History / timeline

[0502880]

When you have a long history/timeline in your model and you need to move some feature somewhere from the start quarter to near end of timeline, Fusion doesn't scroll the timeline automatically forward when you reach the right side of viewport. You have to stop the move there and Fusion starts to calculate all changes. It can take ages, and you have to move the feature again after re-calculation to the right place.

Have I missed some work method how to do it? If it's not possibble, is this request already in IdeaStation?

[Mike.Grau]

Hi @0502880,

Thank you for the idea to accelerate the move feature command. If you left-click a feature, hold left-mouse-button and stay on the timeline you can scroll to the end of

the timeline with your mouse wheel and drop the feature. But it needs a little time to compute the changes.

I think a drag and drop feature as mentioned in this post here might be great idea.

Thanks 

Mike

[0502880]

Thank's for the answer! So if I understood right you should do those left button drag and scroll wheel use simultaneously? A little bit tricky...

Will there be some enchanments to timeline operations in the near future? I personally find it quite tricky and sometimes frustrating to find something from a long timeline. I have of course used Find from timeline command, but still it's like "look for a needle in a haystack". Could it be technically possible, that Fusion should automatically show/roll your choise somewhere in the middle of the timeline and probably the chosen feature icon's size will increase?

[Mike.Grau]

Hi @0502880,

I agree with you. It is tricky. When you do Left-click, drag and then scroll and drop at the right position step by step works.

I think the idea with the increased icons size might be possible and would be very helpful. This should go into the idea station, it is very good.

Check out the Idea Station here and once your post is up, I´ll vote for it.

Thanks

Mike

[TrippyLighting]

You can work much more easily with a long timeline if you stick to Fusion 360 R.U.L.E #1: Before doing anything, create a component and make sure it's activated.

That will do several things for you

• After activation, all new bjects such as sketches, bodies, construction geometry, joint origins, etc. will be created in that component.
• When a component is activated the timeline, by default (this can be changed) will be filtered to show only those items that pertain to that component. This will make working with the timeline much more efficient ad avoids hunting for the one item you want to edit.

You can also group things in the timeline and give unique names to items and groups in the timeline. That will also help organize things.

Both the browser and the timeline, by rightclicking on some items offer to find the item in the timeline, or in the browser.

[0502880]

There has been quite a lot discussions here in forum about best work methods within Fusion. Yes, I have used components and activated them, but sometimes, when you make some kind concepting it's somehow easier/simpler to work with bodies. But sure, it depends how you will learn to do things.

Still I feel, that there could be some development work to do with timeline, that's just my tought.

[kb9ydn]

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@0502880 wrote:

Still I feel, that there could be some development work to do with timeline, that's just my tought.

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Trippy's R.U.L.E #1 is definitely a good one to follow, but I would also agree that the timeline could use a bit more work around how it's implemented and used.  Part of the problem with the timeline is that it's not very efficient from a visualization perspective, because it's a line.  Traditional history based CAD programs (like Solidworks) do essentially the same thing with the feature tree on the left side, but with SWX when you create a feature from a sketch that sketch is then grouped with the created feature.  If a sketch is used for multiple features a virtual copy of (not really copy but more like a link to) the sketch is grouped with each feature.  This makes it a bit easier to find a features' associated sketch for editing.  Fusion doesn't do this and just lists everything in linear order of creation, which makes for really long and disorderly looking timelines.  You can create groups if you want but it's a manual process that puts more burden on the user to manage it.  Even just a simple grouping of features to base sketches could reduce the timeline length significantly.

I really wish that Fusion would incorporate a second dimension to the timeline somehow.  Admittedly I don't do much modelling in Fusion so I don't have a clear idea of how this might work and the impact it would have.  But I really do think a more advanced timeline could be quite a useful.

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