After reading another thread/post from a user about joints where he's refering to the "Assembly" tutorial I watched it. I was convinced I had done so before, but this time I noticed content that is pretty misleading.
Over the last weeks and months I've seen so many designs here on the forum that used linked components, sometimes excessively and in the vast majority of cases entirely unnecessary. At no place in these otherwise well done videos is it explained in an way when and when not to use linked conponents.
Right from the start, and this is repeated several times throughout the video, there is a distinction made between distributed design and top-down design. That is the wrong distinction and it is even more wrong given Fusion 360 abilities and also it's limiations.
The distinction by all means should be between Top-down and Bottom-up design. A bottom up design in Fusion 360 can perfectly fine live without any linked components simply because Fusion 360 does not make a distction between component and assembly files. In Fusion 360 a component can perfectly fine coexist or be part of an assembly all in the same file.
A distributd design requires linked components, but the need for a linked component is not really that common. A linked component should only be created when:
- It is to be re-used in another design AND
- Modifications to it are expected AND
- when the design is mature/complete at least in the originating design it was conceived for/in.
For example there is absolutely no need to keep purchased parts linked at all, if they are not modified.
The link can be broken immediately (before saving the file it was inserted to).
Parts that are unique to the design don't need to be linked, ther is no benefit to it, only headaches down the road.
Here are three of the headaches when working wth linked components:
- Currently designing with linked components is rather cumbersome and slow, even more so when linked parts are nested ( a assembly contains a linked subassembly that contains linked components). A multistep approch miust be taken to update these components to the lowest level (unless one of the most recent updates fixed that limitation).
- When a linked components is inserted and then in a leater version it's not needed anymore it cannot be deleted from the project, because it is still linked to a prior version (well, it can but currntly only with a risky workaround that deletes the version history).
- The most annoying thing is that currently the only object that can be hidden/shown in a linked component/assembly is a joint origin. Trying to use hidden objects in a linked component in the design it as inserted to results in numerous edit/save/update cyles which not only slows the workflow but results in an excessive and unnecessary number of design
There is an excellent Autodesk University class detailling the difference between Top-down and Bottom-Up design by @Phil.E and Sachlene Singh.
Please also include Fusion 360 R.U.L.E #1 right into the first video about sketching because that is the stage most everyone starts with and where so many new users, CAD newbies as well as CAD vetereans alike stumble right into the first trap and get off track, sometimes the only recourse being to having to re-start the design from scratch. That is really a shame!
