Creating and editing features - is there an easier way?

[Anonymous]

I'm workign on a very simple part for a larger assembly - a mounting plate with a few sets of holes in it - see inline image.

I can create geometery now without too much trouble, but I have a few issues with F360 that make me wonder if I'm doing something wrong (e.g.  should I be inserting features with the create command rather than starting from a sketch) or if it is just a limitation of F360 and I need to just stop expecting Solidworks usability.

 1) After creating my feature sketch - in this case, 4 holes - I find there is no easy way to just drag the cursor across the holes to select them for the push/pull command, and, I also can't select the sketch itself in the brower, so I have to shift select or command select each of the 4 sketch features. Am I missing something herem is there a secret key I can hold down to make the selection easier?

2) If I want to go back in and change any of the values that are in the sketch - for instance the size of the holes I created - I have to acrtually edit the sketch, I can't just select the geometry and edit it in a simple way.  Am I missing something here as well?

Thanks,

Art

[michallach81]

Hi it looks like your missing something:

1. I assume that your sketch with 4 holes is placed on top off existing part (that slab) and you want to cut those hols. You should have no problems with selecting desired entities.

You need to investigate a little bit more SELECT tab in your toolset (top ribbon) try all options Window Selection, Freeform Selection and Paint Selection and pick the one that works best for you. I use only Window Selection, because it comes with common feature in cad software, whitch is way it work when you "draw window", from letf to right or oposite.

Only thing that is IMPORTANT to be aware of is that at this stage of development Fusion selection is somehow related to screen resolution (my suspicion) and sometimes is not picking all entities within you selecton, to workaround this issue you need to enable Select Through from Selection Filters, from SELECT tab. Also be aware that with Select Through enabled you will pick many entities that are not visible (not hidden like hide by clicking light bulb from browset of context menu)just  because they are on oposite side of your part, knowing that be foreseeing, enable and disable options from Selection Filters wisely, it can be efficient just try avaible options.

2. You don't have to reedit your sketch in order to change some values, what you need to do is just make your sketch visible again and in your browser mouse over your sketch click RMB and from context menu that will appear choose option Show Dimension. Nice in Fusion is that after making your skech visible you can just drag around entities, of course considering constraints that defining those entities (like dimension, tangency and other).

3. Last but not least, in your example I would use only one sketch to get this part, keep in mind that we can reuse sketches many times to create multiple parts.

[Anonymous]

Hi michallach8,

Thanks for the speedy reply.  I  had no idea the "show dimension" feature existed, and it does indeed solve the problem. I will still say it is a much less graceful workflow (IMO) than Solidworks presents, but I can do what I need with it, so good enough for now.

With regard to selection settings, that trick does not seem to work as it should. Even using the FreeForm selection tool to only grab the new sketch entities does not work, even stepping through multiple iterations of selection filter settings (e.g. only sketch entities, select through on/off).  It looks like it is picking the sketch, but the press pull is not seeing that and is grabbing everything.

I took a quick video of what I am seeing but couldn't get it to upload to the forum, so I've attached a sucession of screencaps that show the issue.

Regarding your final point - interesting - how does one "reuse" a sketch?

Thanks

Art

[michallach81 · Accepted solution]

On attached pictures is quite noticible that you've started lasso at right top corner, if you would start from left bottom corner or also at the top corner the lasso would pick only what is whole within selection:

Be aware that Freeform Selection is a bit tricky, and better use Window Selection.

[Anonymous]

Hi michallach81

Interesting, is the behaviour of this tool documented anywhere or left as an exploration for the user to discover?

As for using the Window selection tool, yes, that is what I started with and would prefer to use, but I get the same results with that tool.  Dragging across the features I want with the window selection will hit more features than I want, but even allowing for that, I get the same results as with the freeform - it selects the entire geometry of the part, in the same fashion as the freeform tool results I've shown here.  This was what lead me to think it was a bug at first, but having used F360 for a while now I've come to expect the tools to be very unintuitive so thought I might be just using it incorrectly.

I'll see if I can reinstall the Autodesk screencap tool so I can shoot and post a screencap of what I am seeing. I wish Autodesk would open this forum up to alternate video file formats so we aren't forced to have their autolaunching screenacap tool running every time F360 launches.

[kb9ydn]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Interesting, is the behaviour of this tool documented anywhere or left as an exploration for the user to discover?

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The documentation is a work in progress.

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hi @michallach81

 

As for using the Window selection tool, yes, that is what I started with and would prefer to use, but I get the same results with that tool.  Dragging across the features I want with the window selection will hit more features than I want, but even allowing for that, I get the same results as with the freeform - it selects the entire geometry of the part, in the same fashion as the freeform tool results I've shown here.  This was what lead me to think it was a bug at first, but having used F360 for a while now I've come to expect the tools to be very unintuitive so thought I might be just using it incorrectly.

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If you're coming from SWX, many things in Fusion will be will be quite unintuitive.  However for the window selection; if you start dragging from the upper right or lower right, the selections are sort of inverted but not really.  I would say this is almost certainly a bug.  If you start dragging from the upper or lower left it works as expected.

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CadZebra wrote: 

I'll see if I can reinstall the Autodesk screencap tool so I can shoot and post a screencap of what I am seeing. I wish Autodesk would open this forum up to alternate video file formats so we aren't forced to have their autolaunching screenacap tool running every time F360 launches.

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The AD screencast tool is ok except that it requires you to have Windows Aero turned on, which I really dislike.

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