Sheet Metal - Edit Rules proposal

[patrick.miller]

We have received a lot of feedback related to sheet metal rules. We’ve heard from you in the forums, internal users, and through formal interviews that creating and managing rules is not as obvious as it could be. Here are a few things we are working on to try to address this.

The first change is to add icons for Edit Rule and New Rule. The icons display when you hover over a rule name. The commands would still be in the right-click menu. The icons make it more discoverable and quicker to access. We’ve also changed the name of “Duplicate and Edit Rule” to just “New Rule”.

We also plan to improve the edit experience. When you edit a rule, an Edit Rule dialog is displayed next to the Sheet Metal Rules dialog. This is more consistent with the Appearance and Materials experience you may be used to. The Save button is also more discoverable in this dialog. And you’ll have a Cancel button if you want to discard your changes.

We hope this changes make it easier to create and define sheet metal rules. I’m always interested in your feedback on this or any of the sheet metal commands.

[TravisJoe]

Thanks, this is looking great! It will help shut me up 🙂

[contentcreators]

Fusion 360 Sheet Metal Preview Developers,

1)

Having used Autodesk Inventor from its inception, I was hoping Fusion may have a similar (or easier) sheet metal interface and commands.

I found the Sheet Metal Rules editor to be similar to Inventor, but was surprised to discover that the parameters are not associative or listed. In Inventor, the sheet metal rules are accessible int he Parameters command. Not so for Fusion. In Inventor, a single edit to Thickness results in associative parameters being updated as shown in the image below.

In Fusion, the user must edit each value. Not all users build these parametric associations. Will parameters be considered for a future release? Will they be accessible in the Change Parameters command? Yes, you would need to manage parameters for each sheet metal rule. Challenging.

2)

As far as selecting the sheet metal rule, would it be useful to add a sheet metal rule drop-down list in the dialog when creating a flange? This rule choice should only be available when creating a new flange from a sketch. Or perhaps when choosing New Body or New Component.

3)

Editing the sheet metal rule assigned to a body/component must be made easier. Perhaps you could use an interface similar to Physical Material and Appearances. Open the Sheet Metal Rules editor and then drag and drop the style on to the body/component that you want to change.

That's all my thoughts for now on Sheet Metal Rules. Keep up the great work.

Regards,

Jerry

[nvanlaar]

1)  Yes, the thickness needs to be a parameter and there should be the ability to put in standard formulas for the rules.

2)  I agree with this idea.

3)  Drag and drop would be pretty sweet for changing rules on components.

[patrick.miller]

Hey guys,

Thanks for the feedback. This is exactly the type of info we were hoping to get with the preview and forums. Here are my thoughts on your list:

1) We plan to make "thickness" more available in Fusion in a future preview (hopefully around May). There are 2 places you'll see this in the future. The first is when defining rules, you will be able to use the rule's thickness to define the values for other fields as you describe. We also will make thickness a read-only parameter in the parameters table when a rule is used. This will allow you create features based on the thickness (create a cut with depth = thickness).

Right now, we do not plan to make all the fields available in the parameters table. We felt this would overload the parameters table with fields that are infrequently used. Unlike Inventor, Fusion could have multiple components and multiple rules in a single design.

2) This was discussed when we added the sheet metal option to the New Component dialog. It certainly makes sense when creating a new component using the flange command. I think this warrants future consideration and I'll add it to the list. It's a long list tho, so I cannot say when you might see this.

3) Drag and drop is not in the plan now but we will make re-assigning a rule easier. The plan is to let you switch rules through the browser. We have a release planned for mid-April that will have this functionality.

Let me know what you think.

[Anonymous]

Dear Patrick,

please see my thread: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/preview-functionality/my-opinions-on-sheetmetal/td-p/6987253

It could be of help talking about the overrides to use as default in the edit rules dialog.

Thank you

Marco