[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

[lemelman]

How about each sketch having it's own time-line that becomes visible when creating or editing a sketch.

[jeff_strater]

@lemelman - I hope it's OK to be honest here:  This idea of a "timeline for a sketch" is almost certainly not going to happen.  The very nature of a sketch is that the operations are not historical in nature.  The entire sketch solves as one unit, in what we call a "variational" solve (meaning no history, as opposed to the timeline solve, which is directed solve), where there is no operation precedence.  Also, this would likely be a case of "be careful what you ask for", because if we recorded an actual history of each operation in a sketch of even medium size would likely be several hundred items in length.  The only reason for having a timeline would be to be able to "edit" an operation.  I'm not sure what editing the creation of a line would look like, or editing a drag operation.

I don't mean to discourage creative suggestions here, just trying to be realistic about what is or is not likely to ever be implemented...

[Garret_H]

@jeff_strater totally reasonable. 

The only reason I personally could see a "timeline" of sorts is to capture major elements like mirror or pattern for easier in place editing. This really isn't a place IMO where design history needs to or should be captured - just easier to find and edit

1. Those items can currently be found by zooming way in - whether or not that's a challenge is driven by the complexity of the sketch. Mirroring of geometry is one item in particular that results in a visually  cluttered sketch space. If a mirror feature appeared somewhere as a feature reference (intuitively the "timeline" bar seems like the natural place") then one could select that and add or remove lines about that single mirror axis as the sketch grows in complexity. That action would actually hindered by a design history , since new lines couldn't be added to the mirror feature.

For mirror in particular a new color would be nice for mirrored geometry rather than dozens of individual constraint icons. Same with patterns.

[jeff_strater]

@Garret_H - yes, I agree.  I, also, can see the benefit of being able to edit things which are editable (pattern is a good example, I'd even include Project as a good possibility for edit).  Personally, I would prefer to see those items in the browser as children of the sketch, rather than in a timeline (again, emphasizing that they are not really history-based things).  I would use something like that, definitely.

[geneanthonyvelasquez]

Hello!

I'd like to import my dimensions/annotations from the model to the drawing just like in other CAD software (SW:Model Items, Creo: Show Model Annotations). This way you're saving time on drawing since you've already had your dimensions set up and in the correct datums from the model level. 

Keep up the good work guys! 

[Intuos5]

I think primitives may need some further shape definition. I often avoid trimming a sketch primitive (circle, ellipse & polygon) as it may break the radius of relation between the elements. By removing two or more adjacent edges and creating a gap in a polygon, the radius no longer works for the whole. Oftentimes, I would like that to be the case. The same goes for trimming circles twice.

Note that the dimension bug has been reported in the support forums.

[pcsentinel]

Hi, Text in Sketches seems to need a lot of work, including things like alignment, but one other thing that is a real pain (fror me at least) is the inability to store text as a parameter. I use parameters a lot when working, but I often need to emboss a word into a surface, having the text as a paramater would make this a lot easier.

Note I will post this in the emboss question as well.

[CoverbeckH3BK4]

I would like some way to differentiate between normal construction lines, and projected lines that are made into construction lines.

I often want to make projected geometry into construction lines so that I don't have to select a bunch of profiles when extruding, but then its hard to tell that the said geometry is projected.

[jeff_strater]

this is WAY off topic for this thread.  However, I am happy to say that this bug has been fixed.  Projected construction geometry now shows in the projected color, but the construction dash pattern:

[GRSnyder]

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@jeff_strater wrote: I...can see the benefit of being able to edit things which are editable (pattern is a good example, I'd even include Project as a good possibility for edit).

I have really been enjoying the new Manage Lost Projections UI. It works well. Now I want a plain old Manage Projections variant that brings up a similar dialog but with all projections listed instead of just those that are broken.

No doubt in many cases it would be overwhelming to see every little projected point and line segment. For projections that aren't broken, I don't really care so much about the individual elements as I do about the operations that generated them: this intersection, this projection of a face, this silhouette.

