As the summer draws to a close and back-to-school season beckons, we at Autodesk have been thinking about the rollercoaster that the academic community—educators, students, parents—has ridden over the last few years and wondering: How do we return to normalcy, and most importantly, return to engaging today’s generation of students? While normalcy is a permanent north star, we do have the path to help keep the students in your classroom engaged and learning.
New educator resources for Autodesk Fusion 360®
In anticipation of this year’s Back-to-School season, Autodesk Education is announcing the CAD and CAM resource centers, complete with industry-validated certifications, in-demand skills training, and Contest-in-a-Box kits for educators to reboot the Autodesk Fusion 360 experience for students by running classroom contests. Autodesk Education resource centers are specifically designed to rev up student engagement and facilitate better student and educator experiences.
Industry-Needed Certifications and Skills
Industry-validated certifications offer free learning content and courses to prepare students for their future careers with industry-relevant skills. With each exam successfully passed, students can build their résumés and earn recognition for their expertise.
In-demand skills training offers coursework, learning paths, and instructor resources with ready-to-use learning content to begin teaching Fusion 360 for developing design and manufacturing skills.
Contest-in-a-Box toolkits offer a built-in way to incorporate design and manufacturing into this year’s curriculum while keeping students engaged in a challenging contest setting. With easy-to-download files, comprehensive instructions for educators to administer a CAD or CAM contest, and a contest rubric to determine winners, students can learn hands-on industry-relevant skills and put those competitive skills into practice, awakening their passion for design and engineering.
Students excel with Fusion 360
Fusion 360 is the software of choice for students because of its fully integrated CAD/CAM/CAE platform and its flexibility for use across a wide range of skill levels. For students participating in the Contest-in-a-Box experience, Fusion 360 enables an environment of teamwork through its cloud collaboration features and streamlined workflows. While it is also relevant for hobbyists and 3D printing aficionados, it is a professional-level tool offering design and manufacturing functionality to connect teams remotely, communicate in real time, and centralize projects for quick deployment. It has been the software of choice for many award-winning student teams, like Danville Community College, which exposes students to Fusion 360 as early as eighth grade because the software is beginner-friendly as well as being an advanced CAD/CAM tool.
At the Technical University of Munich (TUM), a team of 60 students coalesced to design and build the world’s fastest tunnel-boring machine as part of The Boring Company’s Not-a-Boring Competition. The TUM Boring team chose Fusion 360 for its cloud-based workflow for easy remote collaboration, and its integrated CAM, CAD, and FEM (finite element method) to increase efficiency and allow for quick simulations. TUM Boring won the contest over more than 400 other teams.
And as part of an academic/small business partnership, students at Nihon University in Japan used Fusion 360’s generative design capabilities to redesign the riser of a high-performance archery bow to be 50% lighter while maintaining sufficient rigidity. The bow riser is now available commercially.
Access our resource centers and start the school year off right with support from your partner in lifelong learning, Autodesk Education.
Unlock free educational access to Autodesk products and services when you confirm eligibility. Learn more at www.autodesk.com/education. Don’t have Fusion 360 downloaded? It’s free for students and educators. Find it here.
