Parameter area units

[patrik-web]

I'm creating a user parameter that is an area, ie a length*length, but the only area units I can pick in the dialog are "acre" and "circular_mil"... Who the heck uses either of those? Is it really not possible to create an area parameter that is in any sort of standard unit like mm^2, m^2 (or even in^2 for the americans)??

[randyT9V9C]

I find this odd also. Maybe someone more versed will chime in with the reason behind it. Fusion 360 evaluates the unit and then the equation. If the units don't match... it stays red.

I was able to make it work leaving length, width, and area without units (No Unit).

You can assign a unit by creating a parameter and multiplying it by one. Not that it helps any in this case. 😉

[randyT9V9C]

I find this odd also. Maybe someone more versed will chime in with the reason behind it. Fusion 360 evaluates the unit and then the equation. If the units don't match... it stays red.

I was able to make it work leaving length, width, and area without units (No Unit).

You can assign a unit by creating a parameter and multiplying it by one. Not that it helps any in this case. 😉

[daniel_lyall]

http://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=GUID-76272551-3275-46C4-AE4D-10D58B408C20

[patrik-web]

Daniel: Thanks for that link, I've been wondering what functions are possible. It doesn't seem to address the area units though.

(Just to be clear, functionally it doesn't matter what the area unit is, so I just picked acre and it does the calculations fine with all the numbers being 1e-6 or something. Since I eventually compute back to a length, the area units don't really matter in this case. I can also input an area as "25mm^2" and it correctly figures out how many acres that is. If I wanted to output an area, though, I'd have to convert it to a unitless number by dividing out the unit, which kind of defeats the purpose of keeping track of units.

[daniel_lyall]

There is more work to be done to this part of fusion,

for the time being there's this https://apps.autodesk.com/Detail/Index?id=915879760347548283&appLang=en&os=Win64  I know it's not ideal but it's where it is for now there are other paramaters you can use But I can't find them.

Once they included driven dimensions thing will get better, so yer you have to do math functions when you need this and that to equal this, they work ok and they can be added to another math function or the paramater being used, it is a bit of extra work but it's good practise for doing math.

I do it all the time with cabinet making so I can have one paramater that will update a few different parameters when doing standard sheet size cabinets. and when doing wrap so i can use a sketch that is controlled by the parts diameter x pie

[adam]

Three years on and the only area units available are still acres and circular mils, both very peculiar choice of units for an engineering tool.

The other available units are quite sensible so I'm guessing the area options listed are just the units that are NOT the square of another unit (acres and circular mils are both non-trivial derivations from linear units). Unfortunately someone forgot to put the much more useful squared and cubed linear units in for both Area and Volume!Both volume and area are missing the linear unit squared optionsDoes anyone at Autodesk know if this is actually on the roadmap to add some sensible units, ideally defaulting to the square of the model's linear unit choice? It seems too basic to warrant a feature request, perhaps it should be a bug report?

I am having to create some pretty crazy workarounds in parameters which will look rather silly when sensible units are inevitably added one day 🙂

(tagging @daniel_lyall @patrik-web @randyT9V9C in case you don't get notified and have heard something!)

[daniel_lyall]

There are more than likely other units available all I know of are these There could be more just try to see if the unit you want is there, two were found out about last week for the cam workspaces what where two a lot of people wanted. 

I know there is a video coming out on the Autodesk university sight that has a lot of fancy math stuff in it.

https://www.autodesk.com/autodesk-university/

[MichaelT_123]

Hi Mr Adam,

This is for your benefit. It is better to create some pretty crazy workarounds rather than putting in boring puzzles :).

Over time you will be the expert in this challenging task and possibly being invited to do a lecture at Autodesk University.

But, hey... you are not alone!

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-design-validate/units-in-21st-century/m-p/8975168

Regards

MichaelT 

[daniel_lyall]

@MichaelT_123 You give over something you want to teach other users and if the committee likes it you get to do it there is no invite by ADSK or anything like that at all for AU university.

[Vreith]

Chiming in that this is utterly ridiculous in 2023.

With configurations, these weird problems in parameters become even more glaring

[bj_wiegell]

laughable

[fatalbullethit]

bump. it's 2025 now, more than 7 years since this (really simple) issue was brought up...