[kidd_milan]

This example and the attached images are taken from a project complex enough that I created a fully-defined "skeleton" sketch first to nail down the overall geometry before proceeding with the individual components.  I then project the relevant parts of the skeleton sketch as construction geometry into the component sketches and build off of the projections.

BUT the way I constrain my component sketches to the skeleton changed how well they updated when (unfortunately) the skeleton needed to be tweaked.  In the example below, I've built three components that are all constrained to the skeleton.  A fourth component, a loop of wire, is a sweep whose path follows an arc from each body (so the wire wraps around them). 

So I project the arc as a construction line from the sketches of those bodies, then create sketch arcs that follow them, and other arcs to connect them and make a complete path.  If I create the 3-point arcs and constrain the points to the projected construction arcs, it updates poorly (the sketch arcs don't move with the projections if the skeleton is updated).  If I create center-point arcs (with the centers coincident to the projected construction arc centers) and dimension them with the same radius as the projected construction arcs, it updates better.  Perhaps because there is only one coincident constraint (point to point) instead of 3 (all 3 being point on arc)?

If this doesn't make sense, DM me and I'll put together a clearer example and Screencast it.  Maybe this is difference is already a known quantity, and those better trained than I simply do it the right way.  But ideally either method would update smoothly.

Thanks,

Milan

[PrilTech]

You can select the axis from the tree or make it visible and click on it in the design window to constrain to.

(This automatically projects a line from that axis and constrains to it instead of the axis itself, but gives your desired result I think.)  

@lemelman @gazelemone

 

[Anonymous]

Disclaimer/Context: I have been using Fusion frequently (at least once a week) for many small and a few bigger hobby projects for about two years but only now decided to join this forum. The following is an accumulation of notable issues that I have encountered over time, some of them may have already been addressed. I've read some posts in this thread in an effort to avoid duplicates, but I didn't make it all the way through everything.

Problems that I've had while sketching --> Things I would like to see fixed

• Sketch size: at some point (number of figures and/or constraints), Fusion begins to hang for extended periods of time for seemingly simple operations. My understanding is that this is a well-known and generally unavoidable issue due to the constraint solving algorithms that are used. However, I believe that the impact could be offset in a significant portion of cases if Fusion were to recognize operations which do not require existing sketch geometry to be updated/recomputed (= can be treated as if the fix constraint had been applied). Examples of operations which, in my understanding, should not lead to updates of existing geometry are drawing new primitives as well as trimming/extending without crossing any sketch points that have constraints attached to them.
• Constraint solving failures (type 1): many times I've reached a state in which adding a particular geometry in a particular place (touching or intersecting other geometries) will cause the solver to change or even completely mangle all existing geometries in the sketch without observable reason. Using the fix/lock constraint on existing geometry does not prevent this alteration. When this happens, it is reproducible such that 1) I can save the project, restart Computer+Fusion, apply the same operation and the result will be the same; 2) I can delete and recreate adjacent/tangent geometry (recreation based on preexisting sketch points or construction geometry), apply the same operation once more and the result will be the same. Based on this (localized) reproducibility I believe this is the result of numeric instabilities. Unfortunately I have not been able to generate a minimal reproducible example for this. A workaround is to create a new sketch, project the previous sketch and continue from there. This workaround is undesirable, because the advantage of parameterized design is largely lost. N.B.: This is with auto-generated constraints only, no constraints had been manually placed.
  (In the past I have encountered cases where placing the offending new geometry reproducibly caused Fusion to crash. I have not experienced such a crash for a while and I believe that that issue has been fixed, but the issue of mangled geometry still exists to the best of my knowledge.)
• Constraint solving failures (type 2): occasionally I get "sketch overconstrained" errors on sketches where no manual constraints have been placed. There may be some misunderstanding on my part, but it all seems clear and consistent enough to me. My thinking is that when I draw sketch geometries without ever manually placing constraints, then (generated) constraints should only arise from alignments of the new geometry with principal axes (construction objects) or existing geometry. It follows that constraints generated this way are fulfilled by design, because they are only applied in the case that there is positive alignment. While the number of constraints may exceed the number of degrees of freedom, mathematically this iterative process of adding geometry should not lead to an unsolvable system. Again, this feels like numeric instabilities.

