Joint Symbols in Random Places

[pkirby_personal]

I've got an air cylinder that I made as an internal component and it has a sliding joint for the piston.  When I moved the air cylinder to a different part of the drawing, the joint symbol for the sliding joint remained out in space where I originally drew the component.  It's not to annoying right now but as this model gets more complex I think it's going to make a mess of keeping track of which joint symbols control which joints.  How do I get the joint symbol to stay with the component as I move it around?  Thank you for your help and here's a link to the drawing   https://a360.co/3xOkYcc

[laughingcreek · Accepted solution]

The joint symbols aren't in random places.  they are exactly where you put them.

in the circumstance of the component pictured below,  what you did was move the body with in it's component, not the component itself.  every thing else about the component stayed in place.

[laughingcreek]

in general, a design of this nature should have only one component pinned.  there should be no additional pins, unpins (if you need to unpin something, delete the pin from the time line), position captures, moves, or as built joints in the time line (well, maybe as built, if the component was actually as built).

there are times when all those things are useful,   but they are just going to cause you problems here.

there are only 2 viable ways to position components relative to each other.

1- build them in place and use an "as built" joint

2-use a regular joint (deleting any resulting position captures right after applying joint)

all other ways lead to touble.

[jeff_strater · Accepted solution]

There are two things that I saw that are leading to this:

1. As-Built Rigid Joint.  Because you are not picking any actual geometry for this kind of joint, the joint icon is placed at the component origin of (I think) the first component (in this case, it doesn't matter, because the origins are the same):
   
   so, for components whose body geometry is located away from their origin, this will cause the icon to be, also, located away from the geometry.
2. For the Revolute joint, the icon is placed in the "correct" location at the time it is created:
   
   but, then, the next feature is a Body Move, which moves the body away from its home location.  If, instead, you used Component Move, the joint icon would move with the components

[pkirby_personal]

Thank you all for answering, I greatly appreciate your help.  It's pretty obvious that I know enough to be dangerous and make a cluttered mess.  I've got 20 years experience with AutoCAD 2000 that I can do very easily and also am pretty decent in Sketchup but the Fusion360 design process & design history throws me for a loop (I didn't even realize that I was only moving bodies).  

If you guys don't mind...I've got a few more questions:

1) A lot of the "move" commands were just for experimenting as I'm trying to figure out the design.  Is it possible to turn off capture history during these "brainstorming style" moves (or another best practice)?

2) What's the best way to salvage / cleanup this design?

3) I'm still trying to wrap my head around when it's appropriate to use bodies vs components.  What should I be doing differently with my organization of bodies / components:

Organization of Current Model

Table Base (Component)
-8020 Aluminum (Body)
-Mounting Tab (Body)
-Steel Base (Body)
-Vacuum Table (Body)

Air Cylinder Assembly (Component)
-Air Cylinder Bracket (Body)
-Air Cylinder (Component)