Can't find "Edit Face" to covert solid to a T-Spline

[sprior913]

I'm just getting started and want to draw a simple solid box and then change one of its faces to a T-Spline to sculpt it.  I've seen a tutorial video which in the model workspace uses the Modify->Edit Face menu item to convert the face of a solid to a T-Spline, but after drawing a simple box and selecting one of its faces I only see Modify->Push Pull, not Modify->Edit Face.

Can someone steer me in the right direction?

[SallyYang]

As “Edit Face” only works in direct modeling environment without capture history. So you can right click the root node of browser and then switch to Direct modeling environment by clicking "Do not capture history"

    

Or enter create base feature environment by invoking the command in the bottom of "Create" menu.

Then you will find "Edit Face" command under "Press Pull" command in "Modify" menu.

[sprior913]

Thanks, now I can get to the Edit Face command, but when I select a face and choose edit face the OK button is greyed out and I can't do anything but cancel.  What am I missing?

Also, the link between the Edit Face command and Design History doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere in the online documentation or help videos - several hours worth of banging my head on the desk would have been avoided if it had been.  Maybe that's something to add?  I still don't understand WHY that is true, The knife videos seem to sculpt with design history enabled and the design history video itself uses it, so why did my really trivial example require shutting it off?

[sprior913]

I figured out that the OK button isn't available until you make some changes, so you can't edit a face just to convert it to t-splines and plan to make the sculpting changes later.  That doesn't seem obvious to me.

I'd still like to know why design history has to be completely shut off (so you lose all previous history) to use edit face.

[SallyYang]

You can enter "Create Base Feature" environment to invoke edit face, the operations inside this environment will not be captured but the history features in time line could be kept. 

The faces that created out of Create Base Feature environment could not be edited. If you want to continue capture history, you have to "Finish Base Feature".

[jeff_strater]

Thanks for the honest feedback, I understand your frustration.

Regarding parametric features (design history) and Fusion:  As you and others have noticed, we have not yet converted all of our features to be fully supported when capturing design history.  We have tried to prioritize the most commonly used features first, and will continue to make progress on this backlog for the next several updates.  We are interested in our customers' feedback in helping to prioritize this work.  See:   parametric feedback to participate in a quick survey on this exact topic.

Now, in the interest of complete honesty, a comment about Edit Face:  You will notice that Edit Face is not even in our survey.  Why is that?  In direct modeling, when you use Edit Face, this is roughly the set of steps that Fusion goes through:

1. the solid face is converted to a TSpline face.
2. the user does any number of Edit Form-like operations to edit the TSpline into the desired shape
3. click OK, and the TSpline face is converted back into a BRep face, and using the internal Replace Face logic, the new face is stitched into the model

The trouble with trying to make Edit Face into a history-based feature is step #2 above.  Today, we have no near-term plans to convert any of the TSpline (Sculpt) commands into history-based features, so there is no way to capture the potentially dozens of changes made during that step.  Without those changes, this feature will not be able to "replay" if the solid face selected in step #1 changes.  So, for now, I'm afraid that we are unlikely to get around to converting Edit Face into a history-based feature for quite a while.

Thanks,

Jeff Strater (Fusion development)

[sprior913]

I understand that these things might not be implemented yet and considered for the future.  My biggest issue was that NONE of this was mentioned in the online help or tutorial videos so I was driving myself nuts trying to figure out why my design wasn't working like the video did.  If you do nothing else please document this restriction in the obvious places.

Since you mentioned it, I've seen references to a BRep. but haven't seen what exactly that means.  What are they and how do I know whether I've selected one or some other type?

[jeff_strater · Accepted solution]

Agree completely.  I did not mean to imply that not documenting what is not available in a history document was OK.  That is a very valid concern, and you should not have had to spend so much time to find that out.

Regarding "BRep".  I apologize for that.  It's not a widely accepted term even in our own documentation.  "BRep" is short for "Boundary Representation".  We use it in Fusion to really mean "solid or surface"  ("Model" or "Patch").  We use the same geometry representation for surfaces and solids - the only difference is that a solid is closed.  So, we really have 3 basic types of bodies:

1. BRep (surface or solid)
2. TSpline
3. Mesh

Jeff Strater (Fusion development)

[sprior913]

Thanks for clearing that up.

Steve

[schneik-adsk]

There is one workaround you can try.

In timeline mode:

1. Create a rectangle, and extrude it into a box
2. Create a form feature
3. Use the sculpt tools to create a plane on the face you want to modify, add 3, 4 or 5 divisions depending on how much detail you plan on adding
4. Use edit form to modify the plane
5. Exit edit the form feature
6. use replace face to replace the box face with the surface you sut created.

When you need to make changes later you can edit the form feature and tweak the surface.