Starting with a blank screen in a design can be challenging. Even if a rectangle is drawn as the first step in a sketch, there is no sense of scale. Adding dimensions to a sketch helps show scale.

Another way to get started with a design is to use sketches that have already been drawn as guides. Fusion 360 allows the insertion of “canvases” on planes that can be scaled to the correct size and then used as a guide to make a model. This helps with laying out the proportions of shapes. It is not necessary to insert sketches but it is a helpful option. The videos below show how to insert and scale a sketch as well as how to insert an svg or dxf that might have been drawn in a vector program.