Fusion360 - Exporting Body to Mesh should have option to maintain coordinates

[VitorMartinsAugusto]

Hello,

When exporting individual bodies to a mesh, Fusion360 will always translate the body to the first quadrant, next to the workplane.

While this might be the best option for certain workflows, like 3D printing that body, it is not always what a user wants.

I need to be able to export individual bodies as a mesh, where the coordinates of the body relative to the design is maintained. Example: Imagine I am exporting individual bodies to be used in 3rd party software like FEA software. I need all exported bodies to remain at their relative coordinates.

Other CAD software have a checkbox in the export form to select if coordinates are to be maintained or if the geometry is to be moved to the first quadrant. I would need such an option in Fusion360.

I know that one can export the whole design into separate mesh files in one go and in this case each individual body will maintain its relative coordinates.

However, this will export every body and sub-body (bodies contained inside other bodies) into individual files. This results in a huge amount of files and is not what I want, as it increases the amount of work imensely.

Thanks,

Vitor

[HughesTooling]

Are the bodies in components? If you export the main component using Save As Mesh only visible bodies\components should export and their positions should be maintained.

Right click the top level component.

[VitorMartinsAugusto]

I may have used the wrong term: I meant components not bodies.

If you look at the following picture, you understand what I mean:

I have the second component selected and it is highlighted in blue.

If I export it as a mesh, the resulting STL file will not attach correctly to the previous STL I exportted (the base of the robot). Instead, the file will be moved to the origin of the first quadrant.

There seems to be no way to export this component as an STL file, with its relative coordinates maintained.

regards,

Vitor

[VitorMartinsAugusto]

This is how the import of both files look like on PowerSHAPE:

The relative coordinates have been clearly lost.

[HughesTooling]

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@VitorMartinsAugusto wrote:

I may have used the wrong term: I meant components not bodies.

If you look at the following picture, you understand what I mean:

I have the second component selected and it is highlighted in blue.

If I export it as a mesh, the resulting STL file will not attach correctly to the previous STL I exportted (the base of the robot). Instead, the file will be moved to the origin of the first quadrant.

There seems to be no way to export this component as an STL file, with its relative coordinates maintained.

regards,

Vitor

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If you isolate that component then right click the top component and save as mesh you'll get just the visible component exported and it should keep it's position.

It's a bit more work but isolate then un-isolate make it quite easy.

Mark

[VitorMartinsAugusto]

Thansk for the help, but unfortunately it does not seem to work on my side.

When isolated it still translates when exported as STL mesh.

😞

[HughesTooling · Accepted solution]

Are you sure you selected the top level component when you selected save as mesh? Here's a screencast showing exporting 2 mesh components to Rhino and they maintain their position and orientation in Rhino.

Mark

[VitorMartinsAugusto]

Mark,

Thank you very much for your troubles and patience!

The not so obvious trick was that one has to export the top entry in the feature tree.

It will flash the whole design blue but on a closer look, the isolated component has a slightly bluer tint and is in fact the only component that is exported.

It does work as you say.

Thank you again,

Vitor

[rsheldiiiZW7EP]

This doesn't work for me now, I have a collection of bodies in a component, relatively positioned to a separate, larger component. Even if I add joints between the bodies, when I isolate and save the top-level component as mesh the export is not relatively positioned.

Luckily for me the locations of everything lay on the XY plane, so I just moved the larger part in the Z axis, imported it into another software that allows relative exports, and deleted the larger part.

this really should be a checkbox when exporting

[laughingcreek]

hmm.. works for me. can you screen cast your process, or attach a file?