Moving a joint to move a whole component

[lure23]

I must be missing something.

Tried to attach a joint together to the foot of a solar panel model (from GrabCAD). After import, I moved all the bodies under a common component, to be able to move it as one.

Now, attaching this joint insists in sticking to the subcomponent, and will only move it, not the whole panel. 

Tried cut-pasting it to the upper component. Fusion 360 seems to offer this possibility, but it doesn't happen in practise. The joint remains moving the leg only.

Proceeded by simply using 'move' and saying bye-bye to the clever and precise world of joints. Next time, I would like to know where I went wrong.

[innovatenate]

Hi Asko,

It sounds like you may want to the sub-components of the sub-assembly to act in a fashion where they are "welded" or "shrink-wrapped" together. Fusion 360 is very "flat," which is very different than the "usual" MCAD behavior that I am accustomed to. Only the joints/relationships are used to determine the motion of a component. The tree structure in the browser is overlooked. You'll note that if you ground the top "branch" of the subassembly, the "sub-components" can still be moved/dragged in the workspace.

One way you can get around this issue is to create a multi-body component, that collates the bodies of the multiple components into a single component. Another option is to use the combine feature to create one component from many. The latter option would be my first choice.  

This may be easier to demonstrate with a specific model. Let me know if this helps or if you have other questions. I am very interested to hear more feedback on this topic.

Kind Regards,

[lure23]

Thanks, Nate

You are right - I was truly expecting the components to be 'welded' together, and I think there is reason to expect so. If I use the 'move' command on the higher component level, it moves all of the subcomponents together.

There are too many workarounds and unintuitive workflows (to me, at least) in Fusion 360 already, on the alignment / snapping / joining section. Instead of suggesting a way to fix this, I'm just saying it's a problem. I'm getting tired of this, and considering whether Inventor really is the tool I should be using in the longer run.

Fusion is for making glass vases. Without exact measurements.

[kgrunawalt]

We will introduce an easy way to "weld" any groups of components together without joints in the upcoming September release. We also plan to improve the alignment process.

The move components command does treat a subassembly as a welded unit if the root of the assembly is selected. Otherwise, the kinematics is very flat.

There is a lot of good that comes from flat, joint-based kinematics; but we acknowledge that this is an adjustment. We are working to make "welding", moving, and aligning more convenient and obvious.

-Katrin Grunawalt

[lure23]

Sounds splendid.