Getting lots of extra bodies after changing parameters

[gabbymoorePXTTK]

I'm trying to create a parameterised GT2 pulley wheel, which takes a tooth count parameter and resizes the wheel accordingly.

I have what seems like a weird issue - The general process i'm doing is

• create 1 end piece
• create the other end piece
• create a tooth
• do a circular pattern to create all the other teeth
• create the core of the wheel, by doing an extrude with "join" set to connect all the bodies into 1

This works fine once. But if I change the tooth count parameter, the model creates the teeth correctly, but the "new" teeth are separate bodies, rather than joining to the main body.

It's not the biggest issue, but i wonder if someone can explain, or come up with a way around it.

[jeff_strater]

yes, this is a current limitation in the Combine command.  When you do a Combine, you have to select the tool bodies to join to the base body.  If you change your pattern count downward (from 30 to 25, say), this all works fine, because those 25 bodies are a subset of the 30 you selected originally.  You can even go back up to 30, no problem.  But, if you go to, say 32, the Combine feature only sees the 30 you selected, so you are left with 2 that are not combined.  Today, you have to edit the Combine to fix it.

In the future, we hope to add the ability to select tool bodies from a feature (in this case the pattern command), or an "all bodies" option, to make this more robust.

[laughingcreek · Accepted solution]

If doing it from scratch I would probably approach this different, but here is a quick fix using your file. 

[gabbymoorePXTTK]

Thanks a lot. I'm new to fusion and haven't used features before. Not sure i quite understand how a feature is defined, so i'll go and have a play 🙂

I'd be super interested to know what your different approach would be if doing it from scratch