Can't delete bodies because of 'references' in the timeline? Help!!!

[drew]

OK. I'm drawing a deck.

I first made my sketches and then extruded the different parts of the building, concrete slab outside the door, and wall/window features.

I extruded the *perimeter* decking boards as individual Bodies.

I then created a new sketch on the edge plane of one of the perimeter boards.

I then needed to extrude the sketched inner decking boards to the other side, ending at the far perimeter board.

BUT-

There is an area where the perimeter comes inside the main rectangle shape of the deck. 

So, I extruded the inner planks all the way across this obstacle, and used the deck perimeter sketch to extrude>REMOVE the inner boards, creating new Bodies.

This left Bodies that are in this sort of pattern:

________  ___  ________

________  ___  ________

________  ___  ________

_____________________

_____________________

I can select and move, rotate, stretch ... whatever I want to them, but I can't delete them.

When I select those small Bodies and try to delete them, I get this message:

"This feature is referenced by other features in the timeline. Are you sure you want to delete?"

If I actually click to delete the selected bodies, the ENTIRE ROW of decking vanishes!!!! (Not just the chunk I had selected.)

Can I somehow tell Fusion to just delete those small chunks of deck? In other words - can I tell Fusion to CHANGE the 'references' to some other stuff?

If Fusion has created the "Body" entity, can't I get it to make all the Bodies independent?

AAARgh. SO many hours of work got me here, and now THIS is making it all worthless?

Please help...

[HughesTooling · Accepted solution]

When you made the extrusion that cut around the small rectangle why didn't you just sketch a rectangle and extrude cut the whole area rather than just a channel. Another option is select the body in the browser and select Remove from the right click menu.

Capture2.PNG

Mark 

[drew]

YAY!!!!

The "Remove" command works. 

BUT-

It is NOT available if you have more than one Body selected. You must select each body alone to get the command.

Anyone want to explain what the difference here is between delete and remove? 'Cause to me they're the same thing.

Is 'remove' being used to mean "make invisible in this drawing"? If it's just hidden is it still somewhere?

Or did it actually delete the bodies, and we just are not allowed to call it 'deleting' for some other reason?

Seriously, no small part of my battle as I learn to use Fusion is the way things are named.

[drew]

I didn't extrude>delete the whole unwanted rectangular area because:

1) I already had a shape drawn (perimeter planks) that would cut through the decking in exactly the right place. Why would I want to draw more sketches if that is true?

2) It's a natural assumption that if you cut a body into three bodies, that the leftover middle bit would be easily deleted. So I perceived no need to create a new shape with which to extrude.

[HughesTooling]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

I didn't extrude>delete the whole unwanted rectangular area because:

1) I already had a shape drawn (perimeter planks) that would cut through the decking in exactly the right place. Why would I want to draw more sketches if that is true?

---

You could just edit the sketch you had and add one line to make the closed rectangle to remove the whole area. Now you know you can't just delete this is the easiest way to get what you wanted.

---

2) It's a natural assumption that if you cut a body into three bodies, that the leftover middle bit would be easily deleted. So I perceived no need to create a new shape with which to extrude.

 

Delete removes the object from the timeline completely, remove only removes it after the remove feature. There is a request on the idea station to allow multiple selections by the way.

Mark

[drew]

You: "You could just edit the sketch you had and add one line to make the closed rectangle to remove the whole area. Now you know you can't just delete this is the easiest way to get what you wanted."

Yes, I see that this would work... if the only goal is to make the extruded cut. But it isn't the only goal in the broader sense of why you create many different sketches in the first place - organisation being among those reasons.

To use your method, I would then have extraneous lines in the sketch, which defeat the purpose of having only those elements in a separate sketch, since I use the layers of different sketches as forms to draw other sketches on, each needs to be ONLY the items of that 'category' or they become far too confusing - in this case, the sketch is of the "perimeter planks" and that extra line would be confusing when using that sketch to draw other elements of the deck that need to be drawn with the perimeter in view...

So yeah - it would work. But it is a 'work-around'.

To use the shape purely as an extrusion form for cutting, I would really have had to make a new sketch and call it "deck removal blank" (or something) so I could retain control of what is seen when as I work. Which now that I know, I will do - but it just seems like it shouldn't be necessary.

[Anonymous]

Thank you so much for the answer, I was really getting frusterated with a project i needed to have done very soon, so thank you so so much