topic Re: Copy/Paste, Copy/PasteNEW, and another way??? in Fusion Design, Validate & Document Forum

Copy/Paste, Copy/PasteNEW, and another way???

RogerInHawaii — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 23:18:21 GMT

COPY/PASTE

When you do a Copy/Paste you get a copy of the original that is implicitly linked back to the original. Edits made to either the original or to any of the copies made via the Copy/Paste operation appear on the original and ALL the copies. This is a very powerful and useful feature. My own design has a special bolt that I designed and which is used hundreds of times throughout the design, via the Copy/Paste operation. If I need to change the design of those bolts or even just change the color the change is done on any one of them and applies to ALL of them. Fantastic!

COPY/PASTE-NEW

The Copy/PasteNEW operation is different. When you do a Copy of some existing Component and then do a PasteNEW into some location in the timeline it does NOT insert a Copy/Paste item in the timeline. Rather, it copies the entire original Component, all of its operations and sketches and Constructions and Bodies, EVERYTHING, into the position in the timeline. One critical thing to understand is that what you get is a copy of the original AS THE ORIGINAL EXISTED, AT THE TIME OF THE PASTE-NEW. There is no link back to the original. A change to the original has no effect on the PasteNEW copy. And similarly any changes to the PasteNEW copy has no impact on the original. Even if you set the timeline scrollbar back to the location of the original, make some changes to the original Component, and then let the timeline proceed all the way to the end, it will have no impact on what the CopyNEW copy looks like. It will still have all the features that it had when you did the Copy/PasteNEW.

What this means is you had better be absolutely certain that the Copy that you want to get when you do the Copy/PasteNEW will have no linkage back to the original. You can certainly make edits to that Copy/PasteNEW copy, but you cannot expect edits to the original to be somehow reflected in the Copy/PasteNEW copy.

THE PROBLEM

The problem is that you may well have a situation where some component is "basically" a copy of some other existing component and you definitely do want to make edits to that copy, but you also want any changes to the original to be reflected in the copy. For example, I have an incredibly complex Component. It's one-third of the Antenna Canister of my Mercury Space Capsule design. A second one-third of that canister is exactly identical to that initial component, for which I can easily use the Copy/Paste operation that links it back to the original. No problem there. But the final one-third of the canister is "basically" a copy of the original but with some changes to it. There's some parts that I had to delete, other parts that I had to add. I used the Copy/PasteNEW operation to initially make the copy. As far as I could tell there was no other way to do it. A Copy/Paste would not have allowed me to make edits ONLY to the copy, since any edits would get reflected in the other two sections.

For a long time during the design process this was OK. UNTIL I realized that I had to make some significant changes to the original One-Third section, and they were changes that I REALLY, REALLY needed to have reflected in that final One-Third section. But, of course, that doesn't happen with a Copy/PasteNEW type of copy.

What I had to do was manually, explicitly, make all the SAME changes to the Copy/PasteNEW copy that I made to the original. This took several days of work.

THE BIG QUESTION

Is there some other approach that I could have taken? Is there some way that a copy can be both linked to the original object but also allow for editing of that copy?

I do indeed try to use User-Defined Parameters for much of my design, so that changing any such parameter will impact on every single use of that parameter throughout the design, even in Copy/PasteNEW type copies. For example, if I have the length of a bolt (in its sketch) based on a User-Defined Parameter then changing that parameter will change all the bolts throughout the design, whether or not they were copies via Copy/Paste or Copy/PasteNEW and whether or not they RESIDE within Copy/Pasted or Copy/PasteNEW parent components.

But that approach only gets you so far. You can still end up with the situation I'm in, in which edits to the original must ALSO be manually, explicitly done in the Copy/PasteNEW copy.

So, is there a different approach I can take, or SHOULD have taken?

A NEW KIND OF COPY/PASTE ??

Is it even conceivable to have a copy that is both linked back to its source AND editable? I THINK it should be. Editing the original might well cause warnings and errors in that new kind of copy, but errors and warnings can happen in all sorts of editing situations, so it shouldn't preclude having this additional kind of Copy/Paste

Re: Copy/Paste, Copy/PasteNEW, and another way???

TrippyLighting — Tue, 26 Nov 2019 01:18:54 GMT

There's no new copy/paste needed 😉

This is one of the sneakiest "functions" in Fusion 360.

Roll the timeline back to the point in time where you are done with that 1/3 that you want to be the same in both copies of the component.

Create a new, empty component.

Copy/paste the body from the original component into the new component.

Now you can make edits to that new component, which only effect the new component.

If you want to make edits that effect he first 1/3 of both components, roll the timeline back to before the copy/past of the body.

Then make the edits and move the timeline marker back to the last position before that.

Now the changes should be reflected in both components.

This workflow is described in this Autodesk University handout from 2016 as "Configurations light".

Re: Copy/Paste, Copy/PasteNEW, and another way???

RogerInHawaii — Tue, 26 Nov 2019 20:08:07 GMT

I took a look at that description of how to have CopyPasted copies that are not only linked but independent, able to be edited:

Create an empty component #1 and make sure it’s activated. -> Base Component
Create a sketch and then body #1 that holds all the common/shared features.
Create an empty component #2 and make sure it’s activated.
Copy/paste the body #1 from component #1 into component #2.
Add the additional features to the body in component #2 -> Configuration #1

WORKING WITH COMPONENTS AND SUB-COMPONENTS

I did some simple tests and it does indeed seem to work if what you're working with is a simple, single Body from the Base Component. But I then created a Base Component that had some sub-components and CopyPasted the (parent) Base Component into the newly created Component#2. Then, with that Component#2 activated I deleted, from that Component#2, the sub-component, and it got deleted from BOTH the Component#2 AND the Base Component, not just from Component2 as desired.

WORKING WITH MULTIPLE BODIES

I also tried creating TWO bodies in the Base Component and doing a Copy/Paste of BOTH bodies at the same time into Component2. They copied over just fine, but when I selected to delete JUST ONE of the copied-over bodies BOTH of them got deleted.

I again tried creating TWO bodies in the Base Component and doing a Copy/Paste ONE AT A TIME into Component2. They copied, BUT I had to manually position the second one so that it was properly oriented relative to its first Body. When I selected to delete JUST ONE of the copied-over bodies just that one got deleted, which is good. BUT having to manually reposition each and every such copy/pasted Body over to Component2 (and there could very well be many, many such bodies to copy/paste) means that it's incredibly unlikely that Component2 will look exactly like the Base Component.

So, my conclusion is that, while that approach may well be handy for certain limited uses where you basically have a SINGLE Body, it's not actually a full solution. In my case the BaseComponent has dozens of sub-components and sub-sub-components, and part of what I need to do in the CopyPasted (but somewhat independent) copy is the deletion of certain sub-components.

Re: Copy/Paste, Copy/PasteNEW, and another way???

TrippyLighting — Tue, 26 Nov 2019 20:39:22 GMT

The functionality you are asking for is called "Configurations" in three of the CAD systems I have worked with. Solid Works, Alibre Design and ZW3D. That is not available in Fusion 360!

Thus I called the method I describe Configurations light 😉

If you had described your needs more completely with the first post I could have told you this right away.

Re: Copy/Paste, Copy/PasteNEW, and another way???

RogerInHawaii — Tue, 26 Nov 2019 21:29:45 GMT

I approached the topic from a general viewpoint. But I did indeed point out that in my particular situation...

"I have an incredibly complex Component."

I don't know how I could have been more clear that it wasn't just a simple, single-body, situation.

I would also add that the testing I did of the "Configuration Light" approach that you described and my reporting on the particular nuances of it may well help someone ELSE when they come upon this problem and find this particular post that discusses it.

Re: Copy/Paste, Copy/PasteNEW, and another way???

TrippyLighting — Tue, 26 Nov 2019 21:33:06 GMT

@RogerInHawaii wrote:

I don't know how I could have been more clear that it wasn't just a simple, single-body, situation.

You provided specifics in your second post 😉

Re: Copy/Paste, Copy/PasteNEW, and another way???

TrippyLighting — Tue, 26 Nov 2019 21:52:53 GMT

To answer you initial question, this would definitely require added functionality, which BTW was advertised as being part of Fusion 360 and one of the reasons that got me interested in it 5 (or 6?) years ago.

Thus I feel that this functionality should have been part of Fusion 360 a long time ago and I find it unacceptable that it still isn't.

Re: Copy/Paste, Copy/PasteNEW, and another way???

wmhazzard — Tue, 26 Nov 2019 22:29:00 GMT

"I have an incredibly complex Component."

To you it is complex, to someone else it might me fairly simple. The more detail you give in the beginning, the better your answer will be.