How can I remove multiple bodies in one action

[CruftMeister]

Folks,

I've got an PCBA assembly imported from a STEP export out of Altium.  The assembly is actually two boards connected by breakaway headers.  To make my Fusion assembly, I need to make singular instances of the left and right (boxed in dashed red) i.e. I need to make instances where I eliminate the PCB and electronics components on side I am not keeping.

To accomplish this, I'm selecting one set of bodies (i.e. choose a side and select) and would like to remove all the selected bodies in one shot, but the context menu on right click does not have "remove" as an option if I select multiple bodies.  Delete isn't an option as it will delete all instances of selected components, including those on the side of the PCB I am keeping.

Is there a workaround someone knows for this?  Or should I just select and remove one by one . . .

Thanks,

Art

PS:  Using a sketch that covers one side of the board, and then selecting the bodies I want to remove in the "Bodies to Cut" pane acts the same as delete - i.e. all instances disappear even though the cut is only on one side of the board.  😞

[jeff_strater · Accepted solution]

it's a question of what you have selected.  By default, the selection filter will include faces as well as bodies.  If you change it to only be bodies, Remove will work.  It will generate a bunch of Remove features in the timeline, but you can group all of those together if you need to:

[CruftMeister]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for clarifying - I've accepted that as a solution as it does address my original question. I had tried fiddling around with the selection settings, but had not figured out to just limit selection to bodies.

Now for the bad news, even with remove, I am seeing that all the instances of a given component (resistor, capacitor, etc) are removed - so if I select a component on the left that is also on the right, both are removed.  I figured delete would do that, but not remove.  😞

To illustrate, I hid the board under the components and then selected and removed the components on the left, notice the loss of components on the right as well - see screen shot progression below:

Left and Right components (board is hidden)

What was selected and removed on the left.

What remains

[jeff_strater]

@CruftMeister , this is presumably because you have multiple instances of the same component.  All instances of a component share all the same geometries - bodies, sketches, etc.  If you Remove the body, all instances of that component will no longer have that body.  You can see that even with visibility - changing the visibility of a body changes it in all instances of that component.  So, instead, what you need to do is to Remove the instances of the component that you don't want to keep, instead of the bodies.

[CruftMeister]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for putting in the time on this, the video makes sense - if you get down to the peninsula there is a beer waiting for you!

That said, I've invited you to share the model as I am seeing something not quite like what you have.  If I limit selection to components, and select with the browser, things work as expected, but if I select in the viewport by dragging, the behavior is as if I am still selecting bodies.  Curious - no?

The caveat here is that this file is a STEP import exported out of Altium Designer 18 - that may make a difference.

Thanks again,

Art