Move bodies from one component to another

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

I am pretty experienced in Fusion (several hundered hours at least in the app) and this has never happened to me before. I have a relatively complex model that I'm working on with many components. I'm trying to move some bodies from the main 'bodies' tab in browser to another component that I have created, but it's not letting me. When I drag and drop, just nothing changes. I get the feeling this is a classic ebkac error... (error between keyboard and chair). So, is it infact a user error or is something else wrong? Thanks for the help!

[TrippyLighting]

Please make a screencast of what you are trying to do.

You should not really be having bodies in the main bodies folder in the browser, but perhaps that's just a misunderstanding on my side. Thus the request for the screencast.

[Anonymous]

Hmmmm... Now I'm completely sure this is a user error! 🙂

Thanks for the response. I'm going to preface this by saying I know how much of a mess this model is... it started as a concept and then we kind of just went with it and never bothered to make it neat. 

Anyways, back to the issue, as you can see in that screencast I created a bunch of new bodies, and by default they went to that "bodies" tab. Now I want to move them to the proper compenent (It's named 'Rack'). It's just not working. What am I doing wrong?

By the way, I'm not quite sure why I shouldn't just have bodies in the 'bodies' tab. Is there a reason? I know it SHOULD all be put into components, but is there a reason not to leave bodies in the bodies tab?

Anyways, thanks again for your help. 

[TrippyLighting · Accepted solution]

To be able to move forward you could try to create single component out of each body and perhaps then move the components created this way into the componet you want them to be located in. Wheter that is going to work is questionable, but at least you can give it a try!

The reason you cannot just move bodies into any component is because either you referenced other geometry from anoter body/component/sketch to create the body in question, or you refereced that body to create other gometry from it. In your video you are selecting several bodies to move them into one component. Perhaps try to move them one by one and identiy the ones you cannot move.

Then you could dtry to find the references and break them. It might be possible to then move the resisting bodies into the component.

As a general rule, bodies should NOT be put into componneds after they are created. Based on your description you seem to have missed out on one major concept. Fusion 360's R.U.L.E #1 is Create a component and activate it. For newly created components activatin is automatic.

If you want to edit a component particularly when you want to add objects such as sketches, construction geometry, joint origins and a couple of others, you should by all means activate it.

That will guarantee that on export the complete history for that component or assembly is exported as well.

This will likely be another stumbling block in your design. If you even get to export the multi-body component it will not contain all the information that was used to create all the bodies in that component/assembly.

IMHO the best approach ande maybe unavoidable at this time would be to recreate the design from skratch and structure it properly using the guidelines above. The longer you delay that necessary step the more it will hurt you down the road.

[Anonymous]

I was afraid you were going to say that... I guess this is what happens when you teach yourself software and assume you can just figure it all out! I never quite understood what it means to activate a component, but I get it now. The good news for me is most of this stuff has already been fabricated, so it's not a huge deal. It's just one piece left, which I will remake from scratch (and do it the proper way this time). Thanks for taking the time to help out! This is great to know moving forward...

[TrippyLighting]

Teaching yourself the software is fine! 

However, part of that is asking questions and there is really no better place than this forum. Also, while helping other users takes time, i=t really helps broaden your skill set as you get to solve problems you might not come across in your own work.

With several hundred hours under your belt you really should have more posts on the Forum 😉

[Anonymous]

That's a great point. I'll try to get more active. Hoperfully I'll keep myself from making more beginner mistakes in the future!

[TrippyLighting]

Well, if itmakes you feel better, I did the same thing with my first design in Fusion, after 12+ years on Solid Works. I re-designed it three times 😉

It is a very common thing as most other CAD ssystems don't have such a clear distinction between a body and a component.

[Anonymous]

Wow, three redesigns! I think I'm just going to work with what I have for this one, and do it right for the next model. It's not worth the time for me at this point to redo it with everything already fabricated. Anyways, thanks again for the advice.

[jmunkki5ZDPV]

Another self-taught user here... I learned Blender in December, got frustrated with the limitations/bugs with boolean operations etc and started learning Fusion 360 earlier this year. I think I would describe both times as similar experiences to learning a new (spoken) language. I watched a lot of Youtube videos and even now, every time I watch a new video, I usually learn something new.

I'm writing this, because one thing I noticed pretty early on with Fusion 360 is that there's no manual to read from start to finish. If I'm really motivated in learning a new skill, that's how I would normally do it: read the manual cover to cover at least twice. With Fusion 360, I started reading what I thought was a complete manual, then that put me into watching video tutorials on sculpting, sketching and modeling. Components are never really used in the tutorials, which I can understand: for a newcomer, they might be too much to handle right at the start.

However, if you don't start using components properly right from the start, you end up in a lot of trouble.

The best guide on how to use components was actually in a video intended as an introduction to Fusion 360 for SolidWorks users. I haven't used SolidWorks, but I still learned a lot.

If you have pointers on what to read or watch to really learn to use components properly, please post here.

I think the key questions are:

- When should I make a component?

- When do I have to make a component? (A flowchart of questions to go through in case you don't know.)

- How should the component tree be organized?

- I'm working on this detail part of a component. Should it also be a component?

