I made a nice design - now what? :) getting meaninguful drafts for all the bodies

[manoweb]

Hello, I'm fairly new to any type of CAD but I put in many hours of work in the past several months and now I believe I can use many features, all parametric designs; static simulation; take the model and 3D print it, I am quite happy, wonderful results. I recently made a design that consists of many bodies (that happen to be sheet metal bodies as I used the "flange" trick to bend the structure) most of which are flat panels 6.35mm thick. Because of the special shape, each one may be unique (see attachment).

Now, what am I supposed to do? I was able to design this but... I am not sure how to proceed 😄 How do I get a FLAT drawing for each of these bodies that shows exactly the size as if it were laying on a table?
Eventually, I might want to plasma cut these. There is another section of the forum dedicated to that, for now I'd just like to have flat drawings for each of them. I tried to make a single body visible and use the Drawing environment, but... it's not made flat and I am really not sure how to select the right plane.

Next question is: if I wanted to create holes for bolts on all these bodies, it would need to be manually created on each and every one of them, with a sketch and then holes - or is there a better way?

[TheCADWhisperer]

Did you model as separate Components?

Can you File>Export your *.f3d file to your local drive and then Attach it here to a Reply?

[manoweb]

Thank you for Your answer @TheCADWhisperer

I created other components in this design but they are other stuff that will be around this structure. Do you think I should have done otherwise? I must admit that I am still learning the best practices of dealing with components and assemblies.

I have attached the design here. This is a "pergola" design that maybe one day I will make for my backyard. I'll be very happy to receive any kind of feedback, especially if it teaches me.

[manoweb]

I guess what I'd like to see is, for all those bodies to be represented flat on the same plane so that I can put dimensions on them. I can do an approximation to that now if I make ALL of them invisible but one, use the "look at" function, create a drawing. This is kind of tedious but I'll use it if necessary, in particular if I need to sketch holes in all of them manually.

I am now working to design connectors to bolt all of them together.

[TheCADWhisperer]

Yikes!

In the real world these would all be separate components within the assembly.

You have to replicate this in Fusion (do a separate components rather than multi-body in one component.

You might be able to Export to STEP and then open and Convert to Sheet Metal each component - but I haven't tried that yet.

Update:  Well I tried that and it works, but the problem now is that you did not create your parts correctly.

If you examine Body 374 - there are no bends and therefore the part in not uniform Thickness.

My next suggestion would be to delete all faces except for one side, add the missing Bends and then Thicken and Convert to Sheet Metal.  You can now Unfold.  (Edit: I tried this and it works fine.)

[manoweb]

Thank you very much for your feedback.

Workflow question: forget a moment the "outer" body and only consider the internal "flat" ones. As you can see, I made them with the web tool then used flange-unfold-join-refold to achieve the bending, then there is a split operation that creates the long list of bodies (followed by a mirror). As far as I understand the split operation will just create bodies, not components. What can I change to make them components within this component? Also, what is (in a few words) the advantage in doing so. I mean, I understand that I'll be able to work with multiple copies of one or few components but positioning is non-trivial in this case.

I have no idea what "export to STEP" means I will have to look it up thanks - even terms to just search for are useful to me.

[TheCADWhisperer]

You could have Split and THEN covert to Components and THEN convert to sheet metal.

The problem as  you have it now is that you used sheet metal tools to create multi-body solids.

Sheet metal should only be used one one body per Component.

I figured out how I would fix this, but there is no Easy Button solution for a beginner.

I would say start over, but I doubt that you would know where to start with starting over.

Without a lot of experience - you are between a rock and a hard place.

[manoweb]

OK I can accept that but let me make sure I communicate WHY I converted to sheet metal early on - it's merely to use the "trick" to bend the entire structure. I had absolutely no desire to convert anything into sheet metal at any point into this design.

The "trick" I am talking about is the one explained in these videos:

https://youtu.be/3LvT0gwk44c?t=612

https://youtu.be/jekxxqVOy84?t=571

If there is a way to NOT use sheet metal to do the bend I'll be very happy to use it instead.

[manoweb]

OK I have updated the design now I do not have any sheet metal bodies they are all regular bodies. It was actually pretty trivial, I just had to swap the target and tool in a couple of combine operations:

 

I am honestly not 100% sure why this is better than before but I guess it's a step in the right direction.

[manoweb]

So it seems the answer to my initial questions is:

• to get a flat drawing for a particular body, hide every other body, use "look at":
  

  And then enter the drawing environment.

• to get a drawing for a component, "look at" does not seem to be required.

Also, I found out that once I have a component created, I can "substitute" it to an existing body by using the "align" feature "hidden" in the Modify menu (and then hiding the corresponding body). Once finished, a "rigid group" may be created to keep them all together. This of course allows to edit just one such component (with bolt holes etc) and have the modification automatically applied to all.

[TrippyLighting]

Your posts are so full of misconceptions that my suggestion would be to go fully through one of the tutorial courses in the Learn and Support section. You can also get to that forum section by clicking on the question mark in the upper right corner of the Fusion 360 window and select the "self-directed learning" option.

The use of components is one of the most fundamental and basic concepts in Fusion 360 (and other CAD systems). You should not proceed until you fully understand what the difference between components and bodies is and perhaps have familiarized yourself with Fusion's 360 R.U.L.E #1

[manoweb]

Can you describe one such misconception that is apparent from my post?

Bodies are 3D shapes used to add geometry. There are solid bodies, surface bodies, and then I believe others like mesh that I don't use. Components are containers of bodies, sketches, and they each have their own origin.

I know rule #1 (and #2) and I used it - with the component "backyard" that has the basic reference points. I doubt you have even seen my file.

[TrippyLighting]

My apologies! I was judging by your posts but had not looked at the file.

So the misconception is only with the sheet metal body/bodies.

The "trick" you used is a modeling trick only and does not use the sheet metal functionality as originally intended.

It would work well for 3D printing the entire structure as a whole.

However, after re-folding the object all surfaces on all your slats have compound curvature and that effectively prevents you from creating a flat pattern from them.

[manoweb]

Thanks @TrippyLighting . Sorry for the inaccurate use of terminology in my posts, but I am basically new at all of this.

It seems that Fusion 360's limitation in bending bodies might be one of the main issues here. However, after changing how I perform the Combine, what I obtain is "regular" bodies that I was able to transform into components (not sheet metal). The problem at that point, is that such resulting bodies are twisted and with a very slight change in thickness. That is not a problem in principle, in fact it's an inherent characteristic of the geometry of what I'm building. However it makes it much more difficult to achieve what I like to do, that is to be able to cut parts with a CNC plasma cutter and bolt everything together.