Assembly: "Some components have been moved"

[Anonymous]

Why does Fusion keep telling me this? I made three components and moved one so I could see it. When I go to make a joint it gives me this warning message. Yes, Fusion, I moved it. Did I break some kind of associativity when I moved it or something? What's the function of this message?

[kb9ydn]

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@haughec wrote:

Thanks for the feedback.  We are in the process of making changes to the Snapshot prompt/behavior to make this a bit more intuitive.  Can you elaborate on what you don't like about the current behavior?  Is it the prompt itself, the creation of a Snapshot feature in the timeline or something else?

Thanks again,

Charles

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I think for me, the confusing part is how the snapshot functionality and component positioning is tied into the time line.  Having the ability to take snapshots of the position of components is a really great idea, and is very useful for modelling assemblies that can move.  Say you're designing a folding chair; you can have snapshots of the assembly in varies positions of folding or unfolding, and use those positions while your modelling some parts to make sure they fit.  But when this is tied into the time line, you have to roll backwards or forwards to switch positions and so parts of the design my appear or disappear depending on where they were when those snapshots were taken.  To me that's more annoying than useful.

Let me give an analogy:

Imagine you want to build something out of Legos.  Generally whenever I design or build something, I have some idea in my head of what I'm trying to do and I have a short list of parts that I'll need to start with.  So the first thing I do is to rummage around in the box of Legos, pull out a handful of parts, and lay them out on the workspace.  Then I'll sort of move them around and fit some together to see what looks good.  After messing around a bit I'll decide that yeah, this is what I'm looking for as a base structure, and I'll start adding details to it until it's done.

This same process applies to designing in CAD.

But now imagine that the instant you pull a new Lego piece out of the box and put it on the workspace (or attach it to your creation), every move it makes is tracked.  If at some point you decide that the wings on your space ship need to move forward a notch, you can't just pull them off and move them because the instant you pull them off the entire ship will rearrange itself (and partly disappear) because putting the wings on was one of the first things you did.  Why should the laser guns on the wings pop in and out of existence simply because I need to move the wings?  Why can't I just move the entire assembly?  If this was in Fusion I could of course rearrange stuff in the timeline so that the guns were created before the wings were placed, but why should I have to do that?

I think it would be better if I could take snapshots of the design and switch back and forth between them without affecting anything else in the design (and be totally independent of the time line).  If I delete a component that has a snapshot associated with it, it should also be deleted from the snapshot.  No other components would be affected.

C|

[Anonymous]

banshee10, Jeff can feel free to correct me, but the reason snapshot is so unique to Fusion is because Fusion is history based AND allows you to have multiple parts and joints in a single document... AND it allows you to associate geometry after a move. So in his example with the flashlight, he can now go back and change the geometry on the protrusion and the geometry from the cut will update as well. This makes it super powerful for "programming" 3d models that can be later adjusted without having to redraw.

kb9ydn, I think what you're looking for is what SolidEdge would call a configuration. I wish Fusion had a better way of doing this, where it would adjust joint parameters. So if you had a folding chair your first configuration would have the back 100 degrees from the seat, and in the second configuration your back would be 20 degrees from the seat.

I would be nervous to use Snapshots in this way because, as you say, you have to back up the timeline to utilize it.

Fusion in history mode is more like programming a sub assembly made of solid models that will all update automagically if you wrote the program right. It's less like 3d modelling to me. It's super powerful if you consider it this way. But if you jump in and start drawing stuff like you're used to, you get into a lot of trouble really fast when you try to make design changes. Fusion in history mode is awesome for changing dimensions but cumbersome for changing your design.

Direct modelling tools are a lot more adept at changing your design on the fly, as you don't end up with a history bar that is geologic in scale.

I very much dislike Fusion for large assemblies because you end up having the last thing you put in dependent on everything that happened before it. A horrible idea with large assemblies. I think that when Fusion offers xrefs it will be super powerful because right now Fusion dominates the space for sub assemblies IMO.

[Anonymous]

Well, part of the problem may be that there's now an audience that's not at all used to 3D design environments - Fusion is my first. So I don't see Fusion as being unique, and I'm not really comparing it to anything. Some of the things you see as unique I see as "err, of course that's the way you're doing it. Everyone has back mechanisms these days, so yeah, there's a history mechanism. Sure, you can change numbers in the history - why wouldn't you be able to do that? And why do you even have this term "direct modeling"? It really means you've got a parallel way of doing stuff? Why on earth is this a good idea?

Snapshots I think I now understand a bit better - but they're still striking me as a strange idea. If moving components has significance, then those moves always go into the timeline, no? Wait, they're optional? But they're not optional? Huh?

In any case, that dialog should get a lot more wordy - and if it's intimately tied to snapshots, the word "snapshot" needs to appear in there, with links to the help where this is all explained. Having a button that says "revert and continue" is strange - obviously you can never press that button, since it's going to revert the thing I just tried to do, and then continue, and then pop the same dialog, and then it's supposed to revert the thing I did and continue to do the thing I just did that popped up a dialog?????? The continue button clearly is just going to continue with no side effects - but clearly it doesn't, since it's going to insert one of those snapshot things that should just always be autogenerated anyway.

And you should really link to the help from the dialog - but the help isn't helpful. For example, I should be able to go type snapshot into the search box and find out what they are and why they matter.

Try it. Right now, give it a shot. Look through the first page of results and explain to me what snapshots are just based on that information.

It's not possible. Not even close. It's crystal clear that snapshots just don't matter; things that matter _always_ show up high in search results. ALWAYS. If you're result is below the fold, it doesn't matter. Google has trained us well.

The first result is sort of right, but mostly useless. The rest of the results are API calls. The reasonable conclusion? Snapshots, meh, not really a thing anyone should care about - they're not even worth documenting.

I don't want to rant too much - Fusion can do interesting things.  But it feels like the only way to learn it right now is something like an investigative oral history; you need to watch a bunch of videos, you need to read a bunch of blog posts, you need to play with it.  It's not like you can just read the doc and feel like you understand what's going on.  (The doc that's there is good - but there's clearly just too much volume for the staff you've got right now.  Add more writers to the team!)

[nadovich]

+1 from a new Fusion user. The snapshot thing is baffling to me. I move my components and I want them to stay where I put them so I can assemble them. But sometimes, unexpectedly, moving one thing causes other things to move. WTF. The docs don't discuss this at all. How do I use this tool?  No doubt it's a great thing for somebody. Not me. 

[etfrench]

Snapshots and objects moving to previous positions are the main reason I have the Timeline disabled.