Features that I'd like to see

• I would like to see upgrades/extensions of the available sketch primitives. Examples: 2/3-Tangent circles can only be constructed tangent to straight lines; all other geometries (except points) also exhibit tangents that could be referenced. Tangent arcs can only be started from sketch points (open end points); however a tangent can be constructed anywhere on a sketch line (circle, spline, straight line midpoint, ...) and it should be possible to start tangent arcs from any such point.
• When starting a tangent arc from a point that is incident with two or more sketch lines meeting in the same point, there are multiple tangents to choose from and the tangent chosen by Fusion is unpredictable (except in the way that, more often than not, the chosen tangent is not the one intended by the user). In this case I would like to see a projection of the incident lines such that one can choose the desired tangent without ambiguity.
• I would like to see a sketch mode (can be toggled per entire sketch) in which, upon each creation of a new geometry, all line segments which are contained within another closed shape are trimmed. Or in other words, overlapping shapes are merged to form a single shape.
• Either generally or as a configurable option in Fusion preferences, turn off that Ctrl+Z/Undo deselects the current tool first before undoing the last sketch operation with the second press of Ctrl+Z. My primary use of undo is to revert accidental (mis-)placement of geometry. Therefore, it follows that I would want to continue using the previously selected tool in order to retry the failed placement. As of right now, I have to double-tap Ctrl+Z to undo a single sketch operation (this is silly when compared to other applications) folowed by a mouse click to reselect the tool I had been using beforehand.
• Disjoint sketch offset: use the offset tool on disjoint line/arc/spline segments. The minimum allowed offset (per direction) is determined such that the selected line/arc/spline segments form a contiguous path after applying the offset to each segment individually. If the selected segments are contiguous to begin with (and also, beyond offsets greater or equal to the minimum offset), this maps to the currently available offset feature; if the segments never intersect for any offset, the operation is invalid.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

[dirk.brewer]

Have to admit, I am somewhat new to Fusion360. But I started back in the day with the original Autodesk AutoCad v1.0 back in college.

I have one simple request: I would love to just do a parametric 2D sketch, and go straight to a 2D drawing (no phantom, but solid lines).

Why? There are times when I just don't need to do a 3D model. Just a simple 2D model and drawing will suffice and I just don't want to jump ship to another CAD software to get this done (I'm tired of learning different interfaces on various software).

[Anonymous]

I'm sure this has been discussed countless times, but being able to wrap text around a cylinder or other surface (so you can extrude/deboss/emboss) would be great to have.  I can't believe this isn't a feature already.  It is SO simple in Solidworks - create a sketch on a plane, click "wrap text" and choose the surface you want it wrap on and it is done.  Fusion needs this.

I know there is a work around using the sheet metal tool, but it really is a pain to try to fit in to my workflow and does nothing but increase time spent doing something that should only take a few seconds.  It is THE most frustrating thing about Fusion for me and my uses.

[changedsoul]

I have noticed when you "hover" over a constraint, it will highlight the geometry that it is tied to.

A nice improvement would be the ability to "select" the constraint and have the geometry "stay" highlighted. This way you can move the sketch around and see what it is tied to in the case where you cannot see the elements when you first hover over the constraint.

[brianreilly19]

I would love to see an option for bidirectional lines drawing added to the line drawing tool in Sketch mode. This would be a great little productivity improvement over the current method using midpoint constraints. 

BR

[brianreilly19]

How about adding a means for immediately setting the view to the current sketch plane? Just one click? 

BR

[brianreilly19]

The current method for creating Construction Planes can be very tedious, and slow. How about adding a feature that lets the user specify a plane with its origin coordinates in (x,y,z) and orientation as unit vectors on (x,y,z)? 

[brianreilly19]

I shouldn't have expressed that as "unit vectors." I meant to say "vectors" that specify the orientation.