Using appearance or colors to select components or bodies

[YanivBA]

 The idea came to me when I imported assembly file that was color coded which was great because each component type had a unique color and it's easy to recognize it visually.

What could be even better is option to be able to create Selection Set based on common colors or appearances, I have no doubt that Fusion can identify the colors so being able to see a list of colors that existed in the model and select according that should be the next step.

The concept is very similar to the way layers etc. or organized in Autocad, in fact in my business of Injection Molding the drawings are created using Autocad that is color coded (the lines) and usually everyone will use the same colors for same type of components, in the 3D environments it becomes the components that caries the same colors (usually).

[lucasproko]

Hey @YanivBA,

Have you discovered the Component Color Cycling Toggle? I believe it should offer the same functionality  you're suggesting, but please let me know if it doesn't do everything you hope it would.

Thanks!

[YanivBA]

Hi @lucasproko,

This is a nice function to help you visually recognize different components but it's not exactly the situation in my case. what I have is a design that I receive already with correct colors meaning that each color was applied to same type of components for example all the bolts has the same color and the same with pillars, holes, water lines etc.. this situation gave me the idea that it could be really great if I can create a Selection Set based on component/body colors/appearances, that might be even automated when importing the design.

I actually noticed something else that might lead to idea for another function, the Selection Sets from Model environment are not available in Animation environment, if we had both it could be very easy to select a full set of components for single step of animation and in my case I wanted to have it for a set that is based on same color 🙂

[lucasproko]

Ahhh, yes that makes more sense. Thanks for the clarification. 

In terms of automatically creating selection sets based off imported appearances, this does seem like an interesting idea, but might be a bit niche. Let's see if it gets some some support in here and we can further discuss it. 

For the shared selection sets between the animation and modeling workspaces, this is a known limitation and is something the team has been considering. Unfortunately, we do not have a team implementing new features for the animation workspace right now. When we do in the future, this will be a priority.

Thanks for your ideas!

[Anonymous]

I see this as being a tremendous help. 

SolidWorks offers a Power Select tool that allows you to customize selection filters.  

Seen Here:

https://www.cati.com/blog/2017/07/solidworks-power-select-2/ 

Color is just one of the filters.

[khmohib]

Sounds like we could use a feature like that. It would definitely be pretty good, especially for large scale designs.

[Art5]

BobCAD used to have this feature in the selection filters. I could select an individual color, or several colors, drag a selection window, and it would select objects that were the colors I specified. This is a great feature, and I used it all the time. I actually need to do this right now in Fusion, which is how I ended up here.