Move operation not included in Design History??

[RogerInHawaii]

I did a move of a component during my design. If I step through the Design History the move does indeed occur at the point in the design sequence, but there's no entry in the Design History for the move. I need to change the distance of the move but with no entry the Design History it seems that I can't do that.

WHY is the Move operation not included in the Design History?

[g-andresen]

Hi,

Take a look at this tutorial, for example, and some things will become clearer.

günther

[jeff_strater]

Yes, Component Move is not captured in the timeline.  Any type of movement of a component (drag, Move, Drive Joint, Align), just puts the design in a "Capture Position Pending" state, and you see this UI in the right of the toolbar:

This means:  Some components have been moved.  If you want to capture that, you can.  This is to avoid polluting your timeline with a lot of unnecessary Move features, every time you reposition a component.  You can edit a Capture Position, but that just lets you move the component(s) from where they are to somewhere else, and include that in the captured position.

[RogerInHawaii]

The video recommended by guenther.andresen shows the Move operations as appearing in the timeline.

It appears that there are two ways of getting the operation into the timeline: Either by clicking the Capture Position item in the toolbar after the move has been finished ore by checking the Capture Position checkbox in the Move dialog.

But neither of those actually do indeed result in the Move operation ending up in the timeline which means that I actually CANNOT edit the move at a later date.

[g-andresen]

Hi,

Look at the difference between the move actions for bodies and those for components.

Günther

[kevinGG4T7]

Yet another example of why Fusion is a lousy product, unsuitable for a commercial environment. Not saving the Move locations means the cannot use the CTL-B command to rebuild the timeline, nor can you recreate the Design history.

Be clear about this. If you use a Free Move at any point in your design process, then your Timeline is irrevocably broken and unuseable.  As "Timeline" is one of the foundations of Fusion, this renders the product virtually useless in a commercial environment where a person needs to recreate a design.

The excuse is that the Free Move cannot be captured. I call BS on this. This is just lazy programming. The start and end positions can be captured by referencing the Origin before and after the Move.

Fusion 360 has so many broken features and bugs that it is unusable. I will have to look at switching to Solidworks, which means my significant time investment in Fusion will be wasted. Such a nuisance.  

The programming team do need to sort this out, along with proper spline editing tools

[TheCADWhisperer]

@kevinGG4T7 

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

In my experience Move as used by beginners is almost always the wrong move (pun intended).

[RogerInHawaii]

Please do notice that my original post was made back in March of 2021.

[kevinGG4T7]

It's astonishing to me that this has not been fixed. 

The timeline is the foundation of Fusion projects and to have a feature that destroys the usefulness of that is beyond me. if Autocad designed a car, the wheels would fall off when you apply the handbrake.

I'm sure other products have their issues too, but 6 months into learning Fusion and I'm just getting more and more frustrated with it.

[TrippyLighting]

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@kevinGG4T7 wrote:

Yet another example of why Fusion is a lousy product, unsuitable for a commercial environment.

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The move feature should only be used to move bodies & faces, not components. At least in timeline mode. In DM (direct modeling) it can also be very effectively used to move components.

The free (body) move cannot be captured parametrically as it can combine an arbitrary number of translate and rotate operations.

The separate translate and rotate features can are parametric. 

While Fusion 360 certainly has limitation and bugs, just like other CAD product I've used over the last 30 + years, I use it successfully in a commercial professional engineering environment.

[kb9ydn]

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@kevinGG4T7 wrote:

Yet another example of why Fusion is a lousy product, unsuitable for a commercial environment. Not saving the Move locations means the cannot use the CTL-B command to rebuild the timeline, nor can you recreate the Design history.

Be clear about this. If you use a Free Move at any point in your design process, then your Timeline is irrevocably broken and unuseable.  As "Timeline" is one of the foundations of Fusion, this renders the product virtually useless in a commercial environment where a person needs to recreate a design.

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I think this is subjective and depends on how you use the tool.  What are you trying to do that requires tracking of component moves?  If component positioning is important for your design process, you should (most likely) be using joints and not component moves.

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@kevinGG4T7 wrote:

I will have to look at switching to Solidworks, which means my significant time investment in Fusion will be wasted. Such a nuisance.  

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I think you will be disappointed with Solidworks then, because in the assembly context it does not track component moves at all.  To position components you have to use mates, which are (essentially) equivalent to joints in Fusion.  In Solidworks assemblies there is no "timeline", except for component patterns and I think assembly features (which as far as I know very infrequently used).

