I recently found the first shortcoming of Autodesk’s Fusion 360, it doesn’t have thread definitions for PG conduit threads! If you have no idea what PG conduit threads are, you’re probably not alone, they are a legacy thread definition that’s only used for cable glands in Europe these days (and some types of sensors in the chemical industry, or so Wikipedia tells me). PG stands for Panzergewinde which with my German roughly translates to something like “armoured thread”. As I said, it’s pretty legacy, but at least here in Finland you have basically a 50/50 chance of finding a cable gland in either PG threading or metric.
So I had to do something about this, as I happened to have some nice stainless cable glands in my parts bin with a PG 13,5 thread, and I wanted use them for a 3D printed PSU cover I’m working on.
Luckily, Autodesk Fusion 360 comes with the option of adding your own thread sizes to it fairly easily. I won’t go into detail on how they are defined, but it’s basically a huge XML file for each thread family, with an entry for every diameter and pitch. PG sizes are fairly easy to define, as there are only a handful of sizes available, and only one for each specific diameter.
I’ve made up a file for PG sizes, which you are free to use as you see fit. I’ve defined all internal threads with their maximum allowable size, and all external threads with their minimal allowable size, for maximum tolerance, and as we’re talking about a thread used mainly for plastic-on-plastic or metal-on-plastic, with a pretty blunt thread form (80 degrees instead of the ISO metric 60 degrees), I’m fairly certain it’s all fine and good. If you like something else, it’s fairly trivial to change the XML file to suite your needs.
The file is available here: PGConduitThreads or on my Github page.
The XML file is zipped to keep WordPress happy, just unzip it and place the XML file in the following directory
%localappdata%\Autodesk\webdeploy\Production\<version ID>\Fusion\Server\Fusion\Configuration\ThreadData
Autodesk uses this fairly complicated folder structure for Fusion 360, so for more instructions on how to work with custom thread definitions, please visit the Autodesk Knowledge Network page about the topic.
Categories: Tech
Grumpy Techie 
Sebastian, thank You very much for sharing. It helped me a lot.
No worries mate, glad it helped you!
One experience Sebastian. After some time I lost this configuration from my F360. Folder is changing time to time (I have about 8 versions in %localappdata%\Autodesk\webdeploy\Production\ folder. Could you advise me hot to place your PCConduitThreads file permanently? Thanks a lot.
Sadly I haven’t found a way to make this version independent, you’re forced to move them as the folder changes. I’m still looking for a better solution though, and if you find anything, please let me know!
Hi Sebastian
Wow, you are a star! Thank you so much for sharing. I 3D-print many one-off special Junction Boxes with PG Cable Glands for prototypes. So far, I had to manually tap the PC-Threads after printing. Only found this solution today because I never even thought that somebody would create a solution for PG-Threads. PG-Threads have been “out-standardized” some years ago. Yet, many cable glands still use PG-Threads. This “add-on” saves me a lot of time and hassles. Thank you again!
Hi Peter! Glad you liked my “add-on”! I had the exact same problem, but after trying to find a PG tap without much success, I just said to myself, it has to be possible to model that thread. 🙂
Very cool. Works perfect for me.
Path has probably changed a little since this was written, it took a min to find the right folder.
Yeah, Fusion 360 has this annoying feature that it changes the path with every update, so it’s a bit hard to get it right.
Thank you for doing this and explaining where the heck to put the file. Using this in documenting the reverse-engineering of an existing product. After realizing what I’ve found, the new one is going to be either metric or NPS.
Thank you again!
No worries, glad it helped somebody else, I hate it when the only documentation for a feature is in some comment in some forum somewhere, and I remember this one was buried very deep!