Component Origin location

[Anonymous]

One of the stated benefits of components seems to be it has it's own origin.

At creation the component origin appears to be coincident with the model origin and the component may be some distance away if designed in place.

How important or rather when is it preferable or perhaps even necessary to  have the component origin close to or on the  component ?

[laughingcreek]

In general, the model and component origins will be the same with top down design.  with bottom up, the sub component can be modeled about it's origin.

[jeff_strater]

There really is no real difference between building the main body of the component near its own origin, or away from it.  There are a few cases where having it distant from the body can cause problems (I think some Zoom All functions include the component origin, and some types of selections for a sketch plane will project the component origin as the sketch origin).

There is a workflow, often used in Automotive designs, where the entire vehicle is modeled with one global origin.  This is kind of a "modeled in place" workflow, and can be useful, but does require that the body of the component be far away from its origin.  This workflow allows you to use "As-Built" joints to assemble the model.  Other workflows require creating traditional Joints.

[Anonymous]

Thanks @laughingcreek and @jeff_strater

Found and interesting post by @HughesTooling where the component origin was jointed to another component which was orientated at an angle to ease sketching in place on an angled plane etc

Maybe a construction plane created at the same angle and place could have been used but it seemed like a good example of where a component origin might be useful

Link here Best Practice for Top Down Assembly Design and Component Origins

[chrisplyler]

Personally, even when I'm modeling everything in place...

...the first thing I do after creating a new component is to Joint it's origin into the appropriate place within the assembly, and THEN model it on it's origin there.

Now, the result is the same as if I had modeled all components separately, each on it's own origin, and then brought them into an assembly file and Jointed them all together.

It's not super important to do this, but I like it because if I save a component out into it's own file, it's on its origin instead of being somewhere out in space.

[Anonymous]

It certainly seems there are times that having the component origin somewhere on the component makes sense.

If there are no down sides perhaps it would be a good habit to get into for someone (like me) starting with Fusion.

One thing I did find was when selecting the component origin point for the first component of the joint it was better to  either turn off the visibility of all components or an easier way was to select the 0 origin point under the component origin in the browser. The reason is that even though all other origins are turned off when selecting the origin as the first component of the joint, more often than not it would pick one of the other components (somehow) and if it is the one you want to join to, it will becomes unselectable. (as it is already selected and can't be selected twice)

In HughesTooling screencast (msg 4 above) you can see where he turns his Component1 off prior to selecting the origin.

I was curious why, now I know.

[chrisplyler]

That's exactly right.

The benefit - for ME at least - is that if I save out a component into its own file, because it's an item that can be reused in other files as well, then the next time I insert it into another file, it comes in square and where I expect it, instead of somewhere off in space with a weird orientation.