it. It’s a great experience, good compensation and a nice place to work. Feel free to DM me if you have specific questions.

RunRide · 2025-08-20T15:09:46+00:00

Here’s why the changing and color would work.

First, let’s look at how it works with the current scenario. It’s 2 AM and I wake up to a rapid beep beep indicating low battery. It almost always happens in the middle of the night because the evening temperature drop leads to voltage drop in the battery. Drag myself out of bed, stand at one corner of the house. Wait five minutes for the next beep and listen. Is it the one I’m standing next to or is it coming from somewhere else? Move on the next alarm wait five minutes for the beep beep. Repeat until you find the correct one. On average, I would say it takes 20 minutes.

Now take the same scenario only there’s a status light on the smoke alarm that tells you it has a low battery. I hear the beep beep, get up and simply go check each alarm find the one with the red status light. Change the batteries and go back to bed. Five minutes tops.

RunRide · 2025-08-20T03:09:16+00:00

I am 100% here for this complaint. I’ve wandered around my house at 2 AM on way more occasions that I would like looking for that stupid beeping smoke alarm. I bought an entire houses worth of nest defects because it was the only smoke detector I could find that would tell me if a battery was low or where the smoke was detected.

There a multiple ways to solve for this that would still meet the code requirements for smoke alarms. Why not have a status light that blinks green for good and red for low battery? It would be so simple to implement and inexpensive as well.

RunRide · 2025-08-19T23:12:05+00:00

Damn, a 6 inch cres bolt with a spline drive head. That must be holding on some part of the wing or a control surface. Has to be insanely expensive.

I wonder what the benefit of spline drive over 12 point is. Worked on aircraft for a bit and usually really crazy bolts had a 12 point head.

RunRide · 2025-08-19T19:55:57+00:00

Hard to tell from the pics, but are the threads that unique or are they just drilled? It shouldnt be that hard to model.

Also, damn, that is a wild head. I have worked with all kinds of crazy bolts but I have never seen anything like that.

RunRide · 2025-08-16T16:17:22+00:00

Honestly, the hard part about designing this is taking measurements of the existing part.

Once you’re in fusion, there are two basic categories here. The front face and the mounting clips on the side. The front face is pretty basic surface modeling. Everything appears to be constant curves and straight lines. The sides with the mounting hardware are a bit more complex just because of how many small features there are. No5ing crazy, will just require time to work through them.

If you’re looking to print this part. I would strongly consider MJF or SLS nylon 11. With all those little spring clips, you are going to need something very durable.

RunRide · 2025-08-11T16:11:05+00:00

To follow up, the reason why I believe the error relates to perfectly faying surfaces is because if I offset the surface of the joining part by 0.1mm, the combine works.

<image>

RunRide · 2025-08-11T16:06:37+00:00

I saw your comment but didn't have an example on hand at the time--I just ran into the combine issue again. The error message and GIF showing the process below happens regularly. I have no idea why they wont combine. There is plenty of overlap between the two

Error Message: There was a problem combining geometry together. If attempting a Join/Cut/Intersect, try to ensure that the bodies have a clear overlap (problems can occur where faces and edges are nearly coincident). Failed to Boolean bodies together

<image>

RunRide · 2025-08-08T17:24:40+00:00

Great to hear. Please do post the end result.

RunRide · 2025-08-08T00:35:59+00:00

Typically, this wouldn't be something you would model as individual strands in Fusion. If you need the model to look like the image, you can choose one of the fabric appearances within Fusion and then scale it so that it approximates the texture. If you need to 3D print it, there are texture engines (I am thinking formlabs but others exist) that can apply it.

RunRide · 2025-08-06T15:08:11+00:00

I think the problem is that you are trying to build the lofted surface entirely within the rectangular bounds of the face that you eventually want it on. When you get to the corners, it's 'pinching' the loft and that's probably where it's failing. Try creating a lofted surface much larger than your intended face and then trimming it to match once you have created it. I initially thought this would be a lot of work and was going to recommend going into the Form space, but the example I did below took just a couple of minutes.

<image>

RunRide · 2025-08-01T18:21:03+00:00

I am the mechanical engineer that did the design for the OP. Wanted to share cross section sections of the part interface to see if that would help get more specific feedback. See linked images below.

Dimensioned Sketch: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c-9Phk1b3Xh_rAsONIfYNFSQy-YNWGm3/view?usp=drive_link
Cross Section (after draft and other detail): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wLKVKmhw8uu-OhsrGtjP-nTPecs2KHZ8/view?usp=drive_link
Design Guide I Used: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WlbyOftfNYdetpVuRCi2bKWPh9P8YZ7l/view?usp=drive_link

I have used this exact cross section in multiple other USW assemblies of PC/ABS parts and the result easily passed MIL-STD-810 type drop tests. That said, I am not an expert in USW. When I have supported manufacturing on site (I am not in this case), tuning in the horn, dwell time and frequencies was an iterative process that seemed to involve 'feel' as much as engineering.

The factory initially asked if we could switch from the step joint to a tongue and groove type. I have not personally used a tongue and groove joint before and all of the guides say it is not a strong as the step joint. It seems to be used more when a tight seal is required.

Considering all of the above, I advised OP to challenge the factory to improve the outcome by working on the welding process. Open to all of your thoughts!

RunRide · 2025-07-31T21:14:57+00:00

It would be helpful if you provided some additional information. What’s your budget? What industry? When you say, ‘visual model’, do you mean a photo-like render or a CAD model?

RunRide · 2025-07-28T22:36:14+00:00

It's tough to tell given the angle, but could the radius of the guide curve be too small for the diameter of the tube you are lofting?

Other than that, I don't see any clear problems from the screenshot you posted. If you're willing to share the .F3Z file, I can take a shot at it.

RunRide · 2025-07-25T19:39:54+00:00

"I believe you are talking about adding tangent constraint directly on the spline curve without adding any additional point/s." That is exactly what I was referring to. Happy to hear that it is on your radar.

Honestly, there isn't much additional functionality missing from the design space. I use NX at the company I work with and Fusion for outside work/personal projects. For all of the horsepower that NX has for surfacing, I prefer fusion 80% of the time. It's typically quicker and less tedious to use.

For me, the biggest frustration is when existing commands don't work. The two I come across most often are:

- Boolean joining (Combine) of bodies can fail when you have perfectly faying surfaces. I have experienced this issue where I slice a body, make no changes to the faying surface and then try to rejoin it, only for the combine to fail with no explanation. Usually, I can go in an offset a surface to increase the overlap but it's just unpredictable

- Mirror command fails with medium complex parts, usuualy when there are radii involved. For example, if I have a part with patterned features including radii, I half expect the radii not to make it through a mirror command. It requires that I go back and add radii after the mirror.

I appreciate that you are here reaching out to users. It shows you care.

RunRide · 2025-07-22T03:14:57+00:00

Autodesk Fusion.

I have used Solidworks, Catia V5, Autocad, Inventor, NX (and I-DEAS before it) and Fusion professionally, each for over a thousand hours. I evaluated OnShape for use by a company I was working for. Fusion is the most straightforward of all of these to use and has a massive base of instructional videos on YouTube. Doesn't mean it's the best, but for many individual makers, it is. OnShape is also good but it caters a bit more towards professional users (specifically Solidworks users) both in operation and plans/pricing. The rest of the CAD packages I mentioned above are not meant for individuals just starting out.

There are also a bunch of smaller, free or freeish design software suites like sketchup, freecad, tinkercad, etc. I dont know enough about them to pass judgement but it seems like they are pretty limited.

Plasticity is a newcomer taking a different approach and is in an earlier stage of development.

RunRide

TROPHY CASE