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Ability to reference Driven Dimensions

Ability to reference Driven Dimensions

I have a driven dimension in a sketch, which I would like to be able to use in a calculation for another parameter, but there is no way to reference this.  It does not show up in any way under the "Change Parameters" dialog or have any named reference that I can see.

248 Comments
JBerns
Advisor

Stormychel,

 

I completely understand the limitation. I have been frustrated by this on a number of occasions.

 

Regards,

Jerry

scottmoyse
Mentor
That tells a very insightful story about which direction the product team thinks they should develop the product. It doesn't look good at all with respect to them delivering on the needs of their users.
Anonymous
Not applicable

True... the worst of all is that this is not a big request, I am sure these driven dimensions exist somewhere in the variables, and it's a mystery why we don't get to use them...

 

GRSnyder
Collaborator

stormychel: the worst of all is that this is not a big request, I am sure these driven dimensions exist somewhere in the variables, and it's a mystery why we don't get to use them...

 

I wonder if that's actually true.

 

Once you can reference other dimensions, then no dimension is really a fixed quantity. For example, one clearly pathological setup is A being set to "10mm longer than B" and B being set to "10mm longer than A". Even when the definitions of all dimensions are potentially consistent, I would imagine that the general case still requires a solving process since the interactions among dimensions are potentially complex.

 

The solver cannot just be restricted to the dimension domain, either. Dimensions affect sketches and features, so a reference dimension can "escape" out of the dimension system and influence sketch and feature geometry. Then those entities themselves get reference-dimensioned and the whole solution process recurses back into the dimension domain. It seems like a potential hairball.

 

I read somewhere that Fusion 360 ditched the old constraint engine used in Inventor and replaced it with something more modern. It does seem to work more smoothly than Inventor's version, though it's superficially very similar. But I bet it's lacking the infrastructure that's needed to support referenceable driven dimensions. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that the constraint engine needs significant expansion to properly support this feature.

 

"This is a really important feature, but it's hard to implement and we need to lay some groundwork first," seems like a pretty defensible answer. If this is the actual impediment, I wonder why Autodesk won't just say that. 

Anonymous
Not applicable
They have said that. However all engineering cad programs are complex and
hard to code. That is why they hire professional programmers lol. If you
can't figure out how to check for an infinite loop and offer options to fix
it then don't bother marketing your program to engineers. This program is
only for hobbyists until they implement this basic feature.
tiktuk
Advocate

The smallest update on this from them would go a long way 😐

I call semi-bull**** on it being hard, not because I think it'd be easy to tack on (I'm sure it'd be a big deal because I suspect they didn't plan well and have a lot of spaghetti and bad data structures), but because handling potentially cyclical dependencies in a constraint solver is a long-since solved problem and with the right software architecture, it should be almost free to implement

 

I imagine that the situation is that they started with something very straightforward and then started tacking things onto that and onto those and so on and now it's an intractable mess

tiktuk
Advocate

Yes, it's not like this isn't solved in general, even in some of their own products.

 

I wonder if there is a way to get their attention. Maybe make a collection of use cases that would be solved much easier with this ability. Or in a competing application with the ability. We could make a thread in the forum with this.

 

Anonymous
Not applicable

I'm both glad and sad to see so many people really needing this function. 

 

Missing this is the ONLY reason I need Inventor at work instead of Fusion. They are both by the same company but I think Autodesk really wants to push Fusion as being Inventor's successor. Not right away, but I think they have a roadmap somewhere that has Inventor phased out between 5-10 years from now. Why? I think mainly because the Mac is getting more and more popular, and they are building Fusion on a codebase that is not really OS-dependant, unlike Inventor, which means that if Linux finally breaks trough on the desktop (probably in the shape of a green robot), they can easily make Fusion available there as well.

 

So Autodesk, please listen to your users, we REALLY need this function to be able to take Fusion 360 seriously, and as you know, we, the users who give feedback and test new functions in Fusion, are the ones who can make or break your product!

 

Anonymous
Not applicable

Maybe I can push it over the edge.  Smiley Tongue I definitely would want this as well.

i.fanariotis
Contributor

It would be nice if the driven dimension could be use as a reference in other dimensions. lets say you project a line from a sketch to another. Put a driven dimension on the projected line and use it as a reference in the dimension of another line in the sketch and adding or subtracting 10mm for example. So when you changing length of the projected line to it's sketch the other line will changing automatically.

Tags (4)
Anonymous
Not applicable

+1 on this. Any chance on an update from autodesk? This has been years now..

promm
Alumni

I want to let those of you on the this tread know that reference driven dimensions is still in my backlog.  Over the last year we have put a large focus of our efforts on fully constrained.  Now that it's released, we are making progress on other items in our backlog.  To set proper expectations, there are still other items in front of this.  Dragging bugs, CV splines, projection issues to name a few, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

 

Cheers,

 

Mike Prom

GRSnyder
Collaborator

Nice to hear - thanks for the update!

tiktuk
Advocate
Great to hear, thanks for the heads up ☺️ !

It makes a world of difference just to know you have it in mind!
JBerns
Advisor

Thanks for the update, Mike. Appreciated.

 

Regards,

Jerry

ylevine
Advocate

👍

colin.smith
Alumni
Status changed to: Future Consideration
 
wilsonbrett85
Participant

This would be huge.

andrelucasf1803
Community Visitor

Oh man, I need that feature like right now...

Great to hear it's coming at some point though.

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