Mirror tool update, flip pattern of component instances.

[petrol_junkie]

Hi.

I´m looking for the ability to mirror without making copies of the choosen components.

Imagine having a large assembly with a lot of components that are symmetric on each side of a plane, the only thing that is mirrored is the pattern itself. (See picture below.)

The circular pattern in such a case is just a poor workaround, cause it has to be symmetric in two axis.

Theese are screenshots from my computer at work, Solidworks 2014.

Parts circled in blue are the "original" ones and the ones in red are "mirrored".

As you can see the layout of the parts has been mirrored and not the parts themselves. This is extremely useful for slashing the design time, having to manually copy, drag and place - sometimes even making new joint origins is just not the way to go. (Of course is the mates, joints, mirrored as well.)

Something wort noting is that this keeps the quantity in the BOM correct as well.

Did post this at the support forums, if you feel the need to get some more info:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-design-validate/mirror-parts-in-a-assembly-for-symmetric-d...

Picture below shows the option to reorient parts individually, if there´s a need.

 

[lichtzeichenanlage]

I think this "assembly style mirroring" would be a nice addition to the faces/bodies/components mirroring. 

[JYZMT]

Just found this,

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-design-validate/tip-mirror-body-workaround/td-p/7323327

Which looks like an excellent almost work around, and allow me to mirror - albeit at the very end of my work flow....If you patten the component, when you scale it to -1, it also flips the original component. Not great. BUT if you copy, then "Paste New", then scale, then change in the parameters to -1, you get a mirrored component, complete with sketches nested inside. I don't think it is then an instant I'm afraid, because paste new does not appear in the time line as paste/copy does. To be honest paste new is a bit confusing. I've not got to the bottom of the logic behind it yet. But maybe this helps.

[chmed]

Yeah. Just look at what happened to the mounting holes for these audio jacks when I mirrored about that mid plane.  

What would help even more, perhaps, is a way to rectangular pattern about a face, centerline or even point.  In this case I used mirror because I was working on spacing between components while keeping them centered on the panel.  

[lichtzeichenanlage]

But mirror is a part of the create menu, so it does what it should do. And again: It would be nice to have such tools for assemblies, too.