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

I am very new to Autodesk Fusion360 so I am running into some barriers:

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? 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.

How can I connect the pieces after extruding? How can I connect them inside a text object?