No fix for a broken copy-paste of a body ?

[TrippyLighting]

I had modified the body in the base feature. In essence I completely unstitched it, split faces, extended, trimmed etc. and then stitched everything back together. When exiting the base feature I expected to have to fix a few things as the reference to the original body was lost.

Fair enough. However there does not seem to be any fix for the copy paste operation of that body. I had copied and pasted it into a new component. What I'd be expect to be able to do is to edit that copy/paste operation in order to pick the new body as a reference, just as this can be done in many other features in the timeline that loose their references. However, that does not seem to be possible.

This should be a simple fix. I cannot share the model as I signed a NDA.

[jeff_strater · Accepted solution]

Good find, @TrippyLighting.  We could never come up with a workflow that would require "edit Copy/Paste Body", and you just did.  Sadly, I don't know of any workaround off the top of my head.  Time for some head-scratching in the parametric modeling development team.  This seems like a valid workflow, and something we should provide a way to repair.

Jeff

[TrippyLighting]

Thanks for the feedback. This is one of the things that can easily be demonstrated on a cube 😉

I can share the model with AD and/or make a screencast of why the ability to repair this would be a very good thing to have.

I've "repaired " it now by deleting and recreating the geometry. In this case that was not to much work, but...

[jeff_strater]

Thanks.  I was also able to reproduce it using a very simple model.  All it takes is to unstitch and re-stitch the base body model, so we don't need the original model, but thanks for offering!

Jeff

[cekuhnen]

@jeff_strater@TrippyLighting

Yeah if you could find a solution for this that would be amazing. This is a big problem for me because like Trippy I use the base feature as a static DM model container and sometimes I have to adjust the cad data in the DM and then the paste objects break.

Copy and paste however also breaks with normal models

make a solid

unstitch a surface

edit some stuff

stitch it back together

copy paste

edit the original model

paste feature will break

Of course I did not make a copy when this happend and cannot reproduce it now

however I found something else going on

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byzv_NlyKp_2c2dIcmd3R2VSVnM/view

[HughesTooling]

Try using Boundary fill to make a copy in the new component. It will only make the copy where the original is so you might need to move after making the copy.

Mark

[TrippyLighting]

Thanks, but I don't think that'll work.

I have no insight on how the data structure for a 3D object in Fusion 360 really looks like, but somehow any data structure needs to keep track of all the entities in such an object. Vertices, edges, faces, surface bodies, solid bodies. Each of these entities needs to have a unique identifier.

Before unstitching a cube you'll have:

8 vertices,

8 edges, that share some of the same vertices (you ned to keep track of that as well).

6 faces that share some of the edges.

1 solid body.

After unstitching:

• 8 surface bodies that don't share any edges (that's what unstitching does).
  • Each of the surface bodies have a face with 4 edges that share some of the vertices.
  • 4 vertices.

You'll loose the solid body and with it the unique ID, which is referenced by the features you create when back in the timeline.

When you stitch things back together the structure is re-created including a new solid body with a new unique identifier.

There should be a UI just as with other tools in Fusion that allows to re-reference in essence replacing the old unique ID with the new one.

For example when in the base feature I split only 2 surfaces. In timeline mode I had created an offset plane from one of these surfaces. When leaving the base feature that reference was lost.

It was easy enough to edit the offset-construction plane feature and re-select the face it needed to be referenced off.

We'd need that same thing for the copy-paste feature in the timeline.

[HughesTooling]

@TrippyLighting It will fail if you make big changes but you can reselect rather than having an error in the timeline you can't fix. I reused a mould design the other day when a customer reissued new STP files and going through the timeline fixing the warnings was quite easy and a lot quicker than starting again. The 2 versions of the moulding were quite different but it all worked out quite well.

This is the cavities for the first version.

And this is the new version. The design has history enabled and the cavity is built from linked STP files using boundary fill to extract the bodies.

Mark

[TrippyLighting]

You could not possibly make a screencast ?

[HughesTooling]

@TrippyLighting I'll try and come up with something latter. Another way I've done this sort of thing is using Offset to extract surfaces from one component to create a body in another. The problem is if you extract all the surfaces it shows as a open body and you need to stitch even though it should be closed. @jeff_strater could this be fixed? Here's a screencast.

