topic Re: Align tool reduced functionality in Fusion Support Forum

Align tool reduced functionality

grahmart — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 01:15:10 GMT

Starting about 2-3 weeks ago iirc, the align tool lost the rotate option and will no longer snap to anything but front/back orientation when i hover over a origin point. Previously i could use rotate to change the orientation in a different direction than flip does or move the pointer slightly over a origin point to change how it snaps and align almost anything with one align. Now it takes multiple steps to align things to each face one by one

Was this a deliberate change or something i've changed somehow?

Re: Align tool reduced functionality

TheCADWhisperer — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 03:14:35 GMT

@grahmart

Are you in Part Design, Assembly Design or Hybrid Design?

Can you File>Export your *.f3d file that exhibits this behavior to your local drive and then Attach it here to a Reply?

Is there a logical reason you can't use Joints or Constraints rather than Align?

Re: Align tool reduced functionality

grahmart — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 05:28:29 GMT

Hybrid. I am separating individual pieces from die assemblies for 3d scanning and ordering replacements. So there is only the individual body with nothing to joint it to (cannot joint to origin). Constrain components works but is a more complicated way of doing exactly the same thing the current align tool does (as far as orienting a body to a origin, many more clicks than the old align tool) and the constraints then need to be removed to move or modify the part (reverse engineering changes to the actual die from the original CAD often requires multiple rounds of changes in fusion, then alignments and comparisons in the 3d scanning software; push/pulling a constrained face moves the entire part requiring extra time to realign it in the 3d scanning software).

I can attach something tomorrow but it occurs with all my imported models

Is there a logical reason to remove this functionality from the align tool? To 'fix' what wasn't broken?

With the old align tool, with the rotate option, I could click a snap point on the bottom corner of a body, hover over the origin to get the align snap square in the correct orientation, flip and rotate as necessary and done. Fully aligned. With either the align tool without rotate and only 1 snap to origin option or constraints component it's now a new align or constraint and clicking on all 3 faces and all 3 origin faces

Re: Align tool reduced functionality

HughesTooling — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 07:45:02 GMT

Rotate is available if you're aligning a component but not a body. Don't know if it's always worked like that as it's not a tool I use. For components I'd always use a joint because you should try to avoid capture positions in the timeline as they are not as efficient as joints.

Re: Align tool reduced functionality

HughesTooling — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 07:53:25 GMT

@grahmart wrote:

Hybrid. I am separating individual pieces from die assemblies for 3d scanning and ordering replacements. So there is only the individual body with nothing to joint it to (cannot joint to origin).

Have you got an old design where you used align on a body with rotation? What happens if you try editing the align now, does it show the rotation or reset the align and remove the rotation?

OK, Something weird. After playing around aligning components I switched back to bodies and now I have the rotate option of bodies!

Re: Align tool reduced functionality

HughesTooling — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 16:52:42 GMT

After restarting Fusion Align gives me the option to rotate bodies so not sure what was up before?

Re: Align tool reduced functionality

pkomatlapalli — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 07:43:30 GMT

Hi @grahmart ,

Did the info from @TheCADWhisperer and @HughesTooling help answer your question?

If it did, it’d be great if you could click the "Accept Solution" button so others can easily find it too.

If you’re still needing more help, feel free to share an update here. The community will be happy to jump in with any next steps to help you get where you need to be.

Best,

Pavan Kumar| Community Manager

Re: Align tool reduced functionality

grahmart — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 07:49:25 GMT

If you actual read their "info" they're mostly as confused as I am as to why sometimes rotate is available during align and sometimes not

Re: Align tool reduced functionality

HughesTooling — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 08:01:15 GMT

@grahmart It seems to work OK for me now. The only time I see it not give the rotate option is if you select a face rather than one of the points on a face.

If I pick two point like this it works but if by mistake you select the face for one of the selection you don't get the rotate option.

EDIT. The same goes for aligning to the origin, you have to make sure you get the square target around the origin point and a point on the body's face.

Re: Align tool reduced functionality

grahmart — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 23:15:53 GMT

I'm confused how you've gone from admitting restarting fusion or switching back and forth between bodies and components changes this behavior for you to i must be selecting wrong.

As I mentioned in my first post I am using the square snap but it will not snap to anything but front/ back when hovering over the origin. This seems to change depending on the project with others only snapping to top/ bottom and it doesn't matter which snap point on the body i pick

Previously hovering over the origin white dot snap point would allow selecting different orientation for the white square to snap to much the same as it does when hovering over or changing angle of view of a snap point on a body corner