topic Re: Tapped holes don't pattern in Fusion Support Forum

Tapped holes don't pattern

wmbYBW5Q — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 00:35:04 GMT

The following design https://a360.co/2YNyu04 was built as follows, using Fusion 360 v 2.0.6045:

1) Create a box

2) Create a tapped hole offset from the edges of the box

3) Create a 3x3 rectangular pattern selecting the feature that corresponds to the hole. The pattern is fully contained within the body.

After closing the RECTANGULAR PATTERN dialog with OK, the pattern does not show up in the body afterwards, only the original hole is present. There are no warning or error messages.

If I then go back in the timeline and edit the hole feature to change it to a simple non-tapped hole, then the pattern shows up in the body. Furthermore, if I subsequently re-edit the hole feature to change it back to tapped, all the holes in the pattern become tapped.

Update: I discovered something: The problem seems to be related to how you select the "feature" corresponding to the tapped hole. It seems that there are are at least two such features, one for the simple hole and one for the helix. If I select them both by dragging a rectangle (with the selection filter only enabling features), then the patterning works to the extent of duplicating the holes, but not the helixes. If anyone can suggest a workflow that permits easy patterning of tapped holes, I would be grateful.

Re: Tapped holes don't pattern

HughesTooling — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 11:36:51 GMT

Just for future reference, it's better to export your file as an f3d and attach. The share links are too much hassle.

Are you creating modeled threads? Also are you using the hole tool to create the thread and hole or 2 separate features? A couple of options, when you create the pattern change the pattern type to features and select the features from the timeline. Another option that works in pattern even if you use the default Faces option is just click the feature in the timeline. This tends to only work when you create the pattern, if you go back and edit trying to add more faces selection from the timeline doesn't seem to work.

Mark

Re: Tapped holes don't pattern

wmbYBW5Q — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 18:11:26 GMT

I am using the hole tool. The result seems to be the same regardless of whether I check the "Modeled" box or not.

I have indeed been selecting features. When I tried selecting faces, it cranked along for awhile and then "Compute Failed - One or more pattern instances could not be intersected with the original body ..."

Thanks for the "select from timeline" suggestion. That is more convenient than the rectangle-selection I was using, but it still does not work completely, in that the patterned holes are unthreaded.

As requested, the .f3d file is attached.

Here is the sequence of operations. First try with unmodeled holes:

Making un-modeled holePatterning un-modeled holeResult

Second try (delete pattern and hole, then restart) with modeled holes:

Making modeled holePatterning modeled holeResult 2

Re: Tapped holes don't pattern

HughesTooling — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 18:17:15 GMT

I edited your pattern and changing the compute option to either of the other 2 options works!

Mark

Re: Tapped holes don't pattern

HughesTooling — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 18:36:00 GMT

Here's a screencast. Shows how using Pattern Type set to faces then selecting the hole feature from the timeline works and also how using Features with Optimize or Adjust also works. Just as a note, Identical will be the slowest in a big pattern.

Mark

Re: Tapped holes don't pattern

ryan.bales — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 18:37:46 GMT

*edit* Mark beat me to it!

Its the compute option that is doing it. You have identical set rather than optimized or adjust. Switch it over to one of those two and it will compute just fine.

Re: Tapped holes don't pattern

wmbYBW5Q — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 18:37:16 GMT

Thanks! I thought I had explored that part of the choice space but apparently I missed a case.

This is a simplified example to illustrate the problem. The original design was an 18"x12" tooling plate with holes on 1" centers, so lots of holes. In that case, the adjust option fails right out, saying too many pattern instances. I changed to identical and that went away, but then I got stuck in the rathole of selecting the wrong thing and getting nothing. After solving that problem I must have forgotten to try optimized, which is the only way that works for the full sized plate.

The really irritating thing is that this isn't for me. I was helping a friend who is trying, per my suggestion, to switch to Fusion 360 from another CAD system(Moment of Inspiration) that he finds much easier to use. I suggested F360 because of its strong CAM capabilities, but he is horribly frustrated when things don't "just work". I had told him that it would be really easy to make his tooling plate, just use the hole tool and pattern it. And then we spent an entire day plus your forum help trying to get that to work.

Is someone from the Fusion team listening? It really should not be this hard to pattern a feature.

Re: Tapped holes don't pattern

ryan.bales — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 18:47:13 GMT

Honestly we want to see the actual design or plate you are making. What is too many holes? Compute options are higher Fusion theory that someone like @jeff_strater can delve into when he gets the chance.

It might be that a sketch pattern - and holes at sketch points is the right call for a hole pattern rather than make one hole and pattern it. Its the reason why it was adde to the hole tool. So instead of One Sketch, One Hole, Large Pattern - you get One Sketch - Hole Pattern:

Thats 188 holes in a 12"x18" block in about ~5 mins. Compute is a little longer but this is why it was added.

Re: Tapped holes don't pattern

wmbYBW5Q — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 18:57:40 GMT

Okay, now face mode is working for me under certain conditions:

Modeled, select from timeline WORKS

Modeled, select by clicking feature FAILS

Unmodeled, select from timeline WORKS

Unmodeled, select by clicking feature WORKS

A user interface should not be this twitchy.

Re: Tapped holes don't pattern

HughesTooling — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 19:44:52 GMT

I think perhaps the pattern tool needs tuning up to work with the new hole feature where you can create the thread and hole as one feature.

If you select on the thread and hold you get this and the pattern will fail. The parent doesn't give the option to select the hole either.

But if you select the bottom of the hole you get this and the pattern will work. Same thing happens with modeled or simulated threads.

Screencast demo.

Mark

Re: Tapped holes don't pattern

wmbYBW5Q — Fri, 16 Aug 2019 05:05:49 GMT

> Honestly we want to see the actual design or plate you are making.

The reason I submitted a simpler (smaller but otherwise the same except for the number of instances) was because, during my 40 year career diagnosing difficult computer system problems, I came to value the "simplest example that still exhibits the problem". That simplest example is the easiest one for an engineer to analyze, because it can be tested much faster and avoids extraneous factors that can lead one down a rathole. The "failed to compute" situation was such a rathole. Had I submitted the large problem that failed to compute because of too many holes, then people would have focused on that confounding problem instead of the real one, which is that the patterning feature is extremely twitchy, requiring several things to be selected and chosen "just so", in ways that are not at all obvious to the user. Extremely skilled users like HughesTooling often know a lot of alternative ways to do things (like selecting from the timeline instead of the obvious "select by clicking on the object") and can thus get the job done, while the less skilled user is relegated to screaming "why doesn't the straightforward obvious thing work?".

Apple became famous for having best-in-class user experience precisely because Steve would yell at engineers when things didn't "just work".

This might raise some hackles, but I think the job of support engineers in not just to help users find ways around problems, but also to communicate back to the development team that customers are having those problems whereby things that ought to "just work" require very specific and non-obvious combinations of options.

> What is too many holes?

On my system, pattering 49 modeled holes selected as a feature from the timeline in Adjust mode works, while 50 repetitions fails with a "Too many pattern instances" warning. Any combination of rows X columns that multiples out to 49 or less works, while anything that yields 50 or more fails.

> Compute options are higher Fusion theory ...

In a good user interface, things like Compute Option would not be present - the program would work it out. Compute Option has no meaning to the design. Everything else in the RECTANGULAR PATTERN dialog has a clear and obvious relationship to the pattern, but Compute Option is an "under the hood" thing that the user must "try at random until something magically works". In a good design, the program would figure it out for you based on its internal knowledge of the object being patterned. @jeff_strater in https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-design-validate/trying-to-understand-pattern-compute-option-optimized-identical/td-p/6516163 explained the difference between the options, but that explanation involved some amount of deep knowledge about internal representations of features and such, which most users are unlikely to have clearly in their heads. His advice is just to "try them out to see what works in a given situation". That is the sort of advice that would make Steve Jobs' head explode.

> It might be that a sketch pattern - and holes at sketch points is the right call for a hole pattern rather than make one hole and pattern it. Its the reason why it was adde to the hole tool. So instead of One Sketch, One Hole, Large Pattern - you get One Sketch - Hole Pattern ... Thats 188 holes in a 12"x18" block in about ~5 mins.

The "pattern a single hole with 188 repetitions" takes 2 seconds to compute in the cases where it works.

We could have a separate conversation about the twitchiness of the "select sketch points" option of the hole tool. It is another of those cases where you have to do everything just right else it fails.

I realize that I am sounding really negative here, but these are areas where an otherwise-excellent program is badly failing the "should just work" test. My buddy calls me every day and complains about what a difficult time he is having getting over the F360 learning hump. I am starting to regret having recommended it to him.

Re: Tapped holes don't pattern

HughesTooling — Fri, 16 Aug 2019 09:06:59 GMT

@wmbYBW5Q The real problem is with how the hole tool is creating the threaded hole feature. So I've made a bug report here demonstrating how the threaded part of the hole is not associated with the hole feature. The ability to make a hole and thread as a single feature is fairly new, before you needed a hole then add a thread. With the new hole tool the threaded part of the hole is only listed as a face with no reference to the hole. Thought it best to make a new thread for the bug report as it might get lost in this thread.

Mark

Re: Tapped holes don't pattern

g-andresen — Fri, 16 Aug 2019 10:23:14 GMT

Hi,

@HughesTooling , @ryan.bales

why do you ignore the patterntype "faces" although it has already been brought into play?

günther

Re: Tapped holes don't pattern

HughesTooling — Fri, 16 Aug 2019 10:27:34 GMT

I did suggest faces in Post #5. Personally I like selecting from the timeline as in my screencast as window selection can be tricky in complex models. I seem to remember Face selection and Feature set to Identical are pretty much the same when it comes to performance in large patterns.

Mark

Re: Tapped holes don't pattern

ryan.bales — Fri, 16 Aug 2019 13:57:10 GMT

@g-andresen I'm not really a pattern faces guy in a parametric model. I do it in DM but not so much in parametric. I do more when it comes to failed mirror cuts or something like it.

@HughesTooling the modeled thread faces are probably what you mention in your bug thread - really from what i gathered and what i suspect is that they are more linked to the setting in browser and the thread feature and less of faces that can be edited(something you already uncovered). This is so you can switch back and forth to cosmetic and they all shift back.

Re: Tapped holes don't pattern

HughesTooling — Fri, 16 Aug 2019 14:39:05 GMT

@ryan.bales wrote:

. This is so you can switch back and forth to cosmetic and they all shift back.

Don't think that should make any difference, I think the surfaces that make up a modeled thread should be flagged as belonging to the hole feature. This would make selecting for patterning easier and also the useful right click option to edit features. Just thought of another problem, if you select a face of the modeled thread you can't use find in timeline and also it's not highlighted in the timeline. Actually just noticed find in timeline doesn't work for any type of feature is that broken or is my memory going? I mean find in window seems pretty useless as you've just selected the feature you should know where it is!

You can see here the thread face is selected but the hole feature's not highlighted. Not sure if there used to be find in timeline on this menu but pretty sure it used to be there.

Mark

Re: Tapped holes don't pattern

HughesTooling — Fri, 16 Aug 2019 14:50:35 GMT

Ah, I see now you have to use the click and hold menu then select the feature from the parent tab, then you get find in timeline. You can see here using the old method of a hole feature and a thread feature you can use find in timeline, this doesn't work with the combined hole tool. This also demonstrates toggling between cosmetic and modeled should really make any difference.

Mark

Re: Tapped holes don't pattern

ryan.bales — Fri, 16 Aug 2019 14:53:30 GMT

Oh i totally agree it should make no difference. More trying to rationalize why it maybe the way it is right now. The hole tool needs improvement and its something the team is aware of.

Re: Tapped holes don't pattern

g-andresen — Fri, 16 Aug 2019 16:47:56 GMT

Hi Mark,

Some time ago I published here some experiments with the option Feature vs. Face Pattern, which clearly showed the speed advantage of the face option.
Even if you sometimes have to be careful when selecting faces, you will be rewarded with a much shorter calculation time.

günther

Re: Tapped holes don't pattern

wmbYBW5Q — Fri, 16 Aug 2019 20:52:38 GMT

@g-andresen patterning faces does indeed work if you select all of the faces corresponding to the hole, either by drag-selecting as in your screencast or by selecting via the timeline. It fails when a naive user such as myself or my friend clicks directly on the hole, because that does not pick up all of the faces of the hole.

From Joe Naive's viewpoint , when you use "Create Hole", it makes a "hole feature" with the various attributes in the dialog. When Joe points at that thing in the design, he expects to select the feature that he created. Experts know that the feature is actually implemented as a collection of faces, but Joe invoked "Create Hole", so he is thinking of the whole hole thing.

This is the crux of the problem. Alternative selection techniques like pointing at the timeline or dragging a rectangle succeed, while the obvious (to Joe) strategy of pointing at the hole and clicking often does not work. It is even more frustrating when it sometimes works (as if you happen to point at the bottom of the hole) and sometimes does not (as when you point at the threads). The difference in highlighting in those cases is very subtle and easy to miss, especially when your are thinking "hole" and not "collection of faces".