C|

[kevinGG4T7]

Sure. Here's the file. The issue is the first free move in the timeline where I'm moving a mesh onto the face of the main component. Maybe there is a different way to move such a body, but the Free Move was so simple it's challenging for me to accept that is should not be used.

All software has it's issues, and I'm frustrated right now. Maybe it is the wrong tool for the application I'm putting it to - Artworks in wood that are not regular shapes - or I'm just using it wrong. I'm reasonably bright, but ****, it's hard software to use!! 

Off topic, but if you're looking at the file anyway, there is a "Component out of date" error on the Maufacturing tab. Any idea how I clear that? I've tried all that I can think off but no luck

Thanks! 

[TrippyLighting]

What do you want to do once you have all these slices lined up?

In the attached model I made the assumption that in the end you want to combine everything into one solid body for machining.

I added 3 user parameters.

The non-parametric point-to-point moves have been replaced with the parametric translation using the spacer_thickness parameter. If you want to change the number of slices, you need to manually fix a couple of things.  

[kevinGG4T7]

Thanks for this. I went about it differently - creating a pattern for the spacers and then using the Point to Point move to relocate each slice. so that, ironically enough, the moves are captured in the timeline.

The move that cause all the issues is the first one in the timeline. I'm moving a mesh onto the main body, but there are no references to use other than the Mark-One eyeball. It worked fine for what I needed but unbeknownst to me, this move is not recorded in the timeline and thus the cmd-B fails when I tried to rebuild the project. The Scale and Loft feature die a horrible death because the "Head" mesh position is not recorded in the move.

I really don't know how I could have moved the mesh any other way. Any suggestions?

Here's a pic of the in-process artwork. I bundled the slices together into a "brick" of wood, milled the profile and then unbundled it and interspersed the spacers.

Cheers

KB

[TrippyLighting]

I personally would have prepared the mesh in it's own file and in direct modeling only.

That provides you with the opportunity to center the mesh over the origin using the move tool without recording.

That file I would have inserted as a linked component and then you can use the assembly joints to properly position the object parametrically.  

[kevinGG4T7]

I guess this is where I struggle with Fusion. When something is basically wrong with the software, the user is at fault for using it.

In hindsight, there may have been a number of ways to do the move, but not as easily as the Free Move, and each would certainly have required significant extra work. 

Programmers say that they can't capture the Free move because the user may make many permutations. It seems to me that capturing the locations of three corners of the bounding box at the start and end of the move operation would not be difficult. Whatever permutations the user makes during a move, the start and final position would be recorded.

[TrippyLighting]

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@kevinGG4T7 wrote:

I guess this is where I struggle with Fusion. When something is basically wrong with the software, the user is at fault for using it.

With 30+ years of professional CAD and other 3D modeling experience as an engineer I have used many a 3D CAD software. I started with SolidWorks in 1998 and still use it at work alongside Fusion 360, which is my daily driver. I have used Alibre Design for several years  for private projects (I owned a full license) and nowadays I privately own and operate a full License of ZW3D.
I've come in contact with a good number of other 3D CAD software over the years.

I started using Blender for Sub-D and polygon modeling an rendering  18 years ago.

I've discovered bugs and potential for improvements in all of the software  have used. That did not stop me from completing my work. I adapted and learned alterative workflows.

I suggest you do the same!

If you don't want to continue to use Fusion 360, that is perfectly fine with me.

[RogerInHawaii]

The fact that there are problems with all sorts of other CAD programs doesn't excuse any particular CAD program for not addressing its problems.

Sure, we have to do the best we can with what we're using, but the developers of CAD programs should welcome people raising issues with their product and do the best they can to address them.

[TrippyLighting]

1. This isn't a problem with the CAD software as I've demonstrated.
2. I did not state that the Software Developers are NOT addressing problems. I said that in the meantime, until they do, you'll have to adapt and learn to achieve results using other workflows.

[MichaelT_123]

Aloha Mr RogerInHawaii,

Consider:

1. rollback design's history to the move of interest (before or after)
2. optionally, give it a meaningful name 
3. suppress it
4. perform an alternative move to a design entity
5. optionally give the new move a meaningful name 
6. roll  design's history to end (or appropriate event)
7. evaluate the result
8. repeat step (a) until fully satisfied 
9. suppress/unsuppress created moves to evaluate different design scenarios

Regards

MichaelT