Suppressing components with joints

[Anonymous]

So I have a design where I want to suppress and unsuppress components with joints. When I suppress two of the components the third component moves to the position where it was before it was jointed. I looked at the timeline and saw that the joint was suppressed. I did not suppress this joint, it did it by itself when I suppressed the two components. If I try to unsuppress the joint then it gives an error on the last joint. Which does not make any sense because none of the joints or components reference each other. Any help would be appreciated!

[mike.tessier]

Hi @Anonymous,

I understand that you are having some issues when trying to suppress and unsuppress components that have joints associated with them.

I don't see anything too abnormal in your screenshots. Are you trying to make changes to your design while things are suppressed?

I want to note that if you make changes to geometry that the joint may based off of, you will come up with an error. That error is just letting you know that something has changed and the software cannot rebuild the model because dependant geometry has either been changed or removed. For instance, say you start a new design and sketch a circle, extrude and add a fillet to the top edge. If you suppress the sketch, the model will disappear. Then say you try to edit the sketch and want it to be a rectangle. When you unsuppress the rest of the features, you will get a rebuild error because the circle that you referenced for the extrude no longer exists in your design. 

If you would like to explore the error further, I need a little more information to help you out. Could you post an Autodesk Screencast detailing your workflow and maybe sharing your design with me?

Thanks,

[Anonymous]

I sent you a personal message containing a screencast as well as the file.

[mike.tessier]

Hi @Anonymous,

So the first thing I noticed was in your selection set, it appears that you may have inadvertently selected the extrude feature used to cut the holes in the table. After removing that from the selection set, I tried to reproduce your results and I was able to do so. I am just curious as to why you are suppressing the dataports? What overall goal are you trying to achieve? If I can understand your intent, I can help you accomplish your goal by trying to come up with a workaround.

I would just like to note that the suppression of the joints as a result of suppressing the components is expected behavior. When you suppress a component, any joint associated with that component will also be suppressed. This is because when you make the joint, you are selecting a joint origin on the component, whose location is based off of the geometry of the component. So when you suppress the component, you are suppressing any geometry associated with the component, meaning that the joint origin on the component cannot be identified, thus the joint would fail.

I look forward to hearing back from you!

Cheers,

[TrippyLighting]

Is there a reason you want to suppress these compnents instaed of hiding them ?

[Anonymous]

I selected the feature on purpose. The reason is that There are multiple dataports that are different sizes that might be used in the design. So keeping the feature there as well as the component for 10 or so different dataports means that they will overlap and that is an issue. My goal is to be able to be able to show a dataport with the correct hole present for the CNC machine.

[Anonymous]

hiding the components is ok. The issue is I am making this project for people that don't know the program very well so I want to limit the number of things they need to know in order to get a working final product. Hiding the components is not the end of the world, but simplicity is a priority and I didn't know if I was doing something wrong or if this is how the program behaves.

[mike.tessier]

Hello again!

It sounds to me that what you really need is design branching and merging. That functionality is currently not available, however it is coming soon. Development is working on it right now, and from the looks of our Fusion 360 Product Roadmap, it should be coming to live sometime this summer (you have to search for it a little bit, its down in the data management section :D). For right now however, it seems like changing the visibility is the way to go for you.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

[Anonymous]

Can I hide and show features like the hole cutout without suppressing it?

[mike.tessier]

Unfortunately the "hide/show" visibility option can only be used on physical objects, like bodies. The only way to "hide" a feature, like a hole, is to suppress it.

I note you could create multiple bodies that have different cuts in them to show/hide. 

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

[TrippyLighting · Accepted solution]

What this design REALLY needs it the functionality of design configurations.  What I mean with that is explained in this thread.

[mike.tessier]

That sounds exactly like what this design needs. After some investigation on the Fusion 360 Ideastation, I found this post that requests just that. The Ideastation is the best place to go to request feature enhancements.

I added my vote to that post to try and help out. Thanks for the feedback!

[TrippyLighting]

This is not an idea and it should not even have to be on the idea station.

This was an advertized Fusion 360 Ultimate feature on the Fusion 360 pricing page, when I started working with Fusion 360 in November 2014.

It was one of the reasons for me to go for Fusion 360 Ultimate. I wish I had taken a screenshot of that pricing page 😉

Whenever this comes up on the Forum, the answer is often that Branching and Merging is going to address some of this, but I don't think that is the same functionality I am talking about.

Also, Branching & Merging is more than a year overdue!

[promm]

@TrippyLighting,

To be clear, branching in merging is not our solution for configurations. I was not around when the roadmap you mention existed, however what I can tell you is that sometimes priority's change due to factors that we where not previously aware of.   Here are some of the item that have to be done before we can start work on configurations:

1. Our architecture needed some improvements to hand configurations - WIP 2.0 has been released and solved this issue.

2. Need to be able to reference specific parameters such as driven dimensions - This is a larger project because it involves our solver.

3. Allow parameters to be used cross projects - we are working on cross project functionality.

There are additional item's that are also contributing factors.  Once we have some of our larger projects like sheet metal completed, we will look at the configurations priority.

Regards,

Mike Prom

[TrippyLighting]

Thanks for the detailed feedback!