Cleaning Up Designs

[Anonymous]

OK, so being new to Fusion, I've painted myself into a corner.  I've created an assembly with components whose design depends on other components in the design.  I now find I need to create a "loop" where a feature early in the design has to be modified based on features of a component later in the design, which then invalidates features later in the design.   This is, in part, caused by a mistake I made early on - one of the components on which many others depends was created as a body, then later converted to a component, leaving it with no history.  I think if it had been a component from the start, so I could modify some of the base features, I would not have the problem I have.

I find I can copy/paste the components to a new design, giving me somewhat of a "fresh start", but those imported components have a lot of invalid history - invalid/suppressed/deleted/obsolete features that do nothing useful and create a lot of "clutter".  Is there an easy way to do a "clean-up" on a design, and delete all the invalid/suppressed/no-longer-needed "stuff"?

Regards,

Ray L.

[etfrench]

An all or nothing approach is to switch to Direct Modeling mode.  I usually start in Timeline mode now, but switch to Direct Modeling when the Timeline decides it needs to have an error.

[Anonymous]

I will have to take my existing design and convert it, and see how it works out.  I've made piece with timeline mode (and I'm used to it from Solidworks), but I'm not convinced it really buys me much, though I would like to eventually try doing real parametric design, at least on some parts.

Regards,

Ray L.

[daniel_lyall]

Hi Ray, It takes a bit to get use to the design history in fusion, and if you get the order of operations wrong as you have found stuff goes sideways fast.

What some people do is they will do a save as when you are at a point everything is working as it should, then dive into it, if you make a mistake it's not a total redo. or load up a previous version what works as well, you just have to make sure you do a save at the correct time.

Also you can make each part in a different file then import it into one. Then it's edit that file update the assembly and if something is wrong in the assembly you can replaces that part.

direct modeling has it's limits as well, same with doing models with no sketches (yer that's a thing in fusion).

Quite often if you have a problem, you can jump on here and post your file and if it's nothing to bad someone may say how to fix it, or what went wrong.

[m629312611]

Hi, I was reading your post and would like to know after all this time what was your approach? I am in the same situation today.

Thanks a lot!

Manu

[etfrench]

One of the many changes in Fusion 360 since this thread is 'Edit in Place' which allows you to modify components relative to the position of other components.  Timeline travel has always been available.  Your solution will depend on your file.  I usually just move the timeline back to the beginning, then step through each individual feature, correcting any issues at each step. 

Attach your file to the thread for better advice for  your particular issue.