[CLOSED] We want your feedback on sketching in Fusion

[helfenj]

Hey F360 Community,

I'm the Product Manager overseeing the Fusion sketch environment. I want to hear your ideas! Please comment below and let me know what you'd like to see - new features, fixes, comments on functionality, etc.

Overtime this post will be a living place to share out sketch roadmaps and listen for new ideas from the community. As we take up new projects we will create new posts to share ideas and get feedback on each specific idea as required.

I look forward to hearing your input and working with the community to continue improving the Fusion experience.

Thanks,

John

[Le_Bear]

How about ISOLATE for sketches ? It happens quite often, working inside a complex project, that I need to create a sketch on a component, or an offset plan, but after projecting the reference I need, all the components are just making it difficult to see what i am doing on that new sketch.

Being able to isolate sketches, at that point, would save time instead of going through all the components I need to hide. Knowing that the assembly I am working on is already isolated !

I don't know if that as already been said in this conversation, as it is a bit difficult to search with a single subject title.

[GRSnyder]

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@Le_Bear wrote: How about ISOLATE for sketches ? It happens quite often, working inside a complex project, that I need to create a sketch on a component, or an offset plan, but after projecting the reference I need, all the components are just making it difficult to see what i am doing on that new sketch.

I'd echo this as well - I spend a lot of time toggling the visibility of bodies while sketching.

However, the situation seems a bit different to me from Isolating at the component level. I normally do that when working on a component for an extended period and can focus on it without reference to the rest of the design. But while sketching, visibility tweaking is often a rapid-fire series of changes.

I think what I'd really like is a mode in which background bodies were only visible while a modifier key was held down. I'd like to be able to flash-visualize bodies in the middle of a sketch operation in order to pick up (and thus auto-project, which I use) specific reference bodies, then continue with the sketch-only display.

The underlying problem (that is, the reason that I am constantly toggling visibility and would like a better way to do that) is that sketch planes are nearly always parallel to existing geometry. So in the sketch view, you very commonly have edges of background objects, projected versions of background edges, and actual sketch geometry superimposed directly on top of one another. In theory, line color helps to show you what's what, but in practice that does not help much to unscramble multiple superimposed layers.

In addition, body colors are often perceptually close to the purple used for projections. I often find that I can't determine which edges have been projected without some detailed investigation.

[vinivaghani]

hello there, 

I think there much more option in TEXT command. 

> may write two line with different font size 

> there should option then we can write text like we write paragraph.

> when we write text there is rectangle around text, perhaps there should option then we we define that rectangle and text set according to that rectangle or visa-vars. 

> can we type 2D emojis shape or different 2D shapes (e.g. hart, round, diamond as font  )   

[CoverbeckH3BK4]

I disagree with supporting Emojis...

But some proper rich text formatting might be helpfull.

[vinivaghani]

no all emojis. only emojis which can convert in 2D line only. 

[Anonymous]

Hi... I have a small idea that might be handy in regards to entering sketch parameters.  Unless i'm mistaken you have to open the change parameters box from the modify menu first, then create the parameters then apply them in your sketch instead of physical dimensions.  Can you not add a way to create the parameter from in the sketch directly that adds it to the parameter table after the initialisation of it. Say something like entering 'Length=100' in the dimensions box on first use then you could reference it just by 'Length' after this as normal and also go into the parameters sheet and edit it too. hope this is clear enough to get across my point and idea. Many Thanx!

[Ceecis]

There is something, I don't know what, that makes it so dimension labels that appear when hovering dimensions sometimes stay stuck on the screen. The only way I've found to make them disappear without closing Fusion is to open a new document.

I don't know if I like the fact that horizontal/vertical constraints get removed when rotating a sketch with the move command. While it may be useful for them to be removed so that the sketch can rotate freely, I think I'd much rather have the constraints stay and the sketch to only be able to rotate by 90°. Having to redo the horizontal/vertical constraints after a rotation is kind of annoying. Perhaps using modifier keys during rotation would be the answer here. On the whole, I agree with the sentiment previously expressed by other users that it would be preferable if Fusion didn't choose for me what to do with constraints.

I wish there were more hard to sketch shapes available, such as parametric spirals. Using coils is clunky and cannot replace parametric spirals.

I wish it were possible to freeze splines (not fix, so they can still be moved) so they will retain their shape without having to go through a bajillion hoops to fully define them.

I ran into the need to annotate a sketch today while designing a toolbox tailored to my particular selection of tools and I found that it was impossible. Please make it possible.

It seems that adding modifier keys to the right click menu might help implement some of the suggestions made earlier in this thread about adding constraints and sketch tools to the right click menu for space mouse users. It is something I would likely use as a non-space mouse user too.

