Inventor Fusion

[#1]

I have someone who has an AutoCAD part that has been unioned together but would now like to separate into different parts.

I had the idea to run Find Feature and then select and drag features into Components in Fusion.  Is this possible (on a quick little trial I couldn't get to work - but I'm not familiar with Fusion).

[#2]

It's possible to do this, though as with most things with model repair, there is no simple and single workflow.

The basic idea is to convert the solid into a surface model, and then move appropriate surface bodies (which can be unstitched surfaces or quilts) into separate components. To do this you would create a new component, activate it, and then create a new surface group. You can move surface bodies into a surface group, by picking them from the browser or by selecting them in the graphics view ("area select" is very useful here). Create new surface groups and use visibility control (the "light bulb") to help with surface body selection.

Now once you have the set of surfaces for a component in one surface group, there are 3 commands you can use to convert it to a solid -- Validate, Stitch or Sculpt.

Sometimes you would have to create new surfaces, especially where surfaces that are touching are consumed in the unioned body. The primary tool to create new surfaces to patch these gaps is the Patch/Merge command.

The brute force approach might be to first dissolve the original body into unstitched surfaces (using the Unstitch command), and then move the unstitched surfaces into newly created components.

Please ask if you run into any issues with this approach.

[#3]

How would expect features to map to components?

Since features are often things like holes, fillets, revolves and and such they don;t often represent closed volumes that could easily be made into components.

I would solve this problem using split and then divide the part into pieces. 

You would probably have to move the final body into a component of its own to have a nice component only structure buy this should be straight forward. 

If you have the file or a simple version, I could post a video with a method.

[#4]

I am quite familiar with doing this in AutoCAD or Inventor using slice or split or derived components.

Looking at a solid as a collection of primitives I thought it might be possible to find the features and then group appropriate features, for example a cylinder and a negative cylinder (hole) into a part.  Obviously some features like fillets that go across multiple primitives couldn't be collected into a group.

Watching your AU presentation it occured to me there might be a more clever way than using AutoCAD solidedit slice or Inventor Split.  My simple example as just a unioned box and cylinder.