Help displaying XYZ

[Davidf01]

I have been looking in settings but could not find an answer. Is there a way to display the XYZ axis as part of the display cube in Fusion?

Thanks

Dave

[Phil.E · Accepted solution]

No.

The view cube and origin are separate.

View Cube:

• According to your preference of Y or Z up for new documents, the TOP face of the view cube should agree with Y or Z up direction.
• Also, if you wish to change the TOP view after you start a document you can right click on the cube and pick new TOP or FRONT views, or a new home view.
• The view cube TOP direction sets the "floor", shadows, and reflection direction.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any more questions.

Thanks,

[Anonymous]

So the normal axis for the TOP surface is parallel to the Z or Y axis.  How precise. Am I suposed to flip a coin to chose the axis?

[Phil.E]

The setting is done in Preferences.

[Salient1492]

Not displaying the XYZ coordinates explicitly in the program is woefully deficient.

1. Fusion 360 is a CAD & CAM design package. My CNC machine has fixed explicit XYZ coordinates and they cannot be 're-associated' or 're-assigned', they are fixed.

2. An old program AutoCAD provided for displaying the UCS legend, this was a helpful anchor when zoomed into detailed geometry of a drawing.

3. CAD stands for 'Computer Aided Design' therefore the tenant of the program is to Aide the operator first and foremost. Orientation and coordinates are a power aide to the user when navigating and creating designs.

Reading the QA manager's reply. I am wondering if he notices that car Navigation display the compass orientation, as it certain times, it's important to provide the user with the absolute orientation of the car in conjunction with the position on the map. Otherwise how would you know to turn left to head North?

A great deal of mis-understanding in our world stems from the gaps between the 'explicit' and 'derived' meaning.

The Fusion 360 cube is a derived display - indicating the top, bottom and sides of a design. I would offer as the author of a particular design, I innately know what the left side is or the bottom.

What I might lose track of is:..."Is the Left X or Y?". This is where I would like the CAD to kick in and aide me in keeping track of that.

The reply from Fusion alone demonstrates a misunderstanding of the problem. [Why is a QA engineer answering this question?] The question was an explicit one, the answer was in the derived, a tad arrogant when I read it and therefore quite useless imo. Does the respondent think the questioner did not know how to 'derive' the answer?.

As a programmer is about maybe 25 lines of code to throw the XYZ coordinate on the screen?..so why cannot this be done?...make everyone's life easier?.

Regards

Jack Hamilton

[Phil.E]

@Salient1492

Welcome to the Fusion Forum.

Since you asked, my name is Phil and I'm a QA on the Fusion project. I am a mechanical designer by trade and my purpose on the team is to provide customer insight for development. As a part of that duty, I also help on the Fusion forums. This is done to a) help customers learn and understand Fusion, b) look for bugs, c) look for ways to improve Fusion based on customer feedback such as yours. That is why I'm a community manager here and Senior Software Quality Assurance Engineer by title, and why I answer questions such as the OP. I answer these posts for all customers who might read them and include as much information as I can.

I did not mean to be arrogant by simply explaining how the view cube relates to the coordinate system as a part of explaining why the view cube and XYZ system are separate, but rather hoped to illustrate how you can use the two together. I'm sorry it reads that way.

You might be happy to know that the next update of Fusion will have the improvement you and other customers have been asking for, which is to display the coordinates on the view cube itself. We like to implement customer suggestions, so please feel free to post your ideas in the Idea Station!

Also, reading over this whole post, I should also mention that the origin also has a visibility toggle in the Browser (just in case someone looking for information about "origin" and "visibility" finds this post).

Thanks and let us know if you have any more questions! Always glad to help.

Regards,

[Salient1492]

Phil,

Thank you for your quick reply and patient response. Having done product support and development myself, I understand how customer comment weighs more heavily than internal comments about products needs and features. I am certain experienced designers wanted this feature and it got voted off.

What the Fusion 360 marketing and product manager need to understand is how to manage the 'perception base' of Fusion 360. I am new to Fusion but not to CAD so I view Fusion 360 as coming from a pedigree company who created AutoCAD way back when...;).

I am investing a lot of time in Fusion 360 so it's not a cheap product to me. I am very excited about Autodesk offering this, and it's rich and diverse feature set drew me to it. So I am doubly take aback when standard and well vetted features like USC display and Ordinate dimensioning are missing as these are the assets of the developer pedigree.

I look forward to learning more about Fusion and working with the Autodesk Fusion 360 team!

Regards

Jack Hamilton

[Fully_Defined]

@Phil.E I'm totally with @Salient1492 on this.

Including the toggling of the origin is nice and all, but 90% of the time it's toggled off for many reasons. I'm not sure why it's so hard to include a three-colored XYZ graphic in the bottom left corner like every other CAD program on the planet. I half understand the reasoning behind hiding it behind the cube, but I can't see the cube half the time anyway, since it always ends up behind the toolbar when I'm on my laptop.

[Phil.E]

@Fully_Defined

The view cube should never be obscured by the toolbar. Can you post a screenshot of that? And your system specs too please. That's a bug.

And your idea for a 3rd origin display is valid, have you thought about posting it to the idea station? I've never seen it displayed in the lower left corner, what other programs do that I need to check it out.

Thanks,

[Fully_Defined]

Welcome to my world. 

[Fully_Defined]

[TheCADWhisperer]

---

@Phil.E wrote:
...I've never seen it displayed in the lower left corner, what other programs do that I need to check it out. 

---

Sounds like a plan.