- I made this detail part of a component, can I move the actions used to make it into a subcomponent instead of referencing the parent?

- When is it a bad idea to make a new component?

- If I have a "box" and a "lid", should they be siblings under a parent component or can the "lid" be a child component of the "box"?

- How would you organize components of a humanoid robot model? (Body, head, arms, legs, sub-parts of arms and legs etc.)

I'm not asking the questions here to get the answers - I'm just trying to think of questions a new user should be able to answer after going through the online documentation.

The Youtube videos are a great resource, but I think quite often they are focused on showing a specific modeling feature and because of that, they completely skip the component design steps of starting a new design. Essentially you are teaching new users a lot of really cool modeling tips, but you are also teaching them to be lazy with document structure design.

P.S. I'm really impressed with Fusion 360. Keep up the good work. Making it free to hobbyists is an excellent way to get new users and possibly start people on a new career in 3D design. Of all the skills I have learned in the past few years, I think learning to design in 360 is probably one of my most valued ones...and I still have a long way to go.

Another P.S.: It takes me a lot longer to figure out how to model something than it actually takes to go through the actions of making that model. Quite often it makes sense to just throw away a whole lot of work (don't get attached to "code", learn to love the algorithms/ideas instead) and just do it over cleanly. In that sense, making a body that should have been a component to start with isn't as bad as you might think: instead of trying to move it to a new component, I can make a new component and redo the whole thing (better, cleaner). Once it's done and I'm happy with it, I can delete the steps used to make the original one.

[Anonymous]

Good lord but that would be just a terrible user experience. What if I created several bodies in the main component because I just forgot to create the proper components in advance? This doesn't make any sense to me.

[Anonymous]

I totally agree the fusion workflow freaking sucks. I switched to solidworks after the project I wrote this post about. Infinately better. Got it for free through a sponsorship. Fusion is great for little projects but runs into organizational and performance issues with complex stuff. Solidworks is god-tier.

I do still use fusion for CAM/g-code generation for my school's crawlbot. It's an exceptional interface for that. 

[TrippyLighting]

Could you elaborate on "complex stuff" ?

[BlockheadSuper]

Hey, I had the same problem if I'm understanding you correctly. After some fiddling, I discovered the "move to group" function when i right clicked on the part I wanted to move. To break it down: I right clicked on the bodies (in the main bodies directory) that I wasn't able to drag to an already populated component I had. I clicked the "move to group" item, selected the "target group" which was the "Bodies" folder of the destination component, and voila my parts were moved successfully. 

Hopefully we had the same issue and this works for you. It's a stupid simple solution and I spent a hell of a long time trying everything until I found this function.

[brockmoel]

I created the same problem for myself. My goal was to consolidate the multiple bodies I'd accidentally created, into a single body within the same component. Moving the sketches to the proper component did most of the work but didn't consolidate the bodies. Eventually, I started checking the properties of the features and found that they were properly set to "Join" which should result in a single body, right? Well, using the edit command, selecting, "cut" and then re-selecting "Join" caused the behavior I wanted. * I had to do this to all the features but it did work.

[dustinNHELF]

I realize this is an old post, and I get the workflow theory that you explained.... but I don't think it is intuitive. 

This is one of those "you don't know that you don't know until you are screwed" scenarios. I like fusion 360, but am looking at a model full of bodies wondering how on earth I am doing to fix it without spending hours recreating everything. 

As mentioned by another post, I was able to use the join tool to lure bodies into the component and then break them apart. While possible this quirk has worked, it has broken an otherwise great experience with fusion. 

[ANDREWKARTASHEV]

I started my first project (a tie fighter) and wound up with nearly 150 bodies.  But despite the 'always make a component first' thing, I had no trouble copy and pasting bodies from component to component and then removing the originals.  No problem, except that the construction history got deleted.   (But that's not fusion's fault.)  Sometimes the components were nested, sometimes not, but it worked.   It threw me for a second til I started hitting the little activate dot on the component before pasting.  I was afraid all that removing would mess up my model like deleting does.  But I had no issues even when I exported to Max where individual bodies showed up as elements in the Edit Poly stack.   The edges were gross until I cleared all the smoothing groups and autosmoothed and then they looked fine and had a very nice topology.   The materials didn't work either but I use Redshift and didn't feel like messing with it since I was going to put a new UV on it anyway.

[TrippyLighting]

---

@ANDREWKARTASHEV wrote:

   The edges were gross until I cleared all the smoothing groups and autosmoothed and then they looked fine and had a very nice topology.   

---

What you export from Fusion 360 are triangulated meshes and those don't have any topology.

---

@ANDREWKARTASHEV wrote:

... But despite the 'always make a component first' thing...

---

Where did you read/hear that ?

[ANDREWKARTASHEV]

Tris aren't topology?

[image: image.png]
It looks like topology. Maybe this is a somatic debate, but what i mean
are the verts, edges, and faces that define a mesh's shape. You might say
that a voxel mesh or a dynamesh isn't a topology but I'm going to continue
calling it that.

[TrippyLighting]

You can call it whatever you like, but in a mathematical sense you are incorrect.