How to easily project an offset line with many segments?

[Anonymous]

I am preparing a fusion model for laser cutting, and have encountered an annoyance while adjusting the cut layout for laser kerf.  My process is the following.  I've copied all of the bodies that I'd like to cut and aligned them to a common plane, then projected their faces into a new 'cut layout' sketch.  I've then used the offset tool to expand all of the boundaries of the projected faces appropriately for the laser kerf.  The issue is that if I now export this sketch to dxf for cutting, it contains both the original face boundaries and the kerf-adjusted ones.  The original boundaries can just be removed in illustrator, but I'd prefer to find a way to export only what needs to be cut.

I have tried to make another new sketch and just project into it the kerf-adjusted boundaries.  This is fine, except tedious.  For some reason, if I select a line segment in an offset boundary and double-click it does not automatically select all of the connected segments as I expected it would.  I need to project each segment individually, which is significant as my parts have finger joints with many notches. 

Is this behavior a bug, and does anybody know a work-around?  Or, is there a different method to export only part of a sketch to dxf?

Thanks!

[jeff_strater]

@Anonymous,

Yes, this is expected behavior - there is no "double-click to select a loop" in Fusion sketch yet.  Here is the IdeaStation entry for it:  ability-to-quickly-select-loop-continuous-joining-sketch.  You should add your vote to this item.  It is currently archived, but if it gets enough support, that could change.

I don't have any great suggestions for you, other than the one you already found, which is to project the offset into a new sketch, and export that.

You might be able to scale the bodies themselves to get the offset, then just have a single outline, and not have to do a sketch offset to get it to work.

[doreen_holley · Accepted solution]

If you created a new sketch that contains your kerf make that a thin body, turn off sketches and go to your cam environment. Choose the body and create a toolpath. That's your outside kerf path. Turn off bodies and sketch #2 (your offset sketch) and cam your original sketch.

[Anonymous]

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@jeff_strater wrote:

@Anonymous,

Yes, this is expected behavior - there is no "double-click to select a loop" in Fusion sketch yet.  Here is the IdeaStation entry for it:  ability-to-quickly-select-loop-continuous-joining-sketch.  You should add your vote to this item.  It is currently archived, but if it gets enough support, that could change.

I don't have any great suggestions for you, other than the one you already found, which is to project the offset into a new sketch, and export that.

You might be able to scale the bodies themselves to get the offset, then just have a single outline, and not have to do a sketch offset to get it to work.

Thanks for the clarification.  I've added my vote 🙂 

[Anonymous]

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@doreen_holley wrote:

If you created a new sketch that contains your kerf make that a thin body, turn off sketches and go to your cam environment. Choose the body and create a toolpath. That's your outside kerf path. Turn off bodies and sketch #2 (your offset sketch) and cam your original sketch.

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This is a clever idea - make some auxiliary bodies from the kerf sketches, which are easier to get a cut layout from.  Thanks!