Create joints with coils/how to make angle constraints.

[Anonymous]

My question comes in two parts:

1. In Inventor, you can assemble with coils/spirngs really easily because the cursor locks to the centre of the coil, but in 360 you can only attach stuff to the edge, meaning I can't make a working joint between a spring and a slot.

2. Where are good old constraints? I'm just trying to make the centre line one component perpendicular to a face, and there doesn't seem to be any way to do it.

[HughesTooling · Accepted solution]

If the coil a component you can turn on it's origin and use that as point to pick for a joint origin. If you want to make an assembly using joints the coil will have to be a component so make sure you draw it at the components origin.

Mark

[Anonymous]

Thanks a lot. Do you know if angle constraints even exist in Fusion?

[HughesTooling]

Not sure what you need but you could try a ball joint it will let you set Pitch Yaw and Roll.

Mark

[CruftMeister]

Hi Mark,

A quick follow up question to this topic. I'm trying to use a joint to position a coil component at the end of a cylindrical bore in another solid component.  The part with the bore is in my top level assembly and I've linked the coil part into that assembly file.  The issue I'm having is I can't get Fusion to let me place the joint icon in the right orientation on the origin of the coil.  I'm assuming I need to set the joint icon so it is normal to the center axis of the coil.  Interestingly enough - well, scary to me - I found if I selected the top level origin of the coil component (accidentally) and used a cylindrical joint, the joint constraint pulls the coil's top level origin down the bore.  What the huh?  How is this possible I ask myself.  I'm coming from Solidworks where things are very predictable, once a relationship is established, nothing can pull it asunder, not what I just witnessed in Fusion at all - it would seem relationships between datums (origins) within a component mean nothing at all in Fusion - wow.   Anyway, is there a way to force F360 to let me select the orientation of the joint icon on my components?  I've not tired inserting a "Joint Origin" onto the coil but could if that is the path of least resistance.

Thanks!

[HughesTooling]

I guess your coil is not around the z axis so yes a joint origin is your best option.

Mark

[CruftMeister]

Hi Mark,

Actually the coil is concentric with the bore - so yes, the axis of the coil is coincident with the bore. I tried selecting the Z axis of the coil itself, but was not able to do that. I could select the origin, but could not get the orientation of the joint icon to be normal to the Z axis.

Did I miss something?

Art

[HughesTooling]

Is the visible origin and axis you're trying to select for the coil's component? Can you share the model, use export and save as an f3d file and attach.

Mark

[CruftMeister]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for all of your assistance; I've attached the .f3z file.  In this assembly I'm mostly playing around with a few things in F360 that have confused me, including joints, so the models may have some ugly hacks to get the geometry I wanted (e.g. the cut to get a planar surface in the coil) - don't judge.  😉

I was trying to understand how to properly constrain the coil in the bore so it is concentric, but could not select the on-the-fly joint origin to be normal to the Z axis, so I just added one, but if there is a way to do it, that would be great to know.

Also, I added the cut to the coil to make a planar surface for the battery to constrain it to sit on the cut on the coil, but didn't get too far as my attempts to use it ended up pulling the battery out of concentricity with the bore - I over constrained but couldn't figure out how not to do that.

After going through Kevin Schneider's post on Joints (below) I realized my thinking on joints was inverted (start at 0 DOF and add them, sort of opposite of "mates") and that helped, but still didn't succeed with putting battery end on coil end.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/design-validate-document/let-s-talk-about-joints/m-p/5493889?

Regards,

Art