Copy a face

[Anonymous]

How come I can delete an individual face, but i can't copy the individual face. I'm trying to clean up some complex topology from a parasolid import and want to untrim individual surfaces and eventualy re-knit them into the cleaned up body. I'm not finding the tools I need to easily do this.

[innovatenate]

Try using the Offset located in the Patch workspace. Uncheck the Chain Selection option to select a single face.

Thanks,

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Yes, I was using that, but no dialog box was visible for me to un-check chain selection as the dialog box was being displayed on my closed and inactive laptop screen. I only found that out when using a feature that I knew had a dialog box and it was nowhere to be found; so I opened my laptop on a hunch, and there it was. Dialog boxes should default to a visible display, not the non-existent one.

But yes, now I can copy that single face.

Where is the surface un-trim tool? Definitely need one.

[innovatenate]

If you're having trouble seeing a dialog, you may consider using the Reset to Default Layout command, the keyboard shortcuts are below.

Mac OS
ALT + Command + R

Windows
CTRL + ALT + R

If things get really severe with the UI, you may try the following:

1. Close Fusion 360
2. Browse to:

Mac
~/Library/Application Support/Autodesk/Neutron Platform/ Options/<User Specific ID.."WFY..." - try sorting by modified date>

Windows
%APPDATA%\Autodesk\Neutron Platform\Options\<User Specific ID.."WFY..." - try sorting by modified date>

3. Rename NULastDisplayedLayout.xml
*** You may also consider doing this for the ToolbarCustomization.xml file

4. Restart Fusion 360 and retest.

Keep in mind that dialog boxes have the ability to be docked around the perimeter of the workspace, as well. These can be easy to miss!

Can you provide an example of what the surface untrim tool would do?

I note that there is an Extend command located in the Modify drop down menu of the Patch work space. Would this work?

Thanks,

[Anonymous]

The extend command would not work in every case as most surfaces that are causing trouble have boundary edges that are too complex for an extend to work. For CAD packages that use nurbs as the underlying math for surface definition, most surfaces have four edges which you don't see because the surface is trimmed back from those edges by curves that define how the surface is trimmed. I know that when I used to use Alias you could untrim a surface and the curves that defined the trimmed edges would become visible. You could use those curves in the surface to re-trim them or delete them.

SolidWorks has a surface untrim command that will remove either individual trimed boundaries or all the trimmed edges of a surface, including interior holes. What you end up with is the entire underlying surface bounded by it's "real" edge extents. This is extremely useful for fixing imported geometry that has been either modeled or translated badly, especially in cases where there are fillets on every edge. 

[innovatenate]

Fusion 360 does have parametric capability via the timeline that would enable a user to update the base sketch geometry and have these changes propagate to the resulting 3D geometry. The below screencast elaborates on this a bit. Please take a look and let me know if it helps.

As far fixing holes, there is a patch command and a host of direct modeling commands that you may use to repair imported geometry. Is there a specific file or scenario in question here? I would be happy to take a deeper look if you would like.

I hope that helps! 

Thanks,

[Anonymous]

Yes, I understand parametrics. Parametrics are not the issue when repairing imported geometry. Getting to the base surfaces of the imported part are the goal. This requires a toolset that can fix boundaires, delete unwanted surfaces and repair badly translated data. Fusion already has tools that can do some basic fixes on simple topology such as deleting fillets you may not want (on very simple parts). To do this it must untrim surfaces to make boundaries of the b-reps meet. So the ability for the software to do this already exists, I'm just asking to make it accessible to apply to single surfaces.

[Anonymous]

Hello 

Try to use this tip, but it didn't work as expected. On contoured faces (also, I found that only one face is permitted to offset), I get completely deformed face on larger distances. So it is not copy command, it is just offset, and unfortunately useless to me.

Al T  

[TrippyLighting]

You can move the face after the offset. Then you've effectively copied it to another location.

[Anonymous]

Hello 

Thank you, I will try this option. I was not sure that it is permitted offset distance to be a 0.

Sincerely

[ddbacker]

Pfffttt. thanks for your solution/work but it's far from being simple. We just want to copy a face. Give us the popupmenu to do so....
Although A fantastic program a lot is still going wrong... for example within half an hour the merge faces command does not work, changing the pivot point does not work..

[mtriffon]

Change pivot point DOES work but most people forget that you need to select the check mark a second time to accept the new plot point.  Copy is still a pain in the butt.