G’day aspiring engineers!
Thankyou to all who read the first issue of the Future Engineering Newlsetter and special thanks to all those who took the time to complete the feedback survey. This week we’ll briefly review the survey results and then I want to review another Youtube channel you might like to know about.
Survey Results
Here’s what the survey results showed:-
Q1 What do you plan to use Fusion 360 for?
60% of respondents indicated 3D printing which gives me a pretty clear signal about the future of the Future Engineering channel. Next was 20% planning to use it for CNC machining/routing and so I will be planning to cover this one also but I’ll probably emphasise the first one.
Q2 Have you ever posted a design on Thingiverse or similar?
80% of respondents chose the short answer, Nope.
The first thing I thought of was that most of my subscribers are beginners and are still learning how to use CAD in their plans and their overall toolkit. But there may be something else going on here; how many people do you know who are likely to give away their idea for anyone to take? This is something I have plenty to say about, but another day.
Q3 How long did it take you to complete the 16 Basic Tutorials?
Most people got it done withing the time that I estimate, 20 hours.
Q4 This was a satisfaction score for the 16 Basic Tutorials
79% gave it five stars and the remaining 21% four stars. Quite a compliment!
Q5 was similar to Q1 but specifically what you would like my Youtube channel to cover in future instead of your plans for using the software.
47% of you indicated they’d like to see me make content about 3D printing
42% want content about CNC machining / routing
My guess is that a lot of you plan to use 3D printing at home soon but are interested in pursuing CNC machining once you get going with 3D printing. Please get back to me if that’s right.
Q6 was an open ender where I asked what is the most important thing I can do for you?
Interestingly the written responses here were predominantly about advanced Fusion 360 tutorials.
All of which suits me just fine, there were no earth shattering surprises and the things people are asking for are the things I’ve been looking forward to doing.
Other Channel Reviews
There are many engineering related Youtube channels that I love to watch and I will get around to showing my favourites to you, but for today, given your feedback, I understand that you dear reader are focused intently on learning Fusion 360. With this in mind I should show you the best resources that I know of, when I’m stuck or needing to understand how something works. In other words, what is my secret weapon when it comes to solving Fusion 360 problems? Folks, his name is John Hackney and perhaps some of you will know of John from the Autodesk Fusion 360 user forums. I get the impression that John is an educator at some institution in the USA but he is (I think) a volunteer contributor to the Autodesk forum. He has answered countless questions and I suspect that his Youtube channel is simply a place to put video demonstrations to support the answers that he gives to forum members. If he worked on his search engine optimisation I’m sure his channel would be quite successful given the quality of his content but as it is today, he has less than two thousand subscribers. Do yourself a favour and subscribe to his channel and make yourself a note to check his content whenever you have a question. (I’ll be covering the official Autodesk Fusion 360 user forums in an upcoming newsletter.)