Placing sketches using direct coordinates

[lobe360]

Hello

New to Fusion 360, coming from geomagic (Alibre) and already frustrated.

I want to place a circle using direct coordinates, in fact I did that all the time when sketching from a  drawing in Geomagic.

In Geomagic the current coordinates are dispplayed as you move the mouse but nowhere do I see those displayed here.

So, I choose a face and want to place a circle say at x midpoint of the face and y .617 inches and I cannot figure out how to do it.

I can place the circle and then I have to move it which itself is complex using the mouse etc.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

I'm making a learning system that takes you through all this for free, but basically in Fusion 360 you use constraints, and dimensions, after the sketch geometry is "roughly" made, to get the exact alignments and dimensions desired. 

Be sure to post if you still run into trouble.

Jesse

[jeff_strater]

Yes, Fusion today does not support that style of sketching (by entering in exact values).  It has certianly been requested:  idea station: sketch precise input.  If this is something you think is important, please vote for it!

And thanks, Jesse (as always) for the great tips on how to achieve precision without entering coordinates!

Jeff Strater (Fusion development)

[lobe360]

Awesome. thanks very much,

Laurence

[lobe360]

Hello

Yes, I definitely need this. I have spent the last 10 years having to use Alibre (now Geomagic) and Bobcad for CAM.

Never liked Meshcam and hated having to export stuff all the time as .step so I could pull it into Bobcad/CAM.

The cost of both of those (license and maintenenance) has me joining the Fusion 360 experience and I really like what I see so far.

I actually paid the full 1 year subscription already and hope that wont go up too much every year as I am committed to staying with this product,

I was leery of the whole cloud thing but its working for me so far.

I can patiently wait for this as I have been getting ny by placing at a known grid point and moving sketches precisely. What I would like ASAP though is an option to turn on cooordinate view at the bottom right next to the steps displayed. I really want x and y as a start to show up reference by the origin as I move the mouse in sketch.

Thanks and keep up the good work. The Cam is impressive and it sso noce to have it integrated.

Regards

Laurence Oberman

[TrippyLighting]

I freely admit my ignorance if called for, but I am having a hard time envisioning a workflow that necessitates this feature.

Having a continuous display of where the mouse is on a given sketch plane is fine and can be helpful but entering direct coordinates to create sketch gometry can be an outright dangerous design practice!

Please explain in a littel more detail why you would need it and the workflow associated with it. The only workflow I can imagine at the moment is if you have a CNC program that provides you with coordinates and not dimensioned geometric elements and you want to recteate the geometry in 3D. Is that what you need it for ?

The reason why I dont "like" this feature is because about 5 years ago I worked for a company and the tooling that was designed and about to go into manufacturing was part of the companies prestiege project that was over budget already. In the middle of the project the lead design engineer left for another job and I was asked whether I could help with the tooling design, something I had not done in over 10 years.

The first look at the design in SolidWorks revealed to my utter surprise that non of the sketches that were used had any dimensions or any constraints. All of the tooling components were sketched by using the two little boxes that allow to enter coordinates! The enineer that then producced the drawings recognized this as well but instead of working with the other engineer simply applied all the dimesinoning directly in the drawings completely bypassing the parametric design intent.

It turned out that design changes were necessary and as the original design intend was not clear I had the manufacturerer send me the drawing PDFs and I had to completely re-design the toooing in order to apply the changes (fortunately they had not started cutting metal).

I can imagine that at least some of the requests or this feature come from a misunderstanding of how to properly create sketches in parametric modeling software.

BTW, I find Geomagic Design a very fine design package that given it's abilities is in no way to expensive.

I own a license and the only thing I don't like is that I have to fire up the VM on my iMac to run it.

Granted, F360 picing is very attractive even if you are not an early adopter.

[Davidf01]

I used Geomagic also and found that entering sketch dimensions a pretty easy adjustment so far. I got use to this work flow pretty fast. I did

have to rethink some of the things I was use to using geomagic. So far not to painfull.

[lobe360]

I agree with most of this but I have got used to knowing where I was in the sketch and modeling view of Geomagic. Perhaps as I use 360 more and more I wont miss the display of coordinates anymore. I definitely don't consider myself anything more than acceptably proficient with Geomagic> I have picked up Fusion 360 quickly and I find the youtube and training videos awesome.

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous:

Can you provide a link to your learning system?

[Anonymous]

Hi Ilikef360, I like your name!  And thanks for your question, unfortunately that learning system will be part of a new kind of low cost cnc center, which is still not ready for sale yet.  However there is already a great amount of learning content for F360 and a really helpful community, and I wish you the best for learning this great program.  (PS. in meantime if you need any cheap above ground metal frame self watering giant garden growers let me know ;-).

Jesse