Basic Workflow Question about Part Reuse and Assemblies

[Anonymous]

Please forgive me for such a basic question but I am new to Fusion and have been a little self taught in 3D cad to begin with. 

My company is a Solidworks shop so I have some expirience with it. I like how I can create a part and reuse it in assemblies over and over again. I am having some difficulty with trying to do the same with Fusion and am wondering if it was designed to do that. 

For example. I want to use a bolt in my design. In Solidworks I would design the bolt as a part and then reuse the part over and over again either in the project I am working on, or on any project I add the part to. I can see how I can create "sub parts" in Fusion and my design automatically moves to an assembly. But how do I design a part that is reusable in multiple projects? And a corrallary is how do I bring in my Solidworks designs in a way that allows me to reuse their partsi in multiple designs? 

I would also welcome suggestions for resources for learning these things be they online or books. 

[jeff_strater · Accepted solution]

Excellent question, thanks for posting it.  The good news is that you can re-use components in other designs in a way that today is not associative, but we are working even now to make that associative, and much closer to what you are used to in Solidworks.

Today, if you want to re-use a component, simply right click on it in the data panel, and choose "Insert":

This will bring the contents of that design into the active design:

Now, today, that Insert does not maintain associativity to the original design.  The contents of the inserted design are copied into your active design (if you expand the "+" in the timeline, you can see the features in that design).  So, if you edit the inserted design, the referencing design will not be updated.

However, as I said above, we are fixing that even now.  In our next major update, you will have the ability to externally reference a design associatively.

As for help and documentation, I would recommned just starting with the Fusion help menu:

And any additional questions can always be posted to this forum.

Jeff Strater (Fusion development)

[Anonymous]

Thank you fo the answer. It looks like Fusion is going to be exactly what I need. And the part reference as opposed to copy will be a welcome addition when it happens, but I think I can be productive without it. Thanks again.

[fritter63]

@jeff_strater

"However, as I said above, we are fixing that even now.  In our next major update, you will have the ability to externally reference a design associatively."

Just following up on this, I can' see an easy way to find release notes for all the versions, so has this enhancement occurred yet? If not, what is meant by "next major update"?

Would be 3.0 version? or just 2.1?

Thanks.

[HughesTooling]

Here's a link to Whats New. 

You can now insert a design into another design and to inserted part is linked to the original external design.

Mark

Edit not sure if the link above goes back far enough try this as well, product roadmap.