Selecting and Moving a part relative to another

[Anonymous]

I am coming from Tinkercad and I cannot for the life of me figure out some very basic things with respect to movement and placement of 2 or more distinct objects in F360. I have watched many videos but I still cannot find a good tutorial on how to move and place things relative to each other when you have two separate bodies to begin with. How do you simply select something and move it around? Why is this so hard to do and not a first class citizen in this software? In the screencast below, you can see that I am clicking and clicking on one part and it's not getting selected or moving once selected. Sometimes it works, most of the time it doesn't. Is there not a selection tool identical to Tinkercad? How do I get rid of this silly line selection thing? I want a rectangle selection tool just like in Tinkercad. Can you not tell F360 to stop everything it thinks I want to do and move to a pure selection tool that does nothing but select and move things?

My next question is how do you place an item relative to another? I have two separate and distinct objects (here a PCB and a photodiode). I simply want to free-form drag the diode quickly above the PCB rectangle and then precisely position the diode in 3d relative to the PCB's top right borders and then merge them together. I understand how you can build the whole thing from scratch as one item but I don't want this. I want to keep the PCB and the diode separate. 

Lastly, how should I organize this? I am going to be building multiple PCBs of different sizes with different diodes. Once I assemble a specific combination of these, I will then take this new part (joined) and put it inside of another component in another project. Does that mean I make the diode and the PCB as individual components in separate files that I then somehow merge when needed? In Tinkercad all I do is create 3 projects (PCB, diode, assembled part) and I just copy/paste parts from each as needed and group together.

P.S. I did watch the tutorial on components and bodies but that doesn't show you how to move relative to another object and place it at a specific location. Also that video makes it look real easy to select things for movement. That doesn't work at all for me.

[etfrench]

You can change the selection style from the Select toolbar item.

Use the Align tool on the Modify toolbar item to precisely align bodies and components.

OR

Create a joint between the two bodies or components.

Spend some time going through the learning tutorials and videos: http://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/

[Anonymous]

The selection tip you gave me works great but the align refuses to work. Also, when I select the first body it flips it and I cannot undo this or prevent it from doing this. And second, it won't let me align it with the second object. I want to put that diode 7.5 mm from the top and 6mm from the right. That should be trivial to do. Again I know how to do all of this if I am making one object from the ground up. But how do you do it for two separate objects?

Also why is it so hard to select something? What I am doing wrong? In Tinkercad I never have to think about this. You click and move.

P.S. I did spend quite a bit of time with the tutorials and I have built some cool models side by side with the videos.I know how to build some pretty complex things from the ground up. Having said that, many of the very basics are missing in those tutorials. Many assumptions are made about the state of the UI and what mode you need to be in order to do things. Moving and aligning separate things is very difficult to comprehend in F360. If all I have to do is sketch things in the right order, no problem. But bringing in something else is not easy at all to figure out.

[TrippyLighting]

I am not sure what tutorials you have watched, but the first thing you need to understand is the difference between components and bodies and I know there is a number of tutorials that cover that.

In other words, the PCB and the Photo Diode should be distinct components.

The next thing on the list is Fusion 360's R.U.L.E #1, which provides guidelines to work effectively and efficiently with Components.

To lay out the components on your PCB you can also make a sketch on the PCB with the locations for these components. Then you can use rigid joints to assemble these components to these sketch locations.

[etfrench]

The technique I used for populating a pcb was to import the layout dxf from Kicad (I think most other pcb design programs will do this). I extruded the dxf to the thickness of the pcb.  Each part was then aligned with their corresponding holes on the board.  Most of the part models came from the manufacturer.

If you're doing surface mount components, then you may need to add points at the center of the pads either on the imported dxf sketch or a new sketch on the top plane of the board.  It depends on how they're drawn in the dxf file.

When you do an Align operation, the flip command is used after the parts are aligned. 

[Anonymous]

Hi Peter,

I had watched the "components and bodies" tutorial and it didn't help me. I went and watched it again just now in case I missed something as per your recommendation. They do not show how to align a body to another body. When he does move the body away from the pipe, he does not re-align it. He simply hits undo. 

If you have some time, can you look at my second video here and simply tell me why I cannot move that body to the corner of the other body with an offset? See what happens when I try to align it and also look at how hard it is to select this object in my first video. The only way I know to build my PCB right now is if I do everything in one shot. Rectangle of PCB, extrude, sketch on top, circle, position, extrude, circle, position, extrude, circle, position extrude. It cannot be that hard to place a body within another body if it's trivial during sketch. There must be something counterintuitive in the interface that I am not seeing.

P.S. I have watched about 20 hours of videos and while I can do many advanced things, I still struggle with the very basics. The concepts are fine (sketch, body, component) but simple things can be maddening.

Eric

[Anonymous]

Actually, I can't understand why you have so many troubles with alignments. I did not use this tool before, so it's my first try.

[etfrench · Accepted solution]

The first thing you need to change is you don't select the object to be aligned first.  Open the align dialog, then select an alignment point on the component to be moved by hovering the mouse over the component.  All of the available alignment points will show as white triangles, circles, or squares. The alignment cursor will change planes at each alignment point for the type of alignment operation (vertical, horizontal, face to face, etc.)  Once you select the alignment point on the component to be moved, repeat the process on the component to be aligned to.   Note: Components and bodies behave differently in the alignment process, so I think it's best to do component to component alignments (or component to sketch).

Perhaps this will help:

[Anonymous]

A huge thank you to Peter and etfrench!!! I very much appreciate the time you took to explain this. I understand completely now. 

For others who have the same problem 

1. Don't select a body to begin with and go straight to Modify|Align to position it.

2. Unlike Tinkercad, you cannot just click on a body and drag it immediately any way you want. For simple surfaces like rectangles, this works trivially and is misleading (because you think this is the paradigm of the interface but it's not). Most tutorials just click and drag like this so you think this is it. As soon as you have bodies with multiple sketches or even lines,circles or any other shapes, it appears F360 gets very fussy on what you can click on to move. You can grab the edge or face of a rectangle and it moves. But if you grab any sketch lines or any other item inside, you're not going anywhere. All it does is it selects that sketch object which is counterintuitive. I am not sure if this is something people in CAD are used to and want, but for a novice to this software it is far more intuitive to think "when I quickly click anywhere on a body and drag it far enough (to prevent accidental micro moves), I really want you to move it and show me that it moved with a cue (fading arrows showing translation). If I made a mistake, I can undo this very quickly. But if I click slowly with intent (ie I stay near the click for a bit), I probably want you to do what you do now."

3. If you click too quickly sometimes, even though you think you hit a surface and were not near a sketch line, it may not work. F360 will go into selection mode. Click slower and with intent. Not too slow otherwise you get a pop-up menu.

[Anonymous]

Try holding down the 'alt' key and moving your part.

[etfrench]

What is that supposed to do?  On my machine, it does nothing.