Move - point to position snaps?

[derekmcleod]

When using point to position move on a body, there are almost no snaps that appear. On a simple example with a box, the only snaps are the vertexes at the corners. Working with point to point move gives all the options I would expect and in fact more than usual, such as midpoint, center of face, etc., however this functionality is not there for point to position moves. 

[filipmatyja]

Hello derekmcleod,

Hmm... I'm not sure if that what you are looking for but I can indeed snap my moving anchor whenever you mentioned:

All you have to do is press "M" and then hoover over point you want to snap to. 

Does it help? 

[derekmcleod]

That's the case for the Free Move and Point to Point move but not Point to Position. See below:

[chrisplyler]

I don't know anything about the 'point to position' option. But I want to ask you a couple of non-related question.

Do you have a dang good reason for Moving bodies? Do you understand the consequences of doing it?

[derekmcleod]

I might move a body to the origin or to create geometry for a combine operation or any number of seemingly routine modeling tasks. Should I be doing something else?? Apparently I do not understand the consequences of my normal way of creating. 

[filipmatyja]

Hi derekmcleod,

To achieve what you are looking for in point-to-position mode I had to generate manually additional points in places where I needed them. So in this example -  in the middle of the top plane and in the middle of the edge. Even they do not normally show directly from the Move menu, you can select them if they are created beforehand as new points. 

I think this will party solve your problem, even it creates a little bit of extra work. Why they are not available straight away like in the rest of the modes? No clue, maybe we should report it as bug or idea?

Cheers,

Filip

[derekmcleod]

Yeah, I found the same workaround. Had to create axes to arrive at the box face centerpoint to create a point. It can be done but would be great to have the functionality of the other move variants. 

I am not sure how to add it as an idea.  

[chrisplyler]

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@derekmcleod wrote:

I might move a body to the origin or to create geometry for a combine operation or any number of seemingly routine modeling tasks. Should I be doing something else?? Apparently I do not understand the consequences of my normal way of creating. 

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Okay...are you familiar with Rule #1?

Generally speaking, it's wise to create a body on the origin to begin with. And by this, I mean on the origin OF THE COMPONENT the body belongs to. There are certainly exceptions, but generally that's the case.

Now, I understand that sometimes, due to complexity, it might be helpful to make some bit of geometry off to the side of the main geometry, move it into place on the main geometry, and combine it into one body. I'm talking about body moves WITHIN THE COMPONENT.

When you DO move a body within a component, you are moving it away from its sketch(es).

The preferred workflow for assemblies is to make bodies within components on the origins of those components, and then use the Joints functionality to position those components relative to each other.

There are hundreds of threads on this forum in which a user is confused about why their file exhibits some unexpected behavior and we figure out that they used a bunch of body moves without understanding the implications.

[derekmcleod]

I'm fairly familiar with components and use them for everything I am creating at this point. When I first started in Fusion, I wasn't really sure what their purpose was nor how they worked. I do now. That said, I am working with body solids (cylinder, box, sphere, and recently pipe) to create much of my work. If I make a box, I am not aware of a way to create it centered on the origin? I do some sketch based creation and understand the implication of moving a body away from the sketch. 

I can't claim to understand Joints in the same way. I believe it is the same principle of mates in Solidworks? Played around and it seems to be. I made a quick table as an example and if I want to move the component (which contains the top and four legs, connected with joints) from point to position, I still am unable to select any of the snaps available in other move options. I guess I also don't know if there is a way to define an assembly's origin, ie the table in my case. 

[chrisplyler]

I never use the primitives (box, sphere, etc.) because they have issues. The exceptions are Coil (from which I can extract an edge path to use with some other feature) and Pipe (because unlike the others, it actually uses a path that can be manipulated later, just like a Sweep feature). Otherwise avoid them like the plague unless you're doing direct modeling.

The preferred method of creating a box is, of course, to sketch a rectangle on the origin and Extrude that profile.

If you have a table top and four legs Jointed together, that is FIVE components, not one. The Joints locate those five components relative to each other (the top of each leg Jointed to some point on the bottom of the table top (or in the case of my video, to sketch points below the table top)), and you shouldn't need to use the Move command on any of them. Watch this:

[derekmcleod]

That was very cool! I had no idea there were parameters that could be set. Thanks for making the video. I know I still have much to learn. 

I suppose my modeling is often direct where I don't necessarily know what the result will be until it is made. 

In my example of moving the table, I would create a top level component to contain the 5 components (top, legs) and then move that top level component. If I am creating an interior scene, the position of things might change, need more instances, etc. 

[chrisplyler]

Interior scene w/ furniture:

Joint the furniture components/assemblies (we call a component an assembly if it has other components nested within it, as you describe your table; in my video, the table top was an independent component, and the four leg components were nested into an assembly) into place at points in the room. Or, okay fine just Move them if you want to slide stuff around to look at different potential layouts. But when you settle on a layout, Joint them and delete all the Move events from your timeline. But in that scenario there is no reason to Move BODIES. In MOST scenarios there is no good reason to Move bodies.

[Paul.GrafPZAZ7]

I'm new to Fusion 360 and am trying to learn how to snap to object & sketches, etc. Could you explain the consequences of moving bodies? Just trying to learn how to do this properly.

Paul

[jeff_strater]

some of the consequences of moving a body:

1. moving the body will disassociate (in space) the body from any sketches or work geometry used to create it.  If you edit the sketch, that Body Move will be rolled back, so the body will move as you do this.
2. moving the body will move it in all component instances.  If you have more than one instance of a component, generally, you do not want to move every occurrence of the body, you just want to move one component in relation to another
3. too many Body Moves in the timeline can slow down performance.  Not that they are expensive, but if there are a lot of them, that can add up.  Component moves are not recorded in the timeline.

[garrett.glaser]

I gotta say, I do scenic and experiential design in Fusion and have been breaking rule #1 for 5 years now and had almost no problems like you mention. I move bodies around willy-nilly, change sketches that were the basis of bodies that have been moved dozens of times, turn things into components when it suits my needs, and never ever use joints if I can avoid it. Is it possible that rule #1 is an artifact of the experience working in early versions of Fusion? 

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@garrett.glaser wrote:

Is it possible that rule #1 is an artifact of the experience working in early versions of Fusion? 

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No.

Well partially.

But Move is almost always the wrong move as used by beginners and you should be using Joints.

Attach one of your files here for one of the experts to demonstrate.