Mark

[HughesTooling · Accepted solution]

Here's a quick screencast. Shows how modifying the base feature breaks the fillet in the second component but it's easy enough to fix. I think as long as you end up with only one body after the edit the boundary fill should still work and if it does fail you can select and fix the error. Seems like a good workaround\replacement for copy\paste.

Mark

[TrippyLighting]

Yes, that would help avoiding the situation.

I could leave the surfaces unstitched in the base feature.

Then in component 1 I create a boundary fill to get the body for the first component and in component 2 I do the same. Both should update when the base feature is updated, to what ever it's updated to, as long as if there's a boundary to fill. I have yet to try if that works, but in theory it should.

I'll keep that nifty workflow in mind for the next time!

[jeff_strater]

@HughesTooling:  You've managed to uncover another of the great debates we had along the way:  Whether to auto-stitch in Patch mode.  The ultimate example of this is a revolved sphere in Patch mode:

The result is a surface.  We went back and forth on whether to auto-stitch in this and other cases.  In the end, what won out is:  You are in surface mode, so the result should always be a surface, except for explicit conversion commands such as Stitch, and Thicken.  For better or worse...

Jeff

[TrippyLighting]

Is there a timeline as to when we might be able to see an editable copy/paste tool ?

What is kicking me in the teeth in the current project is that if you copy paste two bodies/objects at the same time you get one icon in the timeline. Nice!

But if you then find that you only need one of them, you cannot remove it from the selection by editing the tool.

That means you have to delete etc operation, which breaks al subsequent work on the object that you did want to keep. (Gmblgrmblgmblgrrr.....) 

[cekuhnen]

@TrippyLighting

Good questions. I simply do not use that tool at the moment because it is too unpredictable or I have it at the end and never do more with it.

So in case something goes wrong then well ok I delete the copy and make a new one which will not break anything further down the timeline

because it will not be used for anything else.

[cekuhnen]

@jeff_strater

No reason why not?

I can give you instantly two:

1. swap out object to move

2. if a reference is lost which happens a lot in Fusion you need to be able to fix that

This is actually such a logical thought I am quite surprised you guys did not see it.

[rbackman07]

Did this ever get addressed? I run into this problem very frequently where a copy paste body feature is corrupted. it gives a warning(pasted below) to reselect reference geometry but it doesn't give a way to fix it. I could recreate a new copy/paste feature and try to suppress it to fix dependencies but any features downstream that reference that body are also suppressed

Typically the copy paste is created when I do a move copy. it would be nice if the copy paste body feature was combined with the move feature in the timeline since I can edit the move feature. it is also slightly confusing from a UX experience that doing a move copy creates two features.

Warning: CopyPasteBodies3
<b>1 Reference Failures</b><br/>The model is using cached geometry to solve. Please reselect reference geometry for failed features in the timeline.

[Anonymous]

This has been at Autodesk's attention since early 2017. This is a serious issue in the fact that when it happens, if your model is very complex you have to rebuild everything from this part forward. Can we get clarification if this is going to be updated so the workflow and tools work consistently. How would a user know that copy/paste is not editable when all other features are (if they are not, please fix them too)? This has cost me and others many hours of work. Granted I won't be using copy paste any more, but I think this is a bit irresponsible on Autodesks part.

[milos.ristin]

Completely agreed! Same with the "Remove" Feature. It is quite inconsistent and in-editable, meaning that the timeline can't be properly fixed. With big complex files, this becomes a horrible, time consuming issue. 

[rbackman07]

Hey there, want to bump this issue again because it still exists and seems to be a flaw with the UX. doing a move/copy creates two features in the timeline. except the copy paste feature is not editable so it often breaks and destroys lots of dependencies down the timeline. The copyPaseBody feature is this odd ball feature that can't be edited even though the error says edit feature and reselect. Seems to me that either the move/copy should be a different feature from the move feature or there should be a separate editable command to just copy a body.. Or alternatively, have move copy do a boundary fill (which apparently is an editable workaround). 

I created a toy example and short video of how to reproduce this error, for some reason the dialogs weren't showing up in the screen capture but hope it is easy to follow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-OmjErl2GI&feature=youtu.be

I love  fusion and use it daily but this is one of those issues that can make me frustrated enough to spend 45 minutes recording and posting to a forum lol.. anyway back to fixing my cascade of timeline errors..