<p>I am trying to make stencils of Japanese Kanji characters with my 3D Printer.</p>

<p>I am very new to Autodesk Fusion360 so I am running into some barriers: </p>

<ol>
<li><p>I am having trouble sketching a rectangle and then a text character and extruding them separately. If I extrude one they both disappear. Therefore I have to sketch one, then extrude, then create the next sketch object. 
How can I create both sketches and select different ones to extrude? </p></li>
<li><p>I am having this basic problem where my stencil has parts that are disconnected (see example below). I've tried sketching lines and thin rectangles to connect the pieces but they both didn't work. I once again can't extrude after it's created. </p></li>
</ol>

<p>How can I connect the pieces after extruding? How can I connect them inside a text object? </p>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/hLaBH.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer" title="Example Kanji Stencil"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/hLaBH.png" alt="Example Kanji Stencil" title="Example Kanji Stencil"></a></p>

[{'answer_id': 5843, 'author': 'NomadMaker', 'author_id': 9512, 'author_profile': 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/users/9512', 'pm_score': 1, 'selected': False, 'text': "<p>As I see it, for a stencil you want the brown part with the white part(s) cut out.</p>\n\n<p>This is easily doable. You can do this one sketch at a time, extrude it, and cut it out of the brown part.</p>\n\n<p>To connect the inner brown parts to the rest of the brown, you'll need to cut a thin rectangle in the white character so that the inner brown pieces are connected to the outer brown pieces.</p>\n"}, {'answer_id': 5846, 'author': 'Ryan Neph', 'author_id': 5938, 'author_profile': 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/users/5938', 'pm_score': 1, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>To answer your question about the disappearing sketch check out this answer: <a href="https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-design-validate/sketch-disappears-after-creating-body/td-p/5965216" rel="nofollow noreferrer">forums.autodesk.com - sketch disappears after creating body</a></p>\n\n<p>The default behavior in fusion is that sketches are hidden after the first time they are used in an operation such as an extrude. You can just unhide the sketch by expanding the sketches group in the tree and clicking the light bulb. </p>\n'}, {'answer_id': 5852, 'author': 'Carl Witthoft', 'author_id': 2191, 'author_profile': 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/users/2191', 'pm_score': 0, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>May I suggest an alternative?  Create your characters in a document editor (such as Word or OpenOffice), using a very large font size.  Save the characters to an image file.  Go to one of many converter sites, such as <a href="http://www.embossify.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">embossify</a>  or <a href="https://www.sculpteo.com/en/workshops/create/text/?uuid=QTy21E63tHOjsSDR8WDdZd" rel="nofollow noreferrer">sculpteo</a>, and let them make a 3-D model of your character.</p>\n'}]
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