[carl.j.barker]

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@Ceecis wrote:

There is something, I don't know what, that makes it so dimension labels that appear when hovering dimensions sometimes stay stuck on the screen. The only way I've found to make them disappear without closing Fusion is to open a new document.

Move your mouse pointer over the browser and they will disappear, still a bug but not so bad. 

[andreCF68D]

Yes, I don't mean that handle snaps are useless, far from it.  There are plenty of uses for them.

What I means is that when one is changing a spline during the design, tiny moves can

cause things to snap to nearby lines unnoticed and then you have to spend some time trying to figure out

why you can't move things around anymore.

[andreCF68D]

 @GRSnyder,

Yes I love the *ability* to constrain things.   Often though, I find that I can't move a line or some other thing happens that is mysterious and invariably it boils down to some automatic constraint was created without my knowledge.

It's frustrating!  Sometimes I find myself dreading having to change a complicated sketch because there are all these constraints everywhere that I didn't add myself that make things a pain to deal with. I don't know what the best answer is and maybe it is different for everyone.  Auto-inferencing certainly helps with simple sketches.  When things get "real", it feels to me like it is a net negative.

Perhaps I'd address it in two ways:

1) Create a user setting that reverses the action of the ALT (?) key.  Right now, if you press ALT, it disables auto-inferencing.  Maybe it would be better for me if I could set it to  be disabled by default and pressing ALT enables it.  So, it never does stuff that I didn't ask for, but when I want a constraint, fusion can help me by auto-inferencing.

2) We also need a better way to understand which constraints apply to which entities.  There's something there already where clicking on a constraint dimly lights the entities involved, but it is not enough.  Trying to figure out which coincidence constraint to delete seems to be beyond mortal comprehension!  🙂

Regards,

Andre

[CoverbeckH3BK4]

You can hold ctrl to prevent inference when sketching.

[OceanHydroAU]

Hi John,

You've got an awesome job!  Is it possible at present for a sketch to inform an add-in when something changes?

I've described what I mean in detail here: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-api-and-scripts/add-in-user-parameter-driven-results-is-th... - along with suggestions for how it should work (if you don't already have this).

It would seem relatively trivial to implement, and would extend the massive power that is "parametric" to our add-ins.

[OceanHydroAU]

It would be nice if, when we measure something, there was a checkbox or button we can click so that the measurement we just made gets inserted into the sketch (so we can keep seeing it after we close the measure tool)

It might be a good idea to auto-expand the measure tool output as well - I've got a huge screen, and I see a tiny dialog box with miniscule scroll bars - for some reason, in the sketch environment, it makes us scroll.  It works OK in the solid environment (shows us everything, without scroll-bars):-

 

[helfenj]

@OceanHydroAU while you are in the measure dialog, after scrolling down to the result (comment noted on scrolling), you can click on the resulting value to copy it to the clipboard for pasting in the sketch. 

I know this is highly undiscoverable, but it is available.

Hope this helps,

John

[OceanHydroAU]

Hi John - yes - I saw that in the help tip, which is handy.  I'll give you a bit more context - I'm OK at math, so I can solve stuff like "parametric hub with arbitrary number of arms, and specific wall thickness between them" with judicious use of parameters:-

But I have the luxury of being my own boss, so that fact that took me 2 days is acceptable.  Some people just need to "get the job done", and they could solve these things "pretty close" by sticking a measurement into the sketch which they can see, then adjusting other things until that measurement hits what they're trying to get. 

The point in there is the "that they can see" part -making a change, and re-doing a measurement, over-and-over until it's right would be a lot easier if the measurement just stayed where they want it.

That's just an example - having parametric numbers where you want them is handy for a pile of reasons.

Just my 2c.  (note: I'm not an expert)

[kb9ydn]

If you're in a sketch, you could just add a driven dimension for the thing you want to measure, instead of using the measure tool.  It's far less obtrusive than the measure tool and is visible as long as you're in the sketch.  And even outside the sketch you can show any sketch's dimensions by right clicking that sketch in the tree and selecting "Show Dimension".

C|

[bob.s]

John, this is not a response to my post. This is the sixth time I have
received an incorrect response. Please check into this. Thank you.

[TrippyLighting]

@bob.s you are on a public forum in a thread you did not start. This is not a place where you can request for people to just respond to your posts. If you don't want to receive notifications for new posts, then you can unsubscribe from this thread.

[bob.s]

This post has nothing to do with me and it has happened for the eighth time
in the past couple of days. My post has to do with missing files. This is
becoming annoying as nobody is helping solve my problem.

[Anonymous]

Can you make it so text can be stored as a parameter and then used in a text field in a sketch. I'm hoping to engrave parts with a version name and it is quite a time consuming to update a name without this feature.