Suppress an Individual Feature?

[Anonymous]

I have a design with a few elements I wish to suppress. When I right-click on the feature and choose "Suppress Features", that features PLUS everything after it is suppressed. This includes a sketch (and cut) which should not be dependent on the original feature. 

I realize there may be errors that need to be resolved if I were to suppress individual features in the timeline, but I swear this is how it used to work. But in this sketch, it seems like "Suppress Feature" suppresses everything after that point. This kind of defeats one of the purposes of the timeline.

What am I doing wrong? Can I suppress just one feature? Can I unsuppress something that was done later without unsupressing everything?

[ToddHarris7556]

It's a guess without a file to look at, but it sounds like there is, indeed, some dependency - whether you intended it or not. If there's any sketch elements downstream that were projected from 3d geometry, then there's a fair chance it's dependent. 

In my experience, the most robust workflow is to just use base sketches (i.e. just created on origin/construction planes, with projected features ONLY from sketches - no geometry) for features that you truly want to be independent. 

[Anonymous]

The only dependency I can find is that the sketch plane was originally one of the faces of the suppressed feature. I've redefined that sketch plane. It is possible that there is a projected feature, but I don't see it.

Regardless, I can delete these features and continue my workflow. I'd just rather do something less permanent. I don't see why if I'm able to delete individual features, isn't there a way to suppress individual features without suppressing the entire dependency chain?

[TrippyLighting]

No, because suppressing a feature removes it from existence temporarily. That means all dependencies on that feature would break and create yellow or red icons in the timeline.

IMHO there is some major work to be done on the timeline so that dependencies are clear and can be fixed if broken. 

[ToddHarris7556]

" the sketch plane was originally one of the faces of the suppressed feature"

That would do it 🙂

If you suppress the feature, then that sketch has no reference, and is no longer available for anything downstream.

[TrippyLighting]

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@Anonymous wrote:

The only dependency I can find is that the sketch plane was originally one of the faces of the suppressed feature. I've redefined that sketch plane.

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Right! And that should actually do the trick. As such I believe you've unearthed a bug !

@paul.clauss @jeff_strater could you take a look at this ?

[chrisplyler]

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@TrippyLighting wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

The only dependency I can find is that the sketch plane was originally one of the faces of the suppressed feature. I've redefined that sketch plane.

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Right! And that should actually do the trick. As such I believe you've unearthed a bug !

@paul.clauss

auss @jeff_strater could you take a look at this ?

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Redefining the sketch plane wouldn't necessarily get rid of any geometry-dependent projections therein. If he created the sketch originally on a face of geometry, and snapped to any existing line or corner point or mipoint or anything like that, at least a point got projected into that sketch. Redefining the sketch to some other plane would still keep that projected point. IF this is the case here, it's not a bug.

[TrippyLighting]

@chrisplyler  correct!

But ... I had created a simple example to verify a suspicion. A cube #1  extruded from a sketch and another cube #2 extruded from another sketch.

Then I sketched a cylinder in a new Sketch referencing the top plane of cube #1 and extruded a cylinder from it.

Then I redefined the sketch plane from the top of cube #1 to cube#2

Then In supressed cube# 1 and the cylinder and it's sketch were suppressed as well.

Note, however, that I sketched the cylinder with it's center point constrained to the sketch origin.

When I don't sketch the cylinder at the sketch origin, however, redefining the sketch plane has the desired effect and I can suppress cube# 1 without ill effects.

So just selecting the sketch origin creates and maintains a reference to the original geometry. What the ... ?

That renders an important  function of redefining a sketch plane as useless and even misleading! 

That ought to be looked at!

[jeff_strater]

I think I understand the issue here.  I was flying a little blind, here, so I may be a bit off base.  But, I think that I understand at least one behavior that is considered a bug, and why.  The screencast below is a little long-winded, but shows a case where redefine does work, and another where it does not.  I suspect that there is a body-dependency in this case, that one could argue should be dropped by the redefine.  Anyway, feel free to comment, offer other cases, etc.  This kind of discussion is enjoyable to me.  Yeah, that is a bit twisted, but that's the price of my CAD addiction.

[TrippyLighting · Accepted solution]

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@jeff_strater wrote:

 This kind of discussion is enjoyable to me.  Yeah, that is a bit twisted, but that's the price of my CAD addiction.

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I would under normal circumstances refer you to the support group. The problem is that this IS the support group 😉

The problem is 2-fold in this case:

1. There is only one way to find what the reference is and that is to start deleting stuff until there is almost nothing left. The timeline and browser are completely opaque as to informing a user what might be referenced where. 

2. The purpose of redefining the sketch plane is to break the connection with the previous geometry, is it not ?

In general we need a better concept of how to display existing and fix broken relationships in the two UI element that exist, the browser and the timeline. Other users have called this a dependency graph. 

[jeff_strater]

@TrippyLighting - I agree on both of those points.  I would love to have a tool that showed these relationships.  I've even thought about writing such a tool on the Fusion API (though I'm not sure that enough info exists to capture these relationships).  And, I agree, that Redefine Sketch should break this dependency.  My point was only to explain why I think this is not working currently.

[mavigogun]

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@TrippyLighting wrote:

Note, however, that I sketched the cylinder with it's center point constrained to the sketch origin.

When I don't sketch the cylinder at the sketch origin, however, redefining the sketch plane has the desired effect and I can suppress cube# 1 without ill effects.

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I've become averse to placing anything on the origin as doing so introduces unexpected behaviors; I might consider the origin a special tool valued for its features... if I had a concrete understanding of the implications of its nature.

[amirkovichautodesk]

@ToddHarris7556 was right in my case. I found that I had to unwind several dependencies to fix this error myself. Fusion's not as clever about ignoring stuff like cutting bodies to smaller bodies and then removing the cut later. While unwinding/unlinking hours of changes I was reflecting on Kevin Kennedy's suggestion to name everything--every sketch, body, and historical change (which I had not done).