Combine non-touching objects as one body

[TOwens777]

I am working on a guitar headstock.  I have a logo that consist of individual letters extruded from the headstock.  See attached (Pic 1)

I extruded the sketch and the result was each letter being a separate body. I'm also putting a wooden laminate overlay on top of the headstock. I have cutouts for the letters in the overlay for the letters to extrude through. (See pic 2) What I am left with is the headstock, all the letters, and all the centers of the letters being separate bodies.  If you could look at the pics please. I would like the letters all be part of the headstock.  I would like the lighter overlay with cutouts and centers to be one separate body.  I've tried combining each letter with the headstock but it just creates another body with that individual letter, which is what I already have.

I appreaciate any help!   Thanks!

[jeff_strater · Accepted solution]

You should have been able to use the "Join" type in Extrude to join the letters to the headstock.  Or use Combine to join the letters to the headstock, as long as they are at least adjacent to the headstock, or intersect with it.  Could it be that your letters do not intersect with the headstock?  If you can share/post the model, we can take a look at it.

In general, Fusion does not allow non-intersecting "lumps" to be in the same body.  This was an attempt to reduce user confusion - we already have components and bodies, adding lumps to the mix was seen as more confusion.  Inventor does allow multi-lump bodies...

Jeff Strater (Fusion development)

[TOwens777]

Jeff, you got me on the right track.  The letters did not intersect the headstock. I was able to fix the problem by moving the sketch from the surface plane of the headstock to about .25" inside the headstock.  Then when I extruded it the letters remained part of the headstock body. 

I still have the issue with the letter centers being individual bodies on the overlay but I can live with that I guess.

Thanks for the help!

[chris]

Sorry I know this is an old post but I have the same issue.... I do not want them to touch at all as the parts are part of a print-in-place switch... however having them as seperate bodies causes issues when exporting to cura or using the 3DPrintPro plugin which both only allow the selection of one object for sending to the slicer. Only way around it for me is a manual STL export and Import into Cura..... any suggestions would be appreciated. 

[laughingcreek]

This problem seems to me to be different from the OP's, and probably deserves a new thread.

..but..

I think the only way to do what you want is going to be to-

1-switch to the mesh workspace

2-tesslate all the bodies you want to go to your slicer in one go

3-use combine to have the separate mesh shells recognized as  a single entity

send the resulting "body" to your slicer.

still extras steps though.

[wecas39532]

I found a workaround to combine not touching bodies (for 3D printing)

create a sketch on a body with a tiny rectangle or circle (<0.001mm) who touch all bodies you want combine together

When you will import it into cura and slice your model, the tiny rectangle or circle will not be printed because it's too small 🙂

[ecsuka]

I ran into the same problem you were having and I think I found an easy solution. I recorded a short video to explain the steps on how to combine multiple seperate bodies in Fusion 360.

https://youtu.be/EAjCtifQorQ

Good luck on your guitar design!

Edward Csuka

[phillipw_estore]

This worked great! thanks