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Prevent Movement When Updating Linked Component With "Get Latest Version"

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Message 1 of 17
tedbradley314
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Prevent Movement When Updating Linked Component With "Get Latest Version"

Hi folks,

 

I have a component that is used in 100 or so models. The models rely on the component not moving in the source file. If the component moves in the source file, then it will go out of position in all 100 models when the get latest command is executed. Yes it would be ideal if the positions were set with joints - but these are aesthetic designs and for a variety of reasons it's faster and easier to simply position them and capture position. 

 

Now I've got an issue. I need to update one of the components in the source file. But every time I do that it moves it out of position. I'm stuck because I cannot save this until I can get the new component updated without moving out of position. 

 

See video. "Domes All Sizes" is the component that I need to not move. Note that when I update the linked component "10#G Full Assembly", the entire assembly moves in the "Dome All Sizes" component even though nothing has moved in the "10#G Full Assembly" file between versions. 

 

 

Thanks,

Ted

16 REPLIES 16
Message 2 of 17

Hello,

you should try ground to parent the first part of your assembly to fix it in the original position

Message 3 of 17

Grounding any component in the "Domes All Sizes" assembly moves the assembly out of position with the following warning:

Ground To Parent may cause assembly conflicts and the components may revert to their initial insert or in-place creation positions. The following selected components have existing assembly relationships.

 

Pinning also does not work. See video below.

 

I also tried joining one of the components in the assembly to a sketch feature. That didn't work either. 

Message 4 of 17


@tedbradley314 wrote:

Grounding any component in the "Domes All Sizes" assembly moves the assembly out of position with the following warning:

Ground To Parent may cause assembly conflicts and the components may revert to their initial insert or in-place creation positions. The following selected components have existing assembly relationships.

 

Of course it does!

The position capture icon n your design indicates that you moved one or more components and captured their position.

That is not a recommended assembly workflow.


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Message 5 of 17

Hi Trippy. Yes I understand this is not the recommended workflow. I do engineering designs with Fusion where everything is assembled with joints. I also do artistic design with Fusion where assembling everything with joints would be incredibly cumbersome and slow since I need to freely move things to get the right "look" during the design phase. I know you're one of the top experts on the forum, so any tips you have would be appreciated.

  • I'm not sure why the "Domes All Sizes" is moving when I update to the latest, since the referenced child component did not move
  • I'm not sure why pinning does not work
  • The only solution I've found is to join the "Domes All Sizes" assembly to the origin. That is the only method of fixing the assembly in place that I've found such that it will not move after updating. However as you can see in the video below the origin only presents one plane as an option to join to. I'd like to joint to the Bottom (XZ) plane so the assembly doesn't change orientation. 

Message 6 of 17

Can you share the design?

 


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Message 7 of 17

See attached for the model assembly. 

Message 8 of 17

I'll have to look at this when I get home from work. 

In the meantime, please read through the ground-t-parent (GTP) documentation.

 

It is a very powerful underutilized attribute which has significantly simplified assemblies!


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Message 9 of 17

Going a bit off from ground t-parent but can the capture position tool not just be used to ensure the components position is retained even if there are changes or updates to the assemblies

With an update after using Capture Position, Fusion 360 should preserve that specific placement during model updates unless another change causes an explicit repositioning or update to that part’s origin, right?

 

Kind regards

Ricky

Message 10 of 17

@safwan - capture position tool does not fix a component in position. it just "remembers" that it should be there at that point in the timeline. but it can still be moved around. ground to parent, i'm just learning, does not fix a component in it's current location, it reverts back to whatever the arbitrary location was in space when the component was first inserted. pin *should* fix a component in it's current position in the timeline and prevent it from being moved. but in my testing it will the pinned component will still move in a variety of situations.

Message 11 of 17

Here is the problem captured succinctly in 30 seconds. 

  • Modify grandchild model. No bodies are moved. 
  • Update child model with the latest grandchild version. No bodies move after update. 
  • Update parent model with the latest child version. Child bodies move all over the place in random locations. 

 

Message 12 of 17

I'm not surprised that stuff goes haywire!

 

You have created 7 components up to this point in the timeline, and none of them are assembled properly. 

TrippyLighting_0-1734046438176.png

Only one of them is grounded to apparent, but did not know what that meant.

 

Moving forward, you insert a component and then join it to the 10_inch dome, but you can still drag everything around in the viewport...

 

Why in the world would the origin of a component be located somewhere completely dissociated from the sketches and geometry resulting from these sketches. ?

 

TrippyLighting_1-1734046948089.png

 

I will provide some guidance later, perhaps over the weekend.


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Message 13 of 17

Hi Trippy,

  • I was surprised stuff goes "haywire" because if neither a grandchild nor a child component are moved in a version update, I would not expect those same components to suddenly fly all over the place to random locations when they are updated in the parent. 
  • In the model I shared there are ~48 components and all of them are rigidly joined together. There is not one component that can move freely with respect to any other component in the model. 
  • You've surfaced a particular point in the timeline in which I have not yet created joints between components. I'm not sure how that's useful since they all get joined later in the timeline. 
  • I typically allow assemblies to be dragged around in the viewport because I do just that for testing - to make sure that everything moves as a unit due to joints - to make sure I haven't missed any components that need to be joined.
  • With respect to the origin of a component, I don't typically reference sketch component on the origin. Is there a reason I should? 

Can you share your recommendations for best practices? 

Thanks,

Ted

 

Message 14 of 17


@tedbradley314 wrote:...
  • With respect to the origin of a component, I don't typically reference sketch component on the origin. Is there a reason I should? 

 


You should always fully, or at least mostly, constrain your sketches. It creates more robust designs and also has advantages from a computational performance standpoint. It is very easy to drag accidentally sketch items in the viewport and make unintended changes. Constraining and dimensioning sketches eliminate that problem.

 

That cannot be achieved without referencing the sketch's origin. The origin of a design is like the origin of life. 

 

More later!


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Message 15 of 17

Great, thanks Trippy. I'll start doing that in future designs. 

Message 16 of 17

I had a little time to look over your designs.

Are you using a paid subscription?

If so, you have access to the Configurations feature set, which would be very beneficial for these designs.

It looks like almost the same model in different sizes, which would be easy to achieve by using the same set of user-defined parameters but with different values per configurations.

 

I mentioned your designs seem "almost" the same. There are some differences and I can only assume that things you learned in your first models informed your later designs. If you would wan t tot create "production models, now you would have to go back through each file and make sure they are all following the same approach.

 

With a configured design that would net be needed.

 

Also, I believe all the "internal" components are designed in place. You used "normal" joints to assemble them, which isn't necessarily wrong. It is just inefficient and introduced room for error. When properly designed, the location of components that are designed in place is determined by their sketches and sketch dependencies. If that's done right, in the pas you would have used as-built joints or perhaps a rigid group. Now you can use the ground-to-parent attribute.

 

 


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Message 17 of 17

Hi Trippy,

 

Thank you very much for reviewing. 

 

I've been trying out the "configurations" workflow and it's very powerful. Super fun and now that I've gotten the hang of it a bit, it's saving a lot of time. 

The only downside is that it's causing a whole lot of crashes. Fusion typically crashes for me 1-2 per day (running latest version on Sequoia 15) however not it's crashing every hour or two. 

 

I'm having many fewer issues with loose/moving components thanks to your feedback. I was previously using rigid joints, as you observed. The main changes to my workflow are:

  • Sketch for new component has a point referenced on the origin. 
  • Models that start with an inserted component, and then build off that, I first create a joint between that component and the origin. 

I still haven't had much success with Ground To Parent. I created three new components using "create > pattern > circular" and then grounded them to parent instead of creating joints. That did indeed fix them in the exact location in my model, which is what I was hoping for. However when I then inserted that assembly into another assembly, the new assembly completely ignored the "Ground To Parent" and the components were loose/floating. 

 

Thanks,

Ted

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