Fusion 360 for Woodworkers, Designing an Adirondack Chair

In Part 1, I'll show you how to create what I call the "base outline" sketch which helps create the rest of the design. I'll walk through the creation of the "base outline" sketch, beginning to set up user parameters so you can easily update your design, and creating the left and right side legs (including the mortise and tenon joints) of the Adirondack Chair.

In Part 2, I’ll cover how to model the arm rest. There’s more than meets the eye with this arm rest: two different planes will be sketched on (one we’ll be creating at an angle), getting creative with how we sketch the side and back profiles, modeling a bridle joint to connect the back and side components, and creating a draft between the front and side components.

In Part 3, I’ll cover how to use pattern along path to model the seat slats. There’s a lot that we need to model in the seat slats (i.e. longer front seat slat tapering down to the last seat slat at the back, as well as the rabbet joint that will locate in the groove cut into the side rail). Not everything can be done perfectly in Fusion 360, so I’ll show you how to troubleshoot issues, and in the end, best accomplish modeling the seat slats.

In Part 4, I’ll walk you through creating the back slats. We have some experience with pattern along path, which is great. I’ll cover how to draw the spline that will create the slats, how to pattern along a path in two directions (and some of the challenges of doing so), and how to cut the top profile of the back slats.

In Part 5, I show you how to re-use components from other designs. We’ll be using the corbel from the Bookshelf lesson and importing that component into the Adirondack Chair lesson. This is a very cool feature of Fusion 360 and will really speed up our design process. You could even create a “design library” of common components and insert them into any design you’re working on to speed things up. These components are linked to the original design by default; I show you how to unlink the component from the source so you can freely change it up without affecting the original source component.

Now that you've successfully designed the Adirondack Chair, I’ll quickly show you how to render your Adirondack Chair design. Let's jump into Fusion 360's Render Workspace.