With a good foundation in managing data both through
Fusion 360 and the Fusion team, in this lesson,
we will take a look at using preferences to set up how we would like to use Fusion 360,
and learn how to make changes that will save us time with every new design we create.
To access the preferences,
go to the top right corner of your screen, and find your name.
Clicking on your name will produce a dropdown menu,
where you can select preferences from.
This will open the preferences dialog.
In the preferences dialog,
you will find two main sections.
On the left, is a list of categories that you might want to modify the values of.
On the right, are the various options that you can change for each of those categories.
Starting with the general options,
you can choose items like Autosave time,
the default modeling direction which will control of z is normal to the top,
or front of the view queue by default.
You can also choose heads-up guide options like tooltips,
the command prompt that appears near your cursor when you pause movement,
or the measurements that will appear in
the lower right of the canvas anytime you select something.
For users coming from Inventor, Alias, or Solidworks,
you can change the behavior of the panzoom and orbit
tools of Fusion to behave like those other systems.
You can also reverse,
the mouse will zoom if you prefer.
Looking at some of the other preferences,
select the design option under general.
These options will become more relevant as you gain experience, for example,
the active component visibility controls whether
the other components in the design will fade out when you activate a component.
You can also choose whether capturing design history is on,
off, or prompted, when you create a new parametric design model.
Below that is the Default workspace.
In another exercise, when the I just file was imported,
it opened in the Sculpt workspace.
This is the setting that controls that behavior.
As you see in the pull-down,
you have the option of setting another workspace,
like model, or patch as the default if you like.
An option when you're sketching is to allow for 3D sketching.
The option here will make that setting the default.
Switching this on, will enable a workflow for 3D
sketching that begins by developing a 2D sketch,
and then moving parts of it in 3D space,
or connecting it to other entities off the sketch plane.
For this course, we will mostly focus on 2D sketching.
We can also enable or disable viewing the sketch straight on when it's created,
editing dimensions when they're created,
or showing a ghosted body when editing a freeform body.
As you gain experience,
you might find that some of the settings assist you,
and some you will prefer to disable.
What's important, is that you know what options are available.
Let's look at some of the other options.
One that is often overlooked,
but is valuable for improving Fusion 360,
is the data collection and use options.
Allowing desktop and Google Analytics,
will send crash data to those teams to understand what might have gone wrong,
and to make it easier for them to make adjustments to improve stability.
Fusion 360 is very unique in its frequency of updates.
Many of these do not include new features,
but they will make the software more predictable and reliable for you.
Instead of potentially waiting months for a fix,
and then having to install it,
Fusion 360 will simply update your software in the background,
and advise you that a new version has been installed.
Moving to the default units,
you can choose individual units for design, cam, and simulation.
This makes it possible to design in millimeters,
create Topaz and inches,
and simulate using different unit systems for different values.
Many of these options can be set in the individual file,
but most people tend to work in a consistent unit set,
and that can be established here.
The preview options will change as technologies are integrated into Fusion 360,
while some others might be pulled back and rethought based on your feedback.
You can choose any number of options,
but unless you look at a preview option and see clearly that it has no value to you,
I suggest turning them on to see
what changes or new tools you are given a chance to explore.
Selecting one of the options for the first time,
will ask you to agree to signing up for the previews,
and become part of the preview program.
As you are changing options,
you can click Apply, to keep your choices to that point.
When you are finished, you can click OK to apply the changes,
and return to the workspace.
You can change the choices you made,
or make new choices any time by going back to the preferences,
to make Fusion 360 work better for you.