Problem Locating Body

[george]

Just getting started so try to be kind. I have a simple cylinder that is split in half. There are 2 locator pegs on 1 half with matching holes on the 2nd half.

I managed to create all of that as I wanted but whenever I try to add the locator pegs they don't get added as separate bodies and I can't seem to figure out why. That wouldn't really matter except I can't figure out how to locate them at an exact spot. I can center them inside the wall thickness but I cannot control the distance from the top edge. Since I can't control (or move) the distance down from the top I am not able to locate the 2nd peg at the same distance from the edge.

The model is located at bracket

Thanks in advance for any help with this!

George

[jeff_strater]

Hi - welcome to Fusion!  This is generally a relatively positive place to ask questions, so don't worry.

I think there are two questions here:  One easy, one a bit harder

1.  Creating your pins as separate bodies.  This is the easy one.  You just need to set the operation to "New Body".  By default, we try to "guess" what you want, and in this case, we chose Join.  But, you can change it:

2.  Locating these pins.  This is a bit more complex, but not that bad.  You used a Cylinder primitive for your pin body.  The Primitives are good for playing around and creating simple shapes easily, but they do not give you a lot of positional control.  For that, it is better to manually create the cylinder using a sketch.  Create a sketch on the face, draw a circle, then dimension everything (the circle, and the distance from the top and sides:

Then use Extrude to make your cylinder, and the rest is the same as in your model

Hope this helps!

Jeff Strater (Fusion development)

[george]

Hi Jeff:

Thanks for the rapid and detailed reply. I had messed with sketches a little but couldn't quite get what I wanted so I'll have to try again.

Since the pegs have already been joined to Body 1 there isn't a way to break it off now, right?

Why is it that you can select items but not get the mechanical properties of that item, like position? Coming from my limited AutoCad background it just twists my mind that you can place something in the drawing but not have control over it?

[jeff_strater]

Yes, you can break off the pins after they have been created, use Split Body:

Select the body with the pins as the body to split

And the planar face of the half-cylinder as the splitting tool.  In this case, if you leave "Extend Splitting Tool" checked, you can separate both pins at one time:

Then, you are left with two bodies - one for each pin.  You can move those, but it's a bit more complex, since you would need to do the move before the Combine.  I have recorded a screencast on how to do this, but screencast seems stuck at the moment.  As soon as it comes back, I will post it.

Regarding getting properties of an item.  You can get mass properties of things, by right clicking and choosing "Properties".  However, knowing that you come from ACAD, my guess is that this is not what you really want - it does not include position.  You probably would prefer to just edit the position as a way to move the pins, right?  Yes, unfortunately, Fusion does not really have anything like this today.

Jeff

[george]

I was going to try and split the bodies so it could be relocated but without being able to edit the position of the body it doesn't matter. I went ahead and just started over using a sketch and extruding since this was a simple design. I wanted to make sure I understood the "limitations" so I didn't make the same mistake again later. It's unfortunate that you can't edit the position of a body (this really seems odd to me though since the software has to know how to place it in the model anyway) but knowing this now I'll avoid that procedure in the future.

[TrippyLighting]

For that sort of design you should at the earliest possible time make components out of these bodies.

See for reference this section on the resources and click on Function->Build assemblies->Bodies and components.

[jeff_strater]

Just in case you are interested, here is a screencast showing how to split the pins, move the precisely, and update the rest of the design:  http://autode.sk/1Csoypr 

Good luck with Fusion!

Jeff