Remove Patterned Component Associativity

[euclidmandd]

Hello Fusion 360 Community!

I'm working on a fairly complex structural model (on the order of 100 individual bodies/components.  Unfortunately it's proprietary, so I can't share it, but hopefully this is a pretty straight-forward question.

I've made a component with say 10 bodies within it.  I want to make a revolved pattern of that component (with all it's individual bodies) but retain the ability to modify the new component without affecting it's parent.  Is there any way to break the associativity?

The only work-arounds I can think of are:

1. Create all the bodies in the main component (not a sub component), pattern all the bodies, then drag-and-drop the original bodies into 1 component and the patterned bodies into a different component.  The headache with this is that I'd have a ton of bodies in the main component, plus last I checked the drag-and-drop option is limited to working at the end of the timeline (not great for modifying things later).

2. Copy the component, then "paste new" and move the new component to the position I need.  On the surface, this isn't a bad solution, but if I roll back the timeline to modify something on the original component, it doesn't seem to update on the child.  It seems like the "copy new" sort of does a manual copy of all the features (extrusions, holes, etc) just how they are at that one time during the copy, instead of looking at the modified component during a re-calculation. So I guess that really isn't a valid solution.

3. Since mirrored patterns aren't associative, I can mirror the parent component about one plane (say the x-y plane) then mirror that child about a 90 Deg axis (y-z).  That effectively creates a revolved pattern about the y axis.  It's not the most elegant solution, but it has seemed to work from the tests I've done.

Note: I've tried individually patterning the bodies (instead of the whole component) but it puts the patterned body in the same component, and as far as I can tell, there's no way to move it into a different component.

Overall, fusion has been great.  I love that I can build everything in one model and update multiple related parts so easily.  But a better work flow for this particular issue would make it that much better.

[Anonymous]

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[TrippyLighting]

What exactly do you mean with "mirrored patterns are not associative" ?

Below is a YouTube vid I created a while ago that explains the effects of copying and pasting bodies and components in Fusion 360 :

[euclidmandd]

Thanks for the video Peter. That does give me another solution.

What I meant by mirrored components not being associative, is that when a component with bodies is mirrored (as opposed to patterned), the child component/bodies can be modified without affecting the parent.  But anything changed on the original before the mirror in the timeline does get passed onto the child.  So I probably should've said something like "semi-associative".

Maybe a good theoretical example would be a driver and passenger car door.  I don't want to duplicate a bunch of work by making both doors from scratch since the majority of the geometry is the same.  However there may be details like button layout or trim for example that would be different between the 2 doors.  So my goal is to model anything that's the same on both doors before the pattern, and then add/modify the individual details after.  This requires that changes made to the child component not affect the parent, but changes to the parent before the pattern to affect the child.

From watching your video, I'm realizing that maybe the best way to do this is to copy all the bodies I want from the original component into the new one.  I hadn't realized that was a possibility.  This still is a bit of a laborious process though since I would have to individually copy each body, move them into the correct location, etc.  It would be great if the option of  "make independent" was available in timeline mode.  It would just be really useful to be able to copy all the bodies, sub components, even joints if possible.  But I get that it's not always as easy to get something like that to work as one would hope.

Thanks again for your input.

[Anonymous]

good idea

[MikeMaker]

I would also really appreciate an answer to this question. Like the original question, I too have mirrored and patterned components in my assembly. But now want to make a change to one component, without it being copied to the copied component. Please help!

[g-andresen]

Hi,

If you create a new thread for your request, including the file, the chance of help increases dramatically.

günther

[jeff_strater]

First:  Component operations and Body operations are different.  This is true for nearly all operations.  Since this question is specifically around Component Pattern, we can address this specific set of behaviors.  Just noting, though, that these answers will not apply to Body patterns.  

Components are distinguished from other concepts by the Fusion instancing model.  Instances of components all share the exact same geometry (geometry includes body geometry, sketch geometry, work geometry, etc).  So, any change to that geometry, regardless of whether it happens before or after instances in the timeline, will be made to all instances.  That is just a basic principle of the model.  If you have a component which is a block, then create two instances of that component, then add a fillet, all instance will share that fillet.  It doesn't matter if you roll back in time to put the fillet before the instance or after.

For simple instance creation (copy/paste of the component), there is one mechanism that allows an instance to vary its geometry:  Paste New.  This creates a new copy of the component that can be modified independently of the original.  But, the cost is:  you cannot update the original and the Paste New copy without making the changes twice - you lose the ability to share the geometry.

In Direct Modeling, there is a Make Independent command that will let you decide, after the fact, that a particular instance can be made an independent instance.  However, in a parametric design, this decision must be made at the time the instance is created.

Component Pattern, today, does not offer a "Paste New" approach to the pattern.  All component patterns are always straight instances.  There is not even any Break Link available to convert component patterns to independent instances.

Component Mirror is a special case.  Because the geometry cannot be identical (because it is a mirror image), a new component is always created for the mirrored component.  Because of that, the original and the mirror can be modified independently.  This is the one case where the position of the feature is important.  If you roll back before the Mirror, a change to the original will affect the mirrored copy.  But, if you put that same feature after the Mirror feature, it will affect only the original.

That is the basic set of facts.  There are workarounds and tricks (use Derive to derive a single component to a different design, then modify the derived design and insert it to get some independence, or put the component in a different design, and Derive it into the top-level instead of Insert, because Derived geometry can be modified, etc), but those are a bit more in-depth topics