Best way to scale design with multiple components

[Anonymous]

Hi there,

I'm new to Fusion 360, but I'm not sure if I'm following best practices here.

I'm designing a v2 of a phonebooth (view/download model + picture below) that will have variable door sizes. I'd like the whole model to scale depending on the door dimensions doorgapWidth and doorgapHeight.

I've made the parts for the walls (wood, ply) as seperate components, and then I've put these under parent "panel" components.

1. Is this a good way to manage the components? (I wasn't sure if I should use some kind of other grouping).

I've rigid joined the parts of the panels (wood, ply) to ensure that they stay together when the scale is adjusted. 

2. Is this this the best way to maintain scale for static objects? with joins like this? 

Finally, I'm stuck 🙂 Now I want to join the three panels together, and this is prooving tricky using the technique above, I can't seem to join "parent components" (or the whole panels). I can only figure out how to join individual components of the panel. I've played with rigid grouping, watched many videos and have had no luck.

3. How should I do this? 

this was V1!

[Anonymous]

Hi @Anonymous!

I do a lot of work with parametrized drawings/designs (we create custom road cases and shipping crates) so I think I can help.

I'll get back with you later once I get a good look at your design.

For your questions:

1. You made the walls separate components then combined them. This isn't my way of doing it, but it can work, so you did fine You will learn, if five people make the same design, they may end up with five different ways of doing it. You can leave the components seperate or combine them. Depending on what you need them to do, either way can work.

2. Using rigid joints : This is the exact method I use for our cases. As far as I have seen, this functions well as long as your joints are well placed. I also tend to use variables/parmaters for our joints because we work with different thickness of wood (1/4" to 3/4").

3. I will dig into your model and see if I can figure out why this isn't working for you. If I have the time (I probably will) I'll put together a screencast.

Hope I can help!

[Anonymous]

Hello again @Anonymous

I am looking at your design and first of all, I see you copied and pasted a lot of the bodies which is why a lot of your design is failing when the parameters are changed - when you paste, you want to use "Paste New" or create new panels using the Box primitive like you started with, otherwise, when you change the original (the body you copied from) it also changes the pasted bodies as well.

A few of your parameters are a little confusing (like plyHeight is actually the plywood thickness) so I may rename a few of your paramters just as I work on it - I will put your old paramter names in the comments.

Hopefully I can get to you a working design!

Just looking at this, it seems this booth will be square (never rectangular). Is this true?

Thanks!

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Whoa this was an adventure

Okay, I have attached here a (fixed?) version of your booth.

I noticed you had two parameters you hadn't used yet - booth height and booth width. I just left these alone.

You had a few expressions/equations in the primitives - I created variables for those so you can change them all from the Expressions menu.

I kind of started from scratch here after messing around a bit. Your joints were kind of wild, but I am sure you could say the same of mine. Plus, with the copy/paste of bodies you had, the joints hated updating after a paraeter change. this is no longer the case.

1. I defined the parameters, then used Primitive boxes like you to create the crossbars and the interior/exterior ply for the rear panel assembly. I used the parmaters on creation to help keep things clean.

2. Then, I created an empty top level component, and placed the bodies I had just created (the four crossbars and the two ply parts) into the component and changed those into components (so now each body is a component, inside the rear panel component, see the attached file). I used joints to attach them together.

3. I repeated this for the other two panels - the left and right. I did not use copy/paste - I just don't like how Fusion treats copy-pasted bodies. I drew each crossbar and ply peice new instead.

4. Then, activating the assembly, I created the two joints for the three panels.

I goofed around changing sizes and it seems pretty resiliant. If you need more help with this design or any others, feel free to post here some more (or PM me if you wanna do a phone call). I love figuring these sorts of things out.

From what I can see, your next step is defining the door (and hinge/swinging space), the top and possibly bottom of the booth.

Hope this helps!

[Anonymous]

Hey Autumn

You are AMAZING 🙂 Such exceptional help to a first time poster. Thank you!! 

Sorry for the delay in responding, I was having some flight/visa stresses today.

What you created works perfectly! I've studied the joints and parameters and I'm going to try recreate it tomorrow to learn. I wasn't sure what best practices were for parameter naming so even seeing how you did that is helpful! 

It does seem that one downside of not copy and pasting is that you have to re-do each joint, and you get more box primitives in your parameters (as each one is unique). 

Thanks so much again! 

[Anonymous]

Hey @Anonymous

Glad I can help!

It does end up with a lot of primitives, and clutters the time line a bit, so after I am done with each panel, I was grouping icons on the timeline (click, hold shift, click others, release shift, right click, choose group, you can't group groups though) to keep it clean. I was also activating the componenets as I created them, so the joints for each panel are only in the component they attach to.

As far as paramter names, you want something clear, but also short (especially if you have to type it over and over). So I usually shorten length (L) width (W) depth (D) thickness (T) and so forth.

Good luck, and don't be afraid to contact me if you have any mroe parameter (or other) questions.