Join components while maintaining history

[mpeddicord]

Hello,

I've made a friction joint for a modular phone stand as practice with Fusion 360. I hope to reuse it repeatedly by making copies and placing the individual joint components on the ends of long shaft pieces of differing lengths to create different arms. I've made connected copies of the joints and placed them at both ends of a test shaft. But, as you can imagine. In manufacturing mode, they are treated as different components and layout out disconnected and next to each other instead of together. I could merge them first with Combine, but then I lose the history of both sides of the joint if I decide to update its design later.

Is there a way to "group" the three pieces so manufacturing considers it as one piece while still preserving the change replicating features that I get from copied components?

Thank you.

[Mattxer]

I'm not sure what you mean by they lay out disconnected when you go into the manufacturing workspace. Can you provide an example? or just create an example file to share if you don't want to share your project.

[davebYYPCU]

It’s not clear why, but combine at the end of the Timeline, (can use Roll Back), or

in Manufacturing model, either way should get you there.

Might help....

[mpeddicord]

I apologize for being unclear. I'm pretty new to this and I'm still learning what's possible and what isn't. As well as nomenclature. 

I've attached an F3D file with my project. Hopefully, when you load it you'll the one component in question that's no hidden. And if you switch to manufacture, you'll see it lays them out as individual pieces. The three different pieces aren't connected in any way in design, just sitting next to each other. (I don't know how to without losing their history, that's the main question of this post).

Also, I just realized I used the interface on these forums wrong and no one was able to see the screenshot I intended to upload.

Thanks.

[davebYYPCU · Accepted solution]

Combine > Join

Select the centre body, then the 2 end bodies. Keep Tools.

Save new Body as STL. (Safekeeping)

go to Manufacture > Additive > Model

Hide the two fittings that you don't need to print (separately).

When back in the Design window, move timeline marker left one step.

Might help....

[etfrench]

Manufacturing also doesn't honor joints between the three sections.

@Phil.E :  This looks like a bug to me.   Attached is a simple file with joints which remain together in the Manufacturing workspace.

[davebYYPCU]

I didn't take the joints into Manufacture, I created a secondary copied body.

Will admit not using this area of Fusion for my work, so only know a little in here.

Might help...

[etfrench]

Saving the misbehaving parts as an stl, then importing it back into Fusion 360 also works.

[Phil.E]

I must admit to being a little behind the curve here, what is it you expect to happen that is not happening in the SimpleJoint design?

[etfrench]

The SimpleJoint just shows how it's expected to work.  For some reason, the OPs file does not behave as expected.