Object patterns and the timeline

[tinglett]

Hi all,

While editing today I ran into a little unexpected behavior in Fusion 360 with the object pattern tool (not the sketch pattern tool).  I know there are "issues" with this tool, but today I was a bit surprised when I used the pattern tool within a woodworking project to duplicate a rail several times, and then later in the timeline I added a groove to one of the rails.  It modified all of the rails!

Certainly I want this behavior sometimes, but as with using the mirror tool I would have expected I'd need to roll back the timeline prior to the pattern feature for behavior like this.  This seems like a bug to me, but if not I'll adapt to it.  If it is a bug, I'd better think a little about what will happen to my design if the bug gets fixed.  Hmm....the edits I do to "repair" objects I don't want to edit will fail, I suppose.

Todd

[TrippyLighting · Accepted solution]

It's not a bug.

If you create a component pattern then the patterned objects are instances of the seed object. In essence they point to the same data set. Editing one of them edits all of them.

[jeff_strater · Accepted solution]

without the model, it's a little hard to tell.  If you can share the model here, it will be easier to figure out what is going on.  However, the most likely answer is that you have patterned a Component.  All instances of a Component share the same geometry, so any changes to one instance will be reflected in all instances of that component.  To make changes to just one instance, you'd have to use Paste New to copy that component.  This creates an independent copy of that component.

[tinglett]

Yeah, it occurred to me after I posted that I should have said this was a pattern of a component.  Guess I'd better learn to use Paste New or Move/Copy when I do this.  It's too bad because the pattern tool is placing them all neatly for me.

Is there a reason that Mirror of a component behaves different than pattern?   I actually like the ability choose to edit before/after the feature work, but maybe most people don't think that way.  The timeline seems more powerful, imho.

Todd

[TrippyLighting]

If you post a model I could be convinced to show you a trick or two 😉

You can still use a component pattern , but simply remove those instances you don't need.

There is a suppress feature in the pattern tool that theoretically allows you to suppress a pattern instance.

Unfortunately it's got a bug and when you edit the pattern id does not remember which instances you had previously suppressed.
So remove (not delete) the unneeded instance e and then you could copy-paste-new that component and that way create an independently editable copy of that component.

[jeff_strater]

@tinglett - Mirror Component behaves differently because the body is a mirror image of the original.  Because the geometry is different, Fusion cannot just create another instance of the same component.

[tinglett]

Peter,

I certainly can (and will) post my model, but this time I think I'll save the opportunity until next time around.  I'm sure more questions are coming! :).  I'm really trying to learn how to do various things for woodworking after seeing a few nice videos on youtube and after a number of questions being so kindly answered by folks like yourself!  Thank you!

I also realized for this particular case I could use the pattern tool to replicate the body in my component.  I renamed the existing component to "Side Rails" (plural) and then did a "create component from bodies" for each of the generated bodies.  They ended up as children of "Side Rails", which is actually what I wanted, and so I renamed them "Top Rail", "Middle Rail 1", "Middle Rail 2", ... "Bottom Rail."   Worked like a champ.  Now I can customize each the way I want from here on.

In fact, I went back in the timeline to add top/bottom grooves on each (for panels).  Going forward in the timeline the grooves appeared on a 5 instances, so then I went to the top rail and extruded the top (unnecessary) groove to remove it, and did the same to the bottom rail and also added an arch.  Anyway, it worked nice.  Right now I'm really just screwing around trying things different ways to see what seems to work best for me.

Todd