Some way to vary LOD on referenced components / bodies?

[Anonymous]

I have a complicated gear profile, with lots of small teeth, and zillions of resulting faces. In the design file for the gear, this is fine, I need this level of detail. But when I include ten copies of this gear in the design file for the gear train, I definitely do NOT need that level of detail.

So is there some way to tell fusion not to worry about rendering / modeling these features when I include it in the geartrain design, but to keep modeling them in the gear design?

[etfrench]

I'd convert the zillions of small lines to single splines using the mesh tools.  

Workflow:

1. Extrude gear.
2. Save as stl.
3. Import the stl.
4. Create Mesh Section Sketch.
5. Edit the sketch.
6. Fit Curves to Mesh Section.
7. Extrude the new profile. It will be a single spline.

It may work best to have each unique gear in its own file.

[jeff_strater]

@Anonymous - there is no way today to have multiple representations of a component in Fusion.  This is definitely something we want to support in the future, but it does not exist today.

[Anonymous]

Thanks @etfrench , but that's a bit outside my newbie-level knowledge of Fusion360. Can you help me out a bit?

Create Mesh Section Sketch.

I don't know what this is. What buttons / menu / workbench do I use for this?

Fit Curves to Mesh Section.

Also don't know what this means, if you could help me out with the specific commands?

Thanks so much for your help!

[Anonymous]

@etfrench well, I figured out how to do this, and it works great for smaller gears, but on my  200-tooth monster is screws up every twentieth tooth or so (See attached).

EDIT: Actually, the sketch seems to be working fine, but for some reason, the extrude is screwing up those teeth.

[etfrench]

For the larger gears, you may need to model one tooth or a small number of teeth, then use a circular pattern to complete the gear.