Question about scaling material size, while maintaining product size.

[iworshiplemons]

Greetings! 
I'm a fabricator and I've been slowly brute-force teaching myself fusion for personal projects, because I like being able to "build" the thing before cutting up a bunch of steel. I'm also hard-headed and I'm crap at watching hours of youtube "how to" videos to try to extract the 5 seconds of audio that explains the one thing I can't really explain how to ask.

So I modeled a dump hopper skeleton out of 2.5" square tubing, but now that I've completed the design and I'm thinking about it, I think I went overboard. Is there an easy way to change the 2.5" to 1.5" square tubing, while preserving the final dimensions of the product? I found the "scale" function, but obviously that also scales down the final size from 5.5' to less than 4'. I'm not terribly sure I'm explaining very well, but I'm hoping one of you fine folks has an answer! I'm not sure what I'd need to submit screenshot-wise, so I just gave you some wild guesses. 

Cheers,
Jon

[jeff_strater]

It is possible to design so that you can do exactly that.  This, in fact, is exactly what parametric design is all about.  The way to have done this would have been to create a user parameter for tubing size, and set it to 2.5.  Then, when you create your tubes, you would have used that parameter.  Then, it would have been easy to switch that to 1.5 and everything would update.  It takes some diligence to do that, however.  I cannot tell from the images how you constructed your tubes.  Did you use Pipe, or did you draw a rectangle and extrude it?  You might have to go back and edit every Pipe feature, or every sketch to adjust the sizes.

[iworshiplemons]

Thanks for your quick reply!

So... I actually almost never make my own items, I almost always just go to McMaster Carr and find the thing I want, then download the model and adjust to fit. So for every single one of these tubes I downloaded one 3ft low carbon steel rectangle tube in the thickness I plan on using, and used the "press/pull" tool to size close to what I wanted. I then applied all the angles and placement I wanted, then used "split body" and whichever face made sense to make the final "to size" cuts after I had made the joints.

[TheCADWhisperer]

@iworshiplemons 

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

[iworshiplemons]

Absolutely, here it is! I noticed after I tried the "scale" function that my joint markers are out of place now, but using the "inspect" tool shows the proper dimensions, so hopefully I didn't screw anything up. Total overall width should be just a hair over 66 inches - the very top rear bar is exactly 66 inches long, but the mitered corners add a little bit. 

I'm obviously self-taught and learned just by playing around, so please don't hate on my probably bad practices too much!

Cheers.

Jon

[jeff_strater]

thanks, @iworshiplemons - downloading stuff from McMaster-Carr is certainly a valid workflow, but, in this case, it might make your goal a lot harder, since there is no parametric recipe to edit.  You might be able to do some editing using Offset Faces, to reduce the size of your tubes in just one direction, but I suspect that will be more tedious than just starting over.  Because you've done it once, it will be easier the second time.  Not much consolation, I know...

[iworshiplemons]

No worries, I appreciate it. Disappointing, but won't be the first time I've had to throw away an entire design and start again because I did something stupid near the beginning.

Before I learned about "paste new" I went to great effort to model the bed I wanted to build for my bedroom, only to find that when I inserted the holes I wanted for mounting power outlets and such, it drilled holes in all of the pieces I'd copied from. That was also upsetting.

I'll do some reading on parametric design and hopefully avoid future issues! Thanks for your replies.

[jhackney1972]

You may get some use of this parametric square tube section.  It is fully controlled by the parameter table and has Joint Origins built in for assembly on each end.  Please note one end angle is labeled with "Red" in the parameter name and it matched the end angle with the Red color.

Save this as an external file and add them as needed, making sure to Break Link.  Breaking the link will add a separate parameter list with a modified name so I would label them to match in the Browser.  Model attached.

By the way, the length parameter controls the total length of the tube including miters.

[iworshiplemons]

This is fantastic, thank you very much! I just sat down to start redoing it, so I am going to incorporate this immediately.

Many thanks.

Jon

[jhackney1972]

You are welcome.  Just a note to you, if you need a reverse angle end, just enter a negative end angle parameter.