Joint Error Message
Looking at your design, you've stepped right into the first trap.
You can only assemble components, not bodies. So review the difference between bodies and components here and/or here.
Then, when a design is a traditional mechanical design its advised to follow:
Fusion 360 R.U.L.E #1: Before doing anything, create a component and make sure it's activated.
All objects created after activating the component such as sketches, bodies, construction geometry, joint origins, etc. are created in that component.
This has several advantages:
- On activation the timeline is filtered to show only those items in the timeline that pertain to that component. That will make the quickly growing timeline much easier to work with.
- If a component is exported to the data panel with "save as" this will also export the complete parametric design history.
- Drawings can only be created from components
- The joints in the "Assemble menu only work with components.
When another component needs to be edited for example to add geometry, it should be activated before doing so.
In case of your assembly it also makes little sense to design with linked components. Fusion 360 does not have different file formats for Assembly and Component files. When following R.U.L.E #1 you can perfectly fine organize an assembly in a single file with components, subassemblies etc.
Make sure that at least one component is grounded, otherwise your whole assembly can float around.
It also is a bit of a hassle to download models with linked components 😉
Correct, linked components don't have to be specifically set as componets in their own file.
So for example if you have sketch and body created form that sketch in a file and insert it into another design then it's imported as a component containing that sketch and body.
What I am saying is that this structure can be created within a single file without having to use external components following rule #1.
I doub't it's necessary in your desing and at the moment linked components have a few limitations that make tham somewhat cumbersome to work with if you've used a lot of the functionlaity in Solid Works.
E.g. they are static. to edit them you have to open them in their own file, preform the modification, save them and then you will be asked by the main desing to update out of date components.
If you contain all of that in a single file that's not necessary and provides a smoother design flow.
Your main beam is stiull a body. So create an empty component at the top level. The newly created component is automatically activated. hten take the sketch for that main beam and drag/drop it into the component. This will drag the body along with it and you'll have everything that belongs to that component neatly contained in that component.
then you can start assemblng stuff.
Here's another warning frm a past Solid Works user. In SW we're used to work a lot by slection and manipulating stuff in the viewport.
For example selection an object in the viwwport selects that component.
Fusion 360makes a very clear distinction between components and bodies. If you single-left-click on an object you are selecting the body within the component. If you then use hte move command you ar moving the body away fom it's origin in htat component. Most of the time that's not what you want to do.
To select a component you have to double-left-click on the object in the view port.
I get that same error and don't see anything wrong with your components.
This looks like you might have discovered a bug, or a limitation with external components.
@jeff_strater can you check this out please ?
Sure, I can take a look. I tried to access the model, but do not seem to have access. It could be that the link timed out. @underwood.michael.c, can you please post a new link?
Thank you,
Jeff
Jeff Strater
Engineering Director
The essence of this thread is clearly: Don't work with linked components when it is not necessary.
In this case it is not.
This really should not have anything to do with local vs linked components. While @TrippyLighting is right - personally I don't use linked components unless I have to, they do have their place, and creating a joint between linked components should not give this error. This is a very reasonable command to do in this situation, in my opinion.
I will pass this off to the right group to look at.
Jeff
Jeff Strater
Engineering Director
Sorry, I should have been more specific!
IIRC I had looked at the first assembly and when I broke the link the joint worked as expected.
My comment is aimed exclusively at this particular problem, and not generally at linked components assemblies.
If a problem can be fixed by removing the link in a particular case and the use of linked components is not necessary, remove the link and move on.
BUT still report the behavior, because as you say, and I concur, it should work.