I Tried Learning CAD in 1 Week to Build My Tiny Workshop

November 15, 2025 · 25 min · 10k views

I gave myself one week to learn CAD from zero with Fusion, well enough to design my dream tiny workshop before buying the big power tools that go in it. By the end I had a 3D-printed phone stand (sort of), a full workbench model, and a rough layout of the whole room: walls, storage up to the ceiling, tool placement, and a hidden door that became a pocket door once I realized a hinge alone wouldn't clear the big tools.

I wanted to buy a lot of expensive tools and I wasn't sure they'd all fit. Paper sketches had carried me through the earlier builds, but not this one. The deal with myself: no finished design, no tools.

Picking the software

Onshape and SolidWorks were priced out of my league, Tinkercad was too basic, and LEGO Designer was the wrong kind of fun. Fusion won on resources and price, at $60 a month.

The plan

Day 1 for the free Learn Fusion 360 in 30 Days course, day 2 a phone stand, days 3 and 4 my workbench, days 5 to 7 the workshop.

The first red flag was a 10-minute tutorial on a LEGO brick taking me 30 minutes. There were 30 of those. Day 1 ended after four hours and ten chapters with nothing left in the tank. Day 2 was more tutorials, including a screwdriver that, poetically, screwed me over. Day 3 was more of the same plus too much caffeine, and I finally finished the course. It hurt, but it's a great free resource.

The 3D printer joined in too. My Elegoo Neptune 4 Plus refuses to print anything if a single file on the USB drive has a special character in its name. And after countless failed prints, the phone stand that finally came out was still far from functional.

Designing my own stuff

Then the good surprise: on day 4, designing my own phone stand went well. The lessons had stuck. Day 5 was the workbench, with twenty minutes of existential crisis over 20 mm versus 19 mm dog holes (I'm French, 20 mm won). Days 6 and 7 were the room itself, after I discovered I'd forgotten to measure quite a few things. The arcane punk skin for the bench didn't make the cut.

Sketch, extrude, repeat

CAD boils down to a loop: sketch on a plane, extrude, refine with chamfers and fillets, repeat. It reminded me of coding: there's a slow way and a fast way to get the same result. You can brute force every little square, or use the Rectangular Pattern tool and be done in minutes. And now I've got a workbench model I can actually build from.

My tips: take your time (rushing caused most of my frustration), do one good tutorial properly before designing your own thing, then mix tutorials with real projects.

28 hours of CAD

7 days, about 28 hours of CAD, roughly 4 hours a day
30 lessons in the tutorial series, finished in 3 days instead of 1
$60 a month for Fusion
The workshop: 3.32 by 2.18 meters, about 7.2 square meters or 78 square feet

Watch it

Watch the full build on YouTube.

Gear and links

Software and tutorials (includes affiliate links):

Gear (Amazon affiliate links):

I earn commissions when you shop through the links above, at no additional cost to you.