Assembly Extruded Cut/hole/fillet/etc.
Accepted solution
No, you are not doing anything wrong. Fusion today does not support assembly features. Somewhat surprisingly, we have not heard a lot of requests for this so far. I would recommend creating an idea on the Fusion 360 Idea Station for this, and see what kind of response it gets from the community. If enough others share your requirement, then it will become a priority.
Thanks for your post,
Jeff Strater (Fusion development)
Jeff Strater
Engineering Director
I have a whole list of suggestions I could make that have to do with assembly and a good number of other areas.
Heck, there are some I already have made that have gained no traction. There are some inherent disadvantages to how the Idea Station is currently structured 😉
However, the ability to have better access to linked components and assemblies is certainly high on my list. I agree with @Anonymous that the area of linked assemblies is certainly not currntly used to it's full potential.
@TrippyLighting, I agree on the use of referenced components and assemblies. You should be able to make changes from the top level. Believe it or not, this is high on our list, but it's a bit of a difficult problem to solve. I'll resist the temptation to explain why...
One point here, though, that I would like to make: There are two very different operations that are possible. Internally, we call these "Component Features" and "Assembly Features". The differences are a bit subtle, but important, and only show up if you have multiple instances of a component in your top-level assembly.
A "Component Feature" refers to a feature that is owned by the assembly, but which affects all instances of a lower-level component. Imagine that you have an array of instances of a simple block component:
If you sketch on the face of one of these, and draw a circle:
Then, do an Extrude Cut, a Component Feature will change the definition of the shared geometry by all of the instances of the component:
This is what you can do, today, in Fusion, if your components are all local to the design. If they are external references, you cannot. This is one project - to implement this for external components.
But, what I believe @Anonymous is asking for is what we call an assembly feature. In an assembly feature, the extrude only affects the instance it interacts with. Fusion does not do this today, but this is kind of what it would look like if it did:
This very accurately mimics a common manufacturing workflow. You buy instances of components, assemble them, then modify them in their assembly configuration. A good example is assembling a couple of standard plates, then drilling a hole in them to bolt them together. The holes are not necessarily in the same place on each plate, so they cannot be in the component itself. This is a separate project for us.
Hope that clarifies the differences for everyone.
Jeff
Jeff Strater
Engineering Director
This is a feature I would use and would like to see it implemented, and here's an example of a typical cut I would make, but fails.
Thanks so much.
So I know this is 3 years later but rather than making a new post I though I would try a response here first. Where are we on this concept? Being able to Assembly cut only particular instances of components in an assembly? This is a very common workflow if you ask me. I really want to drill a hole in only this instance via an assembly cut.
Please let us know if you have found a solution for this. To be honest, it is a matter of using this product or not in the long run.
@Anonymous My recommendation would be to not work with linked components if it is not absolutely necessary. I tought a class at Autodesk University covering reasons when and when not to use linked components. Here is a link to the handout.
If you don't work with linked components, some of the problems posted above can be addressed with the "configurations light" approach also described in the document.
@Anonymous wrote:
However I don’t believe that it solves my problem of not knowing I needed an assembly feature until after creating 12 copies that I initially believed would always be the same.
No, it certainly does not solve that and my suggestion was not intended as a replacement for the assembly feature workflow described above. It only helps in some cases and might bridge a gap until such a feature might be developed. I don't see that coming any time soon though.
As to why threads are marked as solutions. I sometimes do this if there's really not anything to answer anymore. If a thread contains a new idea it should be posted in the Idea Station.
no, assembly features (features affecting a subset of component instances) have not yet been implemented in Fusion. As far as I am aware, this is not on any near-term roadmap. Surprisingly, this issue does not seem to come up frequently among customers.
Jeff Strater
Engineering Director