Surface Modeling#

This section covers Fusion's surface tools, used when a shape is better built from skins than from solid features. It explains how surface bodies differ from solids, then covers Extend, Offset, Ruled Surface, Patch, Trim and Untrim, Fillet and Replace Face, and Stitch and Unstitch.

It also covers judging surface quality with continuity (G0 to G3) and curvature analysis, repairing broken surfaces, and turning surfaces into solids. It is for intermediate users who already model solids, with some advanced pages.

Pages in this section#

1. Surface Workspace Overview (beginner): How surface bodies differ from solids, what lives on the Surface tab, and the mental model for building shapes from skins.
2. Patch (intermediate): Fill closed boundaries of edges or sketches with a surface and control tangency or curvature along each boundary edge.
3. Trim and Untrim (intermediate): Cut surfaces with other surfaces, sketches or planes, and restore trimmed regions with Untrim.
4. Extend (intermediate): Lengthen surface edges by distance using natural, tangent or perpendicular continuation so surfaces can intersect and trim.
5. Stitch and Unstitch (intermediate): Join surfaces into a quilt or a solid with Stitch, handle tolerance, and break quilts apart with Unstitch.
6. Offset and Ruled Surfaces (intermediate): Duplicate surfaces at a distance with Offset, and span from an edge with Ruled Surface to build flanges and draft skirts.
7. Thicken and Solid From Surface (intermediate): Turn surfaces into solids by Thicken, by stitching a closed quilt, or by using Boundary Fill; includes a full workflow.
8. Fillet and Replace Face (advanced): Round surface edges with Fillet, and swap a solid's faces for a freeform surface using Replace Face.
9. Surface Repair (advanced): Diagnose and fix gaps, flipped normals, bad trims and broken imports using Stitch, Patch, Untrim, Reverse Normal and rebuilding.
10. Curvature Analysis (advanced): Use Zebra, Curvature Comb, Curvature Map and Isocurve analysis to judge surface quality before you commit to a solid.
11. Continuity G0 to G3 (advanced): What positional, tangent, curvature and acceleration continuity mean, how to get them in Fusion, and how to verify them.

Confirmed vs not confirmed#

Not confirmed in Autodesk's documentation: which license types include the Surface tools, whether Extend works on faces of a solid body, and whether Trim accepts a sketch curve or plane directly as the cutting tool.