Unable to delete empty group

[Anonymous]

My design contains a few empty groups in the browser, under the Bodies section. I want to delete these, as they have no purpose, but Fusion 360 gives me the following error message:

Warning: some selected object is readonly and cannot be deleted.

Any idea how I can have these empty groups removed?

The groups appeared after I tried to rename a mirror group, but the group name reverts to its default leaving the read only, renamed group behind, impossible to delete.

[jan_priban]

Did you try script/macro DeleteEmptyComponents ? Try to use: Convert all your empty bodies to components (RMB in browser and Create Components from Bodies - supports multiselection) and than run this script/macro.

Regards

Jan Priban, Autodesk

[Anonymous]

Hi Jan, thanks for the reply. I tried as you suggested, but converting bodies to components, leaves me with the blank groups in the root component, and I can't even move them, not even trying to delete.

I think there's clearly a bug here. I renamed all the redundant groups to _groupX, and as you can see, I have 5 in the browser already. These all come from trying to rename the Mirror group to something else.

[Anonymous]

I saved my design as a seprate file, and deleted ALL the sketches, construction planes and bodies from the timeline. The _group1 to _group5 items still stay in the tree, even though the design is now empty. Nothing I do will allow me to delete these nodes?

[Anonymous]

Posted a separate thread, this is definitely a bug: http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/design-and-documentation/bug-mirroring-tool-spawns-readonly-groups-whe...

[jan_priban]

Spark,

 one idea I have, try to File -> Export to export your file on hard drive (F3D, SAT) and then upload back to Fusion (Data Panel, blue button Upload). I have no such file with empty bodies, so I am not able to verify if re-import solves your issue, but just try.

Jan

[Anonymous]

Hi Jan, I exported to the F3D format and uploaded, sadly the results are the same. It re-imports with the same, undeletable folders.

Did you see my other post I shared earlier? I created some steps on how to reproduce the problem in a new design.

[Anonymous]

Another thing I tried was to "Save As" turn of design history. Delete everything except my sketches and construction planes, and turn design history back on again. The problem here is, everything becomes a base feature, and my history is lost entirely. I tried to see if I can re-project my sketches onto new sketches in the timeline, but that means ALL my constraints are broken from that point on, and my attributes won't work anymore for adjusting my design.

[jan_priban]

Hi Spark,

you are right, there is no way how to delete such empty group. I will forward your finding to developer guys. So far please try this way:

1. Create New Component

2. Move all bodies under new component

3. Export this new component as e.g. F3D

4. Import

5. In new file there will be no empty group

All steps I tried to ilustrate by the attached image.

Regards

Jan Priban, Autodesk

[Anonymous]

Hi Sparkbuzz, Parametric sometimes is hard to delete items. There are times that you do have to stop recording in order to achieve some tasks. If you wanted to clean up your files for showing clients, or for exporting to stp files for purposes like making mold layouts by mold designers. I agree that clean files are important. This is what I had been doing instead of waiting for development team to work out all the corrections:

1) Export a Parametric version to your hard disk. 

2) Copy your hard disk parametric f3d file and paste to a New f3d File Name on your disk

3) import that new f3d file into Fusion360

4) Select Stop Recording

5) Click SAVE and select the proper folder to save (just in case it crashes).

6) Now you can delete your unwanted items. 

7) Save and Export to whatever file formats you wanted.

8) The parametric file is always in the cloud and your hard disk just in case you wanted to edit again.

I usually do this to final versions that will be exported to STP for making production molds.  Unwanted items that could not be deleted look very unprofessional to clients and other professionals. Mold designers like to put all the blames to the original designers to protect their jobs. 3D printers wanted your business and most of the time they will not say anything about unprofessional files. 

[Anonymous]

Hi Sparkbuzz,

Groups or components that cannot be deleted in the Parametric Mode could be mistakes made somewhere at the origin of the file. If a sketch that seems not important is deleted, or a Patch Plane that generated the solid is deleted strange things will happened. Those errors will be shown as "yellow" icons on the timeline. Those items could not be fixed if you did not hit the back key at that moment. Your problems seem to be the results of what I just described here. So I think the best way is to convert to Direct Modeling mode to delete those left over items. You can also delete the T-Splints or the unstitched planes that way. You just could not use the time line to change everything. But then mistakes on the timeline will generate errors if you tried to make corrections from the origin. We cannot avoid mistakes like that because we are only humans. Sketches are always the problems. But then if you had been clicking "Save" a few times during your file construction, you might be able to fix those problems by promoting an earlier verion to the top at "myhub". You might be able to fix the timeline problems that way. Hope it helps you!