Product Configuration in Engineering-to-Order Business

[Anonymous]

We are in engineering-to-order (ETO) business of modular buildings. So, we produce components which are look-a-like but also specific to customer order. It's a problem specific for all ETO businesses. What I want to accomplish is to make a product model which can be changed according to specific parameters and I could calculate the costs, make a BOM and 2D-drawings. A kind of all-in-one integration. So I tried to methods: 

1. Parametrical Modeling in Fusion 360 and using variables instead of fixed values.

2. Programming Interface and Python scripts.

The second approach is more preferable for my case as I see. I put some parameters and script builds a model. Then I use another script to export a BOM. But I have to make 2D drawings in visual interface because it is not available in API yet.

What approaches and stack do you use for such a case? If you are interested in this specific case I invite you to discuss.

[johnswetz1982]

Wouldnt you want to use Revit for something like this? That way both your drawings and BOM are updated automatically based on the parameters?

[Anonymous]

My goal is to a make an integrated model of a component not a whole
building. As I understand, Revit is for the building level, not for a
component of a building such as wall panels?

[johnswetz1982]

What specifically do you mean by wall panels? Glazing with mullions, Sheets of plywood on wood studs, lathe on CMU?

[Anonymous]

Here you can see what I'm talking about: https://a360.co/2LHNMM2

[johnswetz1982 · Accepted solution]

I dont know about the BOM and cost aspect in Fusion and am not sure how much of a variety you would need in your models that you would have to be working from almost scratch each time the way I would because I dont use scripting. I can see how you would like to automate this with scripts.

Seems that the Fusion API forum would maybe be a better place for this thread @seth.madore, or @Discussion_Ad  ?

Though more expensive, considering the industry you are describing I would consider looking at Revit. The link you posted would be a "Stacked Wall" Family in Revit if you want to try searching for that term. You may also be able to automate what you are trying with Dynamo. The added advantage is that it may add some value added to your product as your end product can be available to the Architect/Engineer/Builder/Owner to use in their building design.

[daniel_lyall]

@Anonymous  have a look at this https://apps.autodesk.com/FUSION/en/Detail/Index?id=6875959433916861257&appLang=en&os=Win64

Link to Dynamo Studio  https://apps.autodesk.com/FUSION/en/Detail/Indexid=74731490955641349&appLang=en&os=Win64

A proper data management tool like what John suggested would be of help to you. 

[johnswetz1982]

@daniel_lyall I meant Dynamo inside Revit (I just havent got the chance to use or mess around with it yet). I did not know Dynamo was also available inside Fusion which is nice. I would have been using the inport/export *.csv for parameters add-on which seems like a much clunkier version of Dynamo for what I need need in Fusion for part families of similar design intent. Nice to know. 

[daniel_lyall]

If it is a straight out hight/length, length or hight change you can just have a sketch what is set with user parameters you can just have the model constrained to the sketch.

[JesusFreke · Accepted solution]

I'm a big fan of programmatic design generation, where parameters are specified as part of the program, rather than being specified as part of the model.

However, I found Fusion's api to be less than idea for the style of programmatic design that I was used to from, e.g. OpenSCAD (which has its own problems, which is why I no longer want to use it!) . So I ended up writing a wrapper framework around fusion's api that allows for the sort of programmatic design I wanted to do. I don't know if it would be useful for the sort of things you're wanting to do, but feel free to take a look 🙂 I have it up on github, at fscad.org (forwards to the github page). It does offer support for 2 dimensional modeling, via boolean operations on geometric primitives.

Note: I don't fault the API or the designers of it. The style of programmatic design I want to do was obviously not the intended use case. There's nothing wrong with the api itself (well, in general. maybe a few small things ;)) -- and it's actually pretty amazing to have such an API available!