Choosing rectangular pattern plane

[MTVDNA]

Hello,

I'm completely new to any CAD modeling. I have followed some tutorials and so far I'm loving Fusion 360. As an excercise, I want to model an organizer for my drill bits like this one: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1345659, and I decided to start with the base plate. I made a sketch of the base, and I included 1 square with the triangles in the corner. I extruded the base, cut out a square and then extruded the corner triangles again. Now I want to use a rectangular pattern to copy those features to cover the entire base. However, I can't seem to figure out how to choose the plane in which the features are patterned, whatever direction I select, the pattern ends up in either the XZ or the YZ plane, but I need it to be in the XY plane. 

How can I do this?

[jeff_strater · Accepted solution]

Hi @MTVDNA,

Welcome to Fusion and the wonderful world of 3D CAD.  It will frustrate you at first, but you will quickly pick it up, and be able to do lots of cool things with it.

To answer your question about choosing directions for the pattern:  The key is the CTRL key (CMD key on Mac).  In all Fusion selections, the best way to add items to a selection is to hold down CTRL.  There are good reasons for this, but for now, it's good to just remember this.  In the Pattern command there are two separate selections:

The first allows you to select the items you want to pattern.  The second is for selecting directions for the pattern.  You can select one or two directions.  If you only pick one, then Fusion tries to pick the second for you.  Sometimes we get it wrong.  To select a second direction, after you already have a preview, you just need to make sure that selection is active, and hold down CTRL.  You can get lots of different orientations this way.  One will be right.  Here is a screencast showing how to do it:

Hope this helps.  Feel free to ask any question here.  You will get lots of support and answers here.

Jeff

[MTVDNA]

Thanks, that did the trick!

Some of the UI behaviour is still a bit confusing to me. For example, when you make a new extrusion, you can select multiple profiles just by clicking them. However, if you then wish to edit the selected profiles of that extrusion, you need to hold ctrl to select multiple profiles. Or when you create a pattern and you select the features. When I click Select to select objects, I can just click without holding ctrl, but for the directions you do need ctrl. Is there some sort of logic behind this, when you should use ctrl and when not?

[jeff_strater]

Hi @MTVDNA,

This is an excellent question, to be honest.  You are right, there is logic here.  The logic is:  If the command is in a "preview" state (showing a preview for the operation, for instance if you can see the fillet being applied to a selected edge), then the CTRL is required.  So, in the case that you showed, and the one in my screencast, we were seeing the pattern preview.  So, in order to select a second edge for a second direction, CTRL is needed.

The reason for this is destructive operations such as Fillet.  In Fillet, when you are in this state:

It is OK to select any edge to fillet, so CTRL is not needed.  However, once you have a radius, the fillet has a) removed the edge that you selected, so it cannot be de-selected, and b) has introduced new edges which cannot be selected for this fillet, since they are part of the fillet being created (this would be a circular dependency):

So, when you hold down CTRL, the preview is temporarily suspended, and you can select new edges, and de-select old edges:

Hopefully that helps to explain the logic used here.  I agree that it is not obvious...

Jeff

[MTVDNA]

Ah, it makes a lot of sense once you know the reason. Thanks for your help, @jeff_strater!