topic Re: Noob – Workflow in Fusion in Fusion Design, Validate & Document Forum

Noob – Workflow in Fusion

lazze — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 09:02:08 GMT

I'm new to Fusion and this forum, so please excuse me if this has been asked and answered before.

First of all, let me thank Autodesk for a truly great product! I have been using Maya happily for years, and it has served me very well for illustration and animation, but getting product design to a 3D printer hasn't been so easy in Maya. Fusion seems to be the solution for me.

I'm getting the grasp of modeling, and I really appreciate the way you can start with a t-spline, add manufacturing details, and still be able to edit the t-spline.

What I'm struggling with right now is what the best practice for creating a shape consisting of objects that appear more than once. I see that distributed design is coming in May, but what I'm looking for may be a little different.

1. I have a body that I wish to use as a part of combined shapes or components at different scales. Copy instanciates bodies, so I can't really change one without affecting the other afterwords. Can I duplicate the whole body with history?

2. Is it possible to work in separate files, and just copy items into the assembly file?

3. Is it not possible to scale a sketch?

4. How do you work when the scene starts to get full of objects? I like to keep the object I'm working with at the origin so that I can keep the object centered and flat, and then scale and move it to the right place afterwards. But the origin is usually crowded.

5. Another detail: I can't get snapping to work when moving line points. They snap to grid increments off the grid, but I can't get them to snap to the grid itself, even when incremental move is off.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Re: Noob – Workflow in Fusion

O.Tan — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 10:58:21 GMT

Hmm, I'll try answer some of them as much as I can or understood:

1. Sounds like you want to modify a duplicated component without having it affecting the other components. If that's the case, what you can do is, Right Click on the Component and choose Make Independent, that way any changes that you do in this component will not affect the other components.

2. Yes, it's possible to do that. Workflow e.g.:
a) Create document, model a, close and save.
b) Create document, model b, close and save.
c) Create document, open data panel, insert model a, insert model b, done

3. You're right, seems like we cannot scale sketches yet, the workaround right now is "offset" but I know it's not the same, I suggest you to post it up in the idea station for sketch improvements: scale, I'll give it a kudos 😉

4. Hmm, I don't use scale that often as the model I draw is close to the size I want, since you mentioned that you came from Maya, could it be that what you're trying to do is closer to how people do things in Maya? Cause Fusion is closer to SolidWorks/SolidEdge/Inventor then Maya/Alias/Blender, so the workflow idea of how things are done could be different.

5. In Sketch environment, look at the Sketch Palette and turn the Snap checkbox to be on, it should do what you're trying to achieve.

Hope these helps.

Re: Noob – Workflow in Fusion

lazze — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 11:37:46 GMT

Thank you! All answers are spot on, and a great help.

Number 5 seems to be the right solution, but no matter what I do, I can't get snapping to work, except for placing the first point at the start of a sketch. After that, it all floats. I can enter values directly, but the values are relative to the last placement, not absolute grid values.

I also understand that scaling a sketch may not be what you'd want because the sketch is supposed to be the documentation for production. It would however be nice in some cases where you bring in a sketch from another product and need it at a different scale.

Re: Noob – Workflow in Fusion

TrippyLighting — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 22:27:46 GMT

You'd do well to inform yourself about the difference between bodies and components following this link http://fusion360.autodesk.com/resources.

Select Function -> Build assemblies -> Bodies and Components

You can and should turn a body into a component if you want to make functional assemblies.

To work on one component (not body) you can select the componet in the browser (not in the viewport) right click and select "isolate". This alows you to hide all other objects but that component. If you slect two components and apply "isolate" you are able to have two components together isolated.