Helicoidal unit with different twisting angle

[israelkeTZC3Q]

Hello, 

I am trying to simply my design, as I need to form an array of it and my PC cant handle the file because it has many elements. I need to design a helicoidal unit as seen in the pic. each layer is made of rods of 1 mm diameter and 18 mm in length. the twisting angle is 2 degrees (But I also have an additional structure with a twisting angle of 4.5 degrees). The height of the structure is until it completes a 180 degrees rotation. 

*Important*: The rotation axis is not at the center of the layer but at its corner.

Does anyone has an idea how to make this structure  in way which is not rotating each layer individually?

thanks in advance!

[TrippyLighting]

The reason this gets slow is because you are working with bodies. So each time you copy a body it creates an independent piece of geometry that needs to be stored in computer memory.

If you use component, and copy/paste (or pattern) those, an instance is creates. That instance is a reference to the original component and requires a lot less memory.

Assuming all these hexagonal sticks are identical, create a component and call it "layer".

Then create another component and call it, for example  "hex stick" . Then pattern that hex stick, making sure the layer component is activated.

... or just export your design as a .f3d file and attach it to a new post. I'll demonstrate it in a new file.

[israelkeTZC3Q]

Hello,

Thanks for your reply. I tried to copy and paste the structure as a component, but seems it is taking a lot of memory as well. Per your suggestion, I am attaching here a .f3d file. thanks in advance for your support. 

[TrippyLighting]

Can you explain what you want to do with the end result ?

@Phil.E This joint goes bad when I delete the explicit joint origins it references, but I don't get a warning message or a yellow icon. A "Compute all" also does not result in error messages or a yellow icon! File is attached.

[TrippyLighting]

So I've created this using components. When saved locally to a hard drive your file is a little over 2MB (not a large file by any means) and mine is 296KB, so magnitudes smaller.

 Whether my approach in the timeline is easy to follow, however, is another question. The timeline is much shorter than yours but not easy to grasp for a beginner.

However is is parametric to a degree:

If, say you'd want to 3D print this and the end result would be a mesh anyway, I personally would not use Fusion 360 but Blender's geometry nodes for this.  Then it would indeed be very easy to parametrize and create variants.

Also, even with components my design still has 1728 components. That is quite a large number  for Fusion 360.

[Phil.E]

@TrippyLighting I'm afraid I don't understand. I can delete the joint origins and the design shows no error and behaves as a component in this state would behave. What's the problem exactly? Looks like as-design behavior.

[TrippyLighting]

@Phil.E In  the design I had attached I had already deleted joint origins that were involved in a joint later in the timeline. When I edit the joint it states "missing reference" for both of the joint origins I picked when creating the joint.  

My expectation would be that upon deleting the joint origins:

1. I get a waring message stating that the joint origins are used somewhere, equivalent to deleting a sketch that is referenced upstream in the design workflow.

2. When ignoring the waring I'd like to see the joint feature highlighted i yellow, because it is missing the joint origins.

Neither of these things happen.

[Phil.E]

Thanks. I get it now. Do you happen to have a copy of that file with the joint origins included? To debug this, the developer needs to start in the good condition (JOs exist, model healthy) and debug what happens when they take the model to the bad condition (JOs are deleted, but timeline doesn't show any issues). 

Much appreciated. I'll add it to this ticket FUS-105928.

[TrippyLighting]

I did not have the original so I recreated it from the file I had uploaded.

Here is the file with the JO present.

Thanks for the help @Phil.E