topic Re: Fusion360 - Exporting Body to Mesh should have option to maintain coordinates in Fusion Design, Validate & Document Forum

Fusion360 - Exporting Body to Mesh should have option to maintain coordinates

VitorMartinsAugusto — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 09:28:21 GMT

Hello,

When exporting individual bodies to a mesh, Fusion360 will always translate the body to the first quadrant, next to the workplane.

While this might be the best option for certain workflows, like 3D printing that body, it is not always what a user wants.

I need to be able to export individual bodies as a mesh, where the coordinates of the body relative to the design is maintained. Example: Imagine I am exporting individual bodies to be used in 3rd party software like FEA software. I need all exported bodies to remain at their relative coordinates.

Other CAD software have a checkbox in the export form to select if coordinates are to be maintained or if the geometry is to be moved to the first quadrant. I would need such an option in Fusion360.

I know that one can export the whole design into separate mesh files in one go and in this case each individual body will maintain its relative coordinates.

However, this will export every body and sub-body (bodies contained inside other bodies) into individual files. This results in a huge amount of files and is not what I want, as it increases the amount of work imensely.

Thanks,

Vitor

Re: Fusion360 - Exporting Body to Mesh should have option to maintain coordinates

HughesTooling — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 09:32:44 GMT

Are the bodies in components? If you export the main component using Save As Mesh only visible bodies\components should export and their positions should be maintained.

Right click the top level component.

Re: Fusion360 - Exporting Body to Mesh should have option to maintain coordinates

VitorMartinsAugusto — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 09:38:30 GMT

I may have used the wrong term: I meant components not bodies.

If you look at the following picture, you understand what I mean:

I have the second component selected and it is highlighted in blue.

If I export it as a mesh, the resulting STL file will not attach correctly to the previous STL I exportted (the base of the robot). Instead, the file will be moved to the origin of the first quadrant.

There seems to be no way to export this component as an STL file, with its relative coordinates maintained.

regards,

Vitor

Re: Fusion360 - Exporting Body to Mesh should have option to maintain coordinates

VitorMartinsAugusto — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 09:54:42 GMT

This is how the import of both files look like on PowerSHAPE:

The relative coordinates have been clearly lost.

Re: Fusion360 - Exporting Body to Mesh should have option to maintain coordinates

HughesTooling — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 10:25:34 GMT

@VitorMartinsAugusto wrote:

I may have used the wrong term: I meant components not bodies.

If you look at the following picture, you understand what I mean:

I have the second component selected and it is highlighted in blue.

If I export it as a mesh, the resulting STL file will not attach correctly to the previous STL I exportted (the base of the robot). Instead, the file will be moved to the origin of the first quadrant.

There seems to be no way to export this component as an STL file, with its relative coordinates maintained.

regards,

Vitor

If you isolate that component then right click the top component and save as mesh you'll get just the visible component exported and it should keep it's position.

It's a bit more work but isolate then un-isolate make it quite easy.

Mark

Re: Fusion360 - Exporting Body to Mesh should have option to maintain coordinates

VitorMartinsAugusto — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 10:36:02 GMT

Thansk for the help, but unfortunately it does not seem to work on my side.

When isolated it still translates when exported as STL mesh.

😞

Re: Fusion360 - Exporting Body to Mesh should have option to maintain coordinates

HughesTooling — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 10:48:17 GMT

Are you sure you selected the top level component when you selected save as mesh? Here's a screencast showing exporting 2 mesh components to Rhino and they maintain their position and orientation in Rhino.

Mark

Re: Fusion360 - Exporting Body to Mesh should have option to maintain coordinates

VitorMartinsAugusto — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 11:12:06 GMT

Mark,

Thank you very much for your troubles and patience!

The not so obvious trick was that one has to export the top entry in the feature tree.

It will flash the whole design blue but on a closer look, the isolated component has a slightly bluer tint and is in fact the only component that is exported.

It does work as you say.

Thank you again,

Vitor

Re: Fusion360 - Exporting Body to Mesh should have option to maintain coordinates

rsheldiiiZW7EP — Thu, 10 Mar 2022 16:47:19 GMT

This doesn't work for me now, I have a collection of bodies in a component, relatively positioned to a separate, larger component. Even if I add joints between the bodies, when I isolate and save the top-level component as mesh the export is not relatively positioned.

Luckily for me the locations of everything lay on the XY plane, so I just moved the larger part in the Z axis, imported it into another software that allows relative exports, and deleted the larger part.

this really should be a checkbox when exporting

Re: Fusion360 - Exporting Body to Mesh should have option to maintain coordinates

laughingcreek — Thu, 10 Mar 2022 18:45:04 GMT

hmm.. works for me. can you screen cast your process, or attach a file?