Is This A Good Design Strategy?

[jagboy2013]

So, being new to Fusion, I've done my first design, and probably made almost every mistake possible.  I'm now ready to scrap what I have, and do it over, hopefully cleaner.  The below outlines what seems to me a good strategy for parametric designs:

1) Always, always, ALWAYS make components, right from the start.

2) Create a single "global" sketch (or at least the bare minimum number of sketches) which, to the extent possible, defines the critical dimensions and relationships between the components in an assembly.  When creating the components, either use this sketch directly to create features, or project entities from that sketch onto a sketch contained within the target component.

3) Avoid, as much as practical, projecting features of one component to create features of another component.  This means planning ahead, to avoid backward references among the components.

4) Don't worry about the position in which a component is created, as it can be moved to another position when adding joints to build the assembly.  Instead, create the components in whatever position makes it easiest to properly create the features (i.e. - see #1).

5) Projecting from sketches seems the safest thing to do, since sketches will not change on their own.  Projecting from faces is probably the next best thing.  Projecting from edges is starting to get a little "fragile", and projecting from vertices is about the worst thing to do.

I've used this approach to start re-creating my design, and it seems to be working well so far, greatly reducing the number of dependencies between the components, which HAS to make the whole design more robust.

Does that all make sense?  Anything major I'm missing?

BTW - One thing that seems missing, or I haven't found out yet how to do it.  In Solidworks, when I've made sketch changes that broke down-stream features (i.e. - by changing a feature that some other feature relied on), I was generally able to "fix" the broken sketches by going in and, for example ,re-attaching the dangling entities in the downstream sketch to the new feature.  Can this be done in Fusion?  Seems to me when this has happened in Fusion, all I could do is delete and re-create the broken features, which creates more problems further downstream, resulting in a cascade of changes/fixes/change/fixes....  Hopefully the above rules will make this less common, but still seems much harder to resolve these problems in Fusion than in Solidworks.

Regards,

Ray L.

[Beyondforce]

Hey @jagboy2013,

Design strategy depends on the design outcome. There are many ways to achieve the same results.

1. You should know RULE #1: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/post-your-tips-and-tutorials/fusion-360-r-u-l-e-1-and-2/td-p/6581749

2. Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip8J2Y2L5tk

3. If you you need specific help, please create a screencast: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/post-your-tips-and-tutorials/tutorial-how-to-create-a-screencast/td-p...

We are here to help, don't be afraid to ask 🙂

Cheers / Ben
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[innovatenate]

That is a pretty great list of the common "gotcha's."

I would add:

• Use the capture position command after moving a component to save a components new position in the timeline
• Activate components when editing them. This will simplify the timeline and make sure that features are added to the correct component's "timeline".
• When you move backward in time (editing a feature), the timeline marker will move and features created after that point in time may not be available. It does help to plan accordingly and try to minimize dragging features around in the timeline. Especially, if you are not aware of all the dependencies that may be involved with moving the feature.

Today, there is no way to repair broken projected sketch geometry unless it is missing the base plane. You can reassociated a base plane. However, if a sketch has lost association to the originating geometry, breaking links or deleting/re-creating is the best way to repair. If you can work around projected sketch geometry by using parameters, that my increase the stability in the design (if you're having difficulty with it). 

 I hope that helps. I'm definitely going to borrow this list! Thank you for sharing it! 

[TrippyLighting]

A very save way to "link" geometry or rather dimensions are user parameters or dimension names in general. These are timeless and when used wisely this is very powerful.

[macmanpb]

My last project i have used parametric design only. No projecting, no sketch dependancies. Each part was created at the same origin and then joint to the end position. Each sketch is parameter driven. The advantage was a incredible fast design and no crashes at all!

if you use projecting or referenced sketches fusion recalculates the design in a linear manner, which means fusion needs to wait for each reference is calculated before then the next step can processed. This is a time sucker.

Without references at all fusion can calculate the design parallel, which is even faster and for large designs the best way for me.

Ok, creating the design is more complex but the result counts! Changes on thouse designs are fast and less stress with lost references (yellow sketch timeline icons), cached features and broken assemblies 😉

One #Rule i would add: Name your stuff! 😉 @TrippyLighting has mentioned!

[jagboy2013]

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@macmanpb wrote:

My last project i have used parametric design only. No projecting, no sketch dependancies. Each part was created at the same origin and then joint to the end position. Each sketch is parameter driven. The advantage was a incredible fast design and no crashes at all!

if you use projecting or referenced sketches fusion recalculates the design in a linear manner, which means fusion needs to wait for each reference is calculated before then the next step can processed. This is a time sucker.

Without references at all fusion can calculate the design parallel, which is even faster and for large designs the best way for me.

Ok, creating the design is more complex but the result counts! Changes on thouse designs are fast and less stress with lost references (yellow sketch timeline icons), cached features and broken assemblies 😉

One #Rule i would add: Name your stuff! 😉 @TrippyLighting has mentioned!

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I can see great benefit to using parametric design, but it would be incredibly cumbersome to do EVERYTHING that way.  But, perhaps use parameters for the most important features, and project only minor features, like holes, where things are required to line up perfectly.  I'll have to find a happy medium, as projection seems to make the design a bit to "brittle".

Regards,

Ray L.

[macmanpb]

@jagboy2013 Yes it is a lot of work to define the hole design with parameters, but you have the ability to change what you want and the hole design follows that changes (Requires you have used variables clever).