FRC Tools for Fusion

These are some tools to speed up some CAD operations that occur frequently in FRC robot design. This work was inspired by the great tools the community has made available for OnShape.

Installation

Download the latest release from GitHub. For Windows there is an installer that will put the Add-In in the $USER\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\Autodesk Fusion 360\API\AddIns\FRCTools directory by default. This is where Fusion automatically looks for Add-ins. Using the installer also allows for uninstallation with the "Add/Remove Programs" functionality. There is also a zip archive that can be used on MacOS (I think). I haven’t tried MacOS to see if these tools even work on that platform.

After installation close Fusion if it was open and reopen it. The FRCTools Add-In should be enabled by default. For more information on installing Add-Ins see How to install Add-Ins. For more information on disabling Add-Ins see Managing Scripts and Add-Ins.

Sketch Tab Tools

C-C Distance Tool

Tip	Sketch Tab Create › FRCTools › C-C Distance

This tool is a Center-to-Center Distance Calculator for 20DP Gears, HTD 5mm Belts, and GT2 3mm Belts. It creates a set of linked sketch entities that represent the C-C Distance, pitch diameter circles, OD circles and a text label. The linked entities can be edited as a unit. Deleting any part of the C-C Distance will delete all of it. The C-C Distance can be edited by right clicking on it and selecting Edit C-C Distance or by selecting an existing C-C Distance within the C-C Distance command.

Bolt Pattern Tool

Tip	Sketch Tab Create › FRCTools › Bolt Pattern

This tool creates a simple bolt pattern about a specified center point for some common FRC motors. After it is created it can be edited to add/remove suppression, change the center diameter etc.

Solid Tab Tools

Timing Belt Tool

Tip	Solid Tab Create › FRCTools › Extrude Timing Belt

This tool generates Timing Belt solids from a C-C Distance input or alternatively from two pitch circles. A simpliflied preview is used to speed up the UI response time. The resulting solid body is not referenced to the C-C sketch geometry as this made the UI laggy and unresponsive.

Preview of the solid to be created by the Timing Belt tool

Complete Timing Belt

Timing Pulley Tool

Tip	Solid Tab Create › FRCTools › Timing Pulley

This tool creates very simple HTD 5mm or GT2 3mm timing pulley shapes. It does not add flanges or center bores.

Tubify Tool

Tip	Solid Tab Create › FRCTools › Tubify Solid

This tool converts solid 1x1 or 1x2 shapes into shelled and hole punched tubes used in FRC.

Lighten Tool

Tip	Solid Tab Create › FRCTools › Lighten

This tool pockets a solid by offsetting profiles and cut extruding them through the solid. It can be quite slow and is still very buggy. It is a work in progress but does work in many situations.