User Parameter Units

[mr.rickwright]

I plan on using user parameters to drive my design, so I am practicing with them.

I wanted to use one of the available units "%" which is under "Percentage" in the units drop-down when creating a user parameter.   It does allow you to enter a value such as 50.

Unfortunately the Unit does not appear in the units column and you cannot use the parameter in a formula in a sketch dimension.

Of course there is a work around; select "No Units" and enter 0.5 as the value.   

But it seems that the percentage units should work if they are in the list!

Am I doing something wrong?

[r.moss]

it lost my screencast, let's try again:

[r.moss]

Bah, forgot to click Insert...

 

[laughingcreek]

amazing how far off topic these discussions can get.

the observations with the conic curve are interesting.  might be worth posting in it's own post and asking AD if it's a bug (which it looks like) so they can get a report posted.

In case you missed the point on the units-as a work around to your issue, when you populate the parameters list with extra place holder variables, make them unit-less.  then add the unit to the dimension when you use it by multiplying by the needed unit.  or if it already has a dimension but you need to change it, divide by the current one, and then multiply the by the new one.  the ability to sort would be better.

[r.moss]

Thanks, handy tip, hadn't thought of that.

It got me thinking about my equation coefficients e.g. y = k*x^2 for a parabola, the k should have units m^-1 (not in the list) but one can instead create a unitless "k" and a unit length parameter U1m.  Then if the end point of the curve is (X,Y), Y can be defined as (k/U1m)*X^2.  (Similarly one could define k with metre units, then Y is k *(X/U1m)^2  ).

[mr.rickwright]

I too find the user parameter list a little challenging because of lack of sorting, grouping etc.    What I do is export the list to csv sort in that and create some unit-less parameters as group headers like "____Side View Sketch____"  .

 But importing creates an append to the list not a replace.    So it only really works if you are re-using the user parameters for a new document.  Which currently I am forced to do. Another workaround for the sorting is the "favorite" function; by clicking on the stars by your user parameters in the order you really want to see the list, fusion creates a "favorites" list in the order you desire.  of course if you want to re-sort you have to un-click all the stars up to your new item and start over, but it is a quick work-around.    

NOTE~   one caution is that during import of a csv of user parameters the sort order is very sensitive to formulae.    eg. if parmeter_1 is a formula referencing parameter_2 the import will fail .   

you can create user parameters in this order in fusion but if you export then re-import it will fail.  I am very careful to ensure that the sequence of parameters is such that each formula uses only parameters that are further "Up" the list.  I use Fusion to calculate most of my values rather then doing them externally.

[r.moss]

Ah, so that's what favourites does..I hadn't used it.   After clicking on the "x" by mistake and deleting some parameters I wanted, I treat that column with caution now.  Fortunately control-Z undeletes them.

[jeff_strater]

on the topic of being able to change the units of an existing parameter:  That limitation has been fixed.  It will be released in an update later this year, but I am not sure exactly which update will contain this improvement.

[g-andresen]

Hi,

Nice to hear!

günther

[drisler8109]

I wanted to use this for "scale factors" ; but immediately ran into trouble with equations. However - here is an example of scaling a "meal cost" of $50 by a "tip" of 15 (percent) - and getting 750 (percent) as a result! 

There is a trick, you have to change type type of "mealTip" from currency $ to percent % while you are entering the values into the equation. You start with "currency" and change it to "percent" when you introduce the term in the equation which is "percent" data type. As you can see, it has been entered into the database!

Still I can't see any legitimate use case with the implementation as it stands, and people have complained about this for 3 years just in this thread. Why not just deprecate the whole "data type" of percent, get rid of it, don't leave it as a stumbling block for future people.