Dividing a hollow box

[sprior913]

I'm trying to design a remote control holder.  So far I've got a bottom and 4 walls, but I want to add an internal divider.  I want to draw a divider which is a specified distance from one of the inside corners and can't figure out how to do it.  I assume there is a way to draw a box aligned to one wall of another box and a specified distance from the end of the referenced box, but can't find how to specify that offset.

Any suggestions?

[jakefowler]

Hi,

Is it possible to attach a file/image showing what you are trying to achieve?

If you are creating new geometry based on sketches, the best way to define an offset between two pieces of geometry is using the Sketch Dimension tool in the sketch menu. Click the reference points on the existing geometry and the new geometry, and click to place the dimension. Then double-click the dimension's value to change the offset distance.

If this doesn't help, we'd probably need an image of your model to get a better idea of what you'd like to do.

Many thanks!

Jake

[jakefowler]

BTW, the new Web tool might offer a useful way to create internal dividers. Jeff gives a brief introduction to its usage here:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Help-and-Support/Web-function-how-to/td-p/5057716

Jake

[sprior913]

I'm designing a remote control holder both as a tutorial and because I happen to need one.  I've got user parameters entered for all the critical dimensions and in fact formula's which set the openings to fit the maximum thickness of the remotes on that row.  Now I'm trying to add small dividers to keep the individual remotes straight.  I want to set the distance between the inside of the left wall and that first divider to the distance defined by the parameter named "cable_remote_width".

I did not use a sketch to draw this, I drew the bottom to the parameters bottom_width x bottom_depth x outside_wall_thickness and then created boxes for each of the walls/dividers using the appropriate parameters.  Things were going fine up until I needed to start inserting the divider walls a given distance from the wall.

Any help?

[sprior913]

With the parametric features of Fusion 360 for the sizes of objects it seemed obvious to me that there would be a parametric way to specify a distance between a point and the base point of another object, but maybe that wasn't so obvious after all.

[jakefowler]

Thanks for the extra details, this really helps. I’m afraid it’s probably going to be difficult to build up this as a parameter-driven design using only primitive boxes, the primary reason being that Box primitives do not currently store their relative positions as parameters (only their size). I’ll follow up on whether this is expected, and if we could/should record more parameters for these objects.

This standard workflow for building a shape like this parametrically would be by using sketches: I would imagine you could build this model by creating only 1 sketch, and building a few extrusions based on this. Is there any reason in particular that you’d rather only use Box primitives for this model? If it’s important to use only boxes, there might be a workaround involving other tools to get these aligned parametrically (one I can think of is using Joints to apply the defined offset parameters). But it wouldn’t be a particularly efficient modelling method.

Thanks!

Jake

[sprior913]

It's not a strict requirement to use just boxes per se, but based on the documentation and the fact that this is a simple object which is basically just made out of boxes it seemed like it was a valid approach.  Fusion says it supports designing with these primitives and has parametric features, so a user (myself in this case) can be led down a dead end path in trying to actually use those claimed features.

[jakefowler]

Thanks for the feedback; we’ll look into the implications of capturing more parameters for box primitives. We’re still in the process of adding to, updating and refining the parametric tools, and there may be changes we can make. However, the core idea of the primitive tools was to build simple shapes as easily as possible, and we need to be careful not to overcomplicate these tools. For now I’d still strongly recommend taking advantage of the sketch tools for designs driven primarily by dimension parameters: this will give you a lot more power. There’s a quick introduction to the sketch tools here.

If you have any further suggestions for changes/improvements, a good way to get these heard is by posting/adding kudos to the IdeaStation.

Thanks!

Jake