Assembly: "Some components have been moved"

[lukepighetti]

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?

[paul]

I've been wanting to ask this myself but assumed I just wasn't getting something. I'm coming from Solidworks and am struggling with all of the fundamentals.

[Mike.Zhang · Accepted solution]

Fusion told you some components moved, and you could accept the Snapshot by click the "Continue" button which will record the moved distance, so you can edit in future.

Or you can click the "Revert and Continue" to undo the move. Or click the "Cancel" button to cancel current command.

[lukepighetti]

Thanks Mike, this must be a fusioney thing. I guess I'm confused as to why you would want to revert to a previous part orientation when I just keep things correct as I go? Is there a use case I'm not thinking of?

[Mike.Zhang]

Some times, user moved the the components by accident, this "Revert and Continue" option will make user could back to the before status.

[paul]

The way I see it, I am not concerned about the position of an object until it is constrained, after which it won't accidentally move anyway. I look at fully constraining/mating/jointing as a requirement. I'm not sure this is such a strong discipline in Fusion. Seems a lot more free form, maybe that is why the warning seems necessary to some and not others? Does this make sense?

[adelemm]

Hi Paul,
You suggestion makes sense to me.
Fusion as a fully parametric cad software, the position of objects has also been taken snapshot and can be revert anytime...but you don't have to do this; the design propose is like Mike mentioned, make user could back to before status. but if you feel it's annoying and confusing, I will log an improvement and discuss with our UX folks on how to improving this.

[TrippyLighting]

I think just with other UI elements such as warnings it would make sense to have a littel check box the first time this warning shows up to say "do not show this warning", with the ability to turn it back on in the settings/preferences. Not a big deal but it is in the way of a smoother workflow.
Does not make much sense to have pie menus, a concept taken from some of the leading polygon modelers to have super quick access to menus and then waste it having to repeatedly click away these warning messages.

[paul]

Yep, checkbox to dismiss warning for at least the active session.

[lukepighetti]

I cannot imagine a scenario where I'd want the dialog, but maybe someday I will! Being able to turn it off in preferences would be nice. 🙂

[kb9ydn]

I can see how the snapshot functionality could be useful for making animations (or configurations/versions) of models in different positions and such, but most of the time it's just in the way (for me).  I think it would be nice to have a way to enable/disable it entirely, not just ignore the warning.

C|

[banshee10]

My guess is that a grand total of zero users have ever figured this out on their own. It's baffling.

[haughec]

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

[lukepighetti]

If you drag a component and then do a joint; this dialog should not appear as it is completely unecessary in only this scenario.

In this example you would be dragging the component so you could better see your two mating geometries. This is way faster than trudging through the browser to hide and show your components.

I know you can use "as built" stuff but I don't trust these constraints. Call me superstitious.

[lukepighetti]

For some reason I have two accounts, not sure why.

Edit: And my other one is a 7 and has way less snarky posts!!! 

[banshee10]

Part of it may be the whole snapshot thing.  AFAIK, there's no coherent explanation in the documentation of what they are.  And they're a bit bizarre.

The explanation here:

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/fusion-360/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/ENU/Fusion-F...

"The Snapshop command is only available when components are moved. Adds a snapshot operation to the Timeline. The snapshop maintains the position of any components that were moved."

My reaction:

So there's this thing called a snapshot that goes in the timeline and stores the position of components that have moved.  No, I clearly don't need one of those; one of the fundamental things that Fusion does is move stuff around and leave it where I put it.  A snapshot is a thing that, err, I have no idea, because Fusion already does this as one of the very most fundamental things it does.  A snapshot is an extra thingy that stores positions that are already stored?  Yeah, clearly don't need one of those.  Ever.  For anything, as far as I can tell.

(Oh, and this bit: "The Snapshop command is only available when components are moved" - HATE HATE HATE.  Fusion is like my cat; she loves to find things and hide them.  Stop hiding things.  It's ok to disable a menu item.  It's not OK to remove it completely.   ARRHHGHHH I know that command was here somewhere....)

[jjurban55]

Hey Luke! 

Of course if you do a body move, rather than component move, a snapshot is not needed, since you're not moving the actual component coordinate system.  For anyone wondering, in the Move tool, there are different selection options, from left to right being component, body, and sketches I believe.

Jesse

[jjurban55]

Hi James,

When you do a component move the whole origin coordinate system of the component is being moved (and this can be seen if turn on visibility of the component origin).  A snapshot represents this new coordinate system origin position in the timeline.  I sometimes use a snapshot to very good effect in the timeline in order to have all objects tied to that component coordinate system take that new coordinate system position, even when I edit them.  I do this by moving the snapshot earlier in time ahead of the creation of the other objects, as illustrated in a few pictures in this thread:  

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/general-fusion-360-questions/along/m-p/5576959#M9350

Let me know if you have any other questions about this or snapshots.

Jesse

[jeff_strater]

backing up a bit...

I hope that I can shed some light on the "why does this prompt even exist?" question.  The quick answer is:  So that Fusion can support "positionally-based" modeling operations.  That is, a modeling operation whose results are dependent on the position of components in the design. 

A quick example might help.  I apologize for the lack of "polish" here.  This design is not meant to be accurate, but hopefully conveys the general idea.  The design is one of those hand-cranked flashlights.  The particular problem at this stage of the design is to create a pocket for the handle of the crank:

So, to make this pocket, we need to close the crank.  Doing so triggers the "components have moved" UI:

Once, the crank is closed, we want to do a Combine to remove the material in the handle from the body.

This triggers the UI that tells you that you are about to do a positionally-dependent modeling operation.  Your choices are either: 1) capture the position in the timeline, 2) revert the components' position to an un-moved state, or 3) give up entirely (cancel).  In this case, I chose "Continue" (which means to capture a snapshot and continue):

This captures a snapshot in the timeline, and invokes Combine:

Choose the body as the target, the handle as the tool body, and Cut as the operation.  Check "keep tools" to make sure that the handle is kept around after the Combine:

And, the result is a new pocket in the flashlight body:

But, the key point here is that this combine feature, from a parametric history point of view, depends on the components being in the correct position when the Combine is computed.  If the handle is open at the time that Combine computes, you would get no pocket.  So, Fusion has to have a feature to assure that position.  This is the Snapshot feature.

As Charles says above, we are working to make this more clear, easier to understand, and easier to use.  There are lots of ideas that we have on this topic, but we are interested in your feedback.

The other front that we are addressing this is to be smarter about when snapshots are/are not needed.  Today, we are overly conservative about the snapshots, and we probably prompt more often than needed.  For instance, in this model, if it also had a represenation of the batteries, and if those were moved while you do some operation that doesn't even involve the batteries, we should not prompt for a snapshot, and today we do.  We have optimized it a bit - if you do an operation that is always not positonally dependent (for example, a fillet or chamfer), you will not see this prompt

Hopefully this is clear, and helps a bit with the understanding.  

Jeff Strater (Fusion development)

[jjurban55]

That makes a lot of sense, thank you 🙂

Jesse