Tangent construction plane creation

[kellings]

I'll attach a video that shows my question pretty clearly. I'm creating a tangent constuction plane on the face of a cylinder. Start the command, click the cylinder face, and a construction plane appears. You even have the ability to enter a rotation angle. Beautiful! However, how is Fusion determing the normal for that plane? Is it to the point closest to where you click? To get the plane parallel to the view cube face, you have to click on one of the origin planes. When you do that, an odd angle is entered into the rotation value of the dialog box. 

Is Fusion supposed to choose the face on the view cube that is closest to where you pick? A quadrant of the cylinder? Is this currently broken if that should be the case?

http://autode.sk/1OKEPgP

Thanks,

Kevin

[Oceanconcepts]

What it looks like to me is that Fusion attempts to infer a location from the position at which you click on the cylinder. Since that’s unlikely to be correct, you can select the Measure option from the tangent plane dialog, click on the tangent plane, then on another plane or face in the drawing you would want to match. What I see is that it then moves the plane to be parallel, and registers 0°- so if you want a particular offset you can enter at that point. using the measure option eliminates the odd angle on matching.

[kellings]

Hi Ron. I didn't even see the measure option in that dialog. Thanks for pointing that out. 

I wonder if this is just a broken feature? I would have tended to go with your workflow had I not known that you could do this. In this Screencast, you can see that as I pick places to add holes, Fusion 360 locks on to the quadrants. 

http://autode.sk/20TPB8s

By the way, how do you embed a screencast like you did? That would be handy to know.

[Oceanconcepts]

Yep, with some tools Fusion snaps to a logical orientation, and with others it doesn’t. I guess I’ve learned to look for options in the dialogs. My personal peeve is not being able to snap the measure tool to center points or quadrants. It seems to me such tools should have the same type of snap options that the joints too does. That idea is here:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/ideastation-request-a-feature-or/improvements-to-the-measure-tool-addi...

In Fusion’s defense, component origins can be just about anywhere, and aren’t referenced to the root component. That creates possibilities for the future, but it means that in any given component the origin may net have a clear relationship to the base component origin. 

EE’s can post video directly to the forum, but you need to use the 696 x 435 embed code size that is labeled for the Autodesk Community (from the pull down menu), and paste the code into the HTML tab in the forum. 

[TrippyLighting]

I don't think I'd call that broken. It's simply not fully thought out. Incomplete!

[promm]

Kevin,

I will start by answering your first question.  When you using the tangent command Fusion 360 is creating the 0 reference point is where you click on the surface.  There is actually no need to measure to reference another plane.  All you have to do is select the face and then select a reference plane.  What you see next is a number that represents the angle between the point you picked and the referenced plane.  We know that this is not ideal and have it in our backlog to have it go back to zero and list the referenced plane.  For the meantime my suggestion is after you select the reference plane use + ___ to determine the angle between the reference plane and the tangency.  I have attached a video that demonstrates this workflow.

http://autode.sk/1NAbCzn

Cheers,

Mike Prom

[kellings]

Can this work the same way the hole command does? The way you add holes to cylindrical face is drop dead easy and elegant. 

The workflow you show is pretty broken. As you pick on the plane for a reference, the plane jumps to the other side of the cylinder. If you want to get it back to the front, you would have to add 180 degrees to the number it adds when you select a reference plane. You come back 6 months from now, open up that file, edit that plane and see some number like 268 degrees and would wonder where that number came from. 

It's the little things like this that I think need to be addressed along side of new features being added. Get the foundation down. 

Kevin

[promm]

Kevin,

I am assuming you are referring to the layout of the hole command listing features and selections, but I don’t want to make assumptions.  Can you please describe the workflow that you are envisioning and I will pass it on to the UX designers.

Thank you,

Mike Prom

[kellings]

Start the hole command, pick on the face of a cylinder. The hole is snapped to the quadrant of the cylinder closest to where you mouse was when you clicked. Start the hole command again. Choose the right side of the cylinder. The hole again is locked to the quadrand of the circle that matches the right side of the view cube. You can then either enter a rotation angle or use the onscreen manipulator to then enter a rotation angle. 

Adding holes to the cylinder couldn't be any simpler. It's really nice.

Kevin

[promm]

Thank you Kevin, I will pass it along!

Cheers,

Mike Prom