Timeline sequence

[kevinwilcox46]

Hi, my design timeline has gone a bit weird. I have a dozen or more complex components that I have worked up sequentially and logically. Over the course of the project I've needed to revisit some bodies within components, sometime making quite substantial changes. I'm now finding that the timeline is all over the place. The actions for some bodies, instead of being together in a straightforward sequence, are scattered across the timeline and the  components are no longer in the original logical sequence. Is that normal?

[TheCADWhisperer]

Can you File>Export your *.f3d file to your local drive and then Attach it here to a Reply?

[jeff_strater · Accepted solution]

@kevinwilcox46 - This is just a wild guess:  do you have this setting enabled (it is the default, so it is possible):

And, if you do have this enabled, do you regularly activate a component when you add features to it?  If so, this setting can be confusing, and can lead to the symptoms you describe. 

When you activate a component with this setting, Fusion filters the timeline so that it only shows features that are owned by this component.  However, all the other features remain exactly where they were, and the "insertion point" remains where it was.  So, it may look like the features for the component are nicely grouped, even if they are not.

Here is an artificial example to illustrate.  Two components, and I've purposely mixed the features for them:

but, if I activate component1, it looks nice and tidy:

but, the timeline is really in the same state as it was before.  New features added will go at the end of the timeline, not at where it appears that the end of the timeline is here.

I apologize if that is not your issue, but it sounds from your description as if it could be.  Worth checking.

[kevinwilcox46]

Many thanks Jeff, that's the culprit; and all down to me having read about that functionality in the tutorials but not understanding the relevance, as at that time I had no large, complex timeline to see it in effect. I'll know from here on that I need to check and place the insertion point first before editing in the component. For the rest of this file I guess I'll just have to work around the result, it's not a big problem, just makes work a little harder and a little slower. 

As I'm rarely needing to ask questions these days, while writing can I just say thanks again for this great product. There is obviously a lot of learning needed but having got over the initial hump I appreciate more and more what a powerful package this is.

[smithweyer]

The timeline feature, although great, is a huge pain the the butt. You can turn it off in the bottom, although if you edit a sketch later on you'll have to rebuild the model. I wish fusion 360 rather than just having the timeline feature had a better way of linking sketches to models. It hinders creativity in design so I've been turning it off lately on more fluid designs. I find other programs are more robust in some ways.

[TheCADWhisperer]

@kevinwilcox46 @smithweyer 

If you are ever tempted to turn off the Timeline, I recommend that you ask questions here first.

[kevinwilcox46]

For me that would be like trying to design blindfolded. I must have a thousand or so operations in this assembly so far, I even struggle to remember what some operations were for when I have to revisit them after a week or two. How do you keep track without the timeline? I now rename almost everything just to give myself a clue. One thing I’d add, feature-wise, if I was King, would be the facility to annotate actions and also sketches (beyond using the existing comments and milestones functions). You know, a bit like you’d sometimes do on paper.