Renumbering tools

[Don.Cyr]

I think it would be a practical and time-saving feature if we could drag and drop tools in the active document to have them renumber in the order they are in the list. The renumbering icon at the top of the list works as expected by renumbering the tools in the order of operations from the manufacturing tree but on occasion, I find myself having to renumber tools not always following the order of operations.

I also think that the Fusion team can better implement some of these ideas by importance or popularity if they had a spot here on the forum for their development team to post potential roadmap improvements and we the users can vote on the ones that are "popular" to hopefully bump those up the list? Not taking away from any of the talent on the team but some of us that use the product daily might have different demand for certain fixes or improvements.

Just my .02

[martha.deans]

Hi @Don.Cyr, thanks for the feedback! totally hear you that doing customer renumbering can take a bit of time. What situation makes it so that you don't want to use the operation order for renumbering? How much time do you think something like this would save you when it comes to renumbering tools as you'd like them in your document?

I think we've also chatted on the forum before about linking tool libraries together so that changes propagate from the library to the document – if number were part of the information that was linked, would that change your desire to renumber all your tools?

As for the voting, are you familiar with the Feedback Hub? 

[Don.Cyr]

Hello @martha.deans

I don't have the need very often, it's just one of those things you think of and wish you had when performing the task. We do a fair bit of fixture machining and depending on the configuration or number of setups/ops on the same fixture, occasionally some of the machining ops don't carry the same sequence or sometimes, a different tool needs to be pulled from the "master" library so if I move around operations and for instance I have tool #1-4 and somewhere in the middle, change or add an operation and pull in a tool from the library which may have tool #20, renumbering with the built-in feature wants to change the tool numbers already "set" by the document. 

We did chat about linking tool libraries, while that will be an excellent addition, as I mentioned above, there are certain situations where the tool number linked to the tool in the library might be different when pulling it from the library than what is needed for the document. Hopefully my rambling makes some sense...

Makes me think... maybe somehow when creating a feature and selecting a tool, an pop-up option saying something like "current tool # is __, do you want to keep the same number or change?" similar to the feeds/speeds popup when changing tool numbers if the values in the feature were changed from set values in the library. Or maybe a drop-down on the tool tab for tool #? We can override coolant but maybe tool # also?

Ideas are one thing and I may be asking for things easier thought of than implemented. Not sure if others had the same need but just wanted to throw the idea out to see if it grabbed any interest. 

I have participated in the feedback hub in the past, should I be posting these ideas there instead? I only posted here thinking this was a more visited forum and to see if others would chime with their feedback...

Thank you for giving me some of your time to listen. Looking forward to hearing back from you. Have a good day!

[martha.deans]

So is the basic goal to just have all tools with a unique number or to have all tools with a unique number and numbered sequentially based on where they appear? Is there a reason you'd want them to be numbered specifically that way? Like in your example, if I'm reading it right, the tools would all still have unique numbers (1, 2, 20, 3, 4). Just want to make sure i'm understanding!
And thanks for the input on linking – I think it's something we'll have to consider as there are people who may want to change the numbers but leave the other information associative.

I was just making sure you knew of the feedback hub, I think the interactions are like what you described in your first post (voting, gathering support, etc) but I think you're right that this is a good place for discussions and gathering a variety of view points. I am also interested in hearing others' feedback on this! 😂

[volodymyr.iaroshenko]

Hello. A question about renumbering an instrument in the library. Can you fix the sort reset after tool renumbering? (For example, if I need sorting by diameter, then after using renumbering, the tool is sorted by name, after each time I need to select sorting according to my criterion, or it should be so, this is very inconvenient)
Thanks.

[martha.deans]

Just tried and I see what you're saying – makes sense to want the sorting to remain on the same column that it was before the renumbering.

I'll try to find out if there was a reason we did it this way and log it if not. 

[martha.deans]

hi @volodymyr.iaroshenko – just an FYI this should now work after the most recent update of Fusion! Please give it a go when you get the chance 🙂 

[volodymyr.iaroshenko]

Hi. Oh yes I noticed that, thanks a lot.
Another would be to correct the synchronization of the visibility of objects in the active setup ...

[volodymyr.iaroshenko]

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-manufacture/sync-visibility-with-active-setup/m-p/10220924...

https://autode.sk/39SUIkB

[myerpaul]

I am very confused by this feature. Why is it useful to renumber tools and who would use this feature? This is such a different concept than how any machine I have ever used is set up. I am lost.

I set up tool numbers based on where they are in the tool changer, and they never change. I have a machine set up with tool 1 as a center drill. Tool 1 will be a center drill for any job I run, even if I don't use it. Tool 3 is always a quarter inch endmill even if I do not use it in a job. I do not want to have to move all the tools around in the tool changer and reset all of the offsets for every job.

What I need is to set the tool number when I select it for an operation. This automatic renumbering feature makes this inconvenient to do. I have found a work around (I think) using tool libraries, but I also find them hard to maintain across multiple users.

I must be misunderstanding something here, because this system seems so inconvenient. 

Please let me know what I am missing here.

Thank you,

[seth.madore]

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@myerpaul wrote:

I must be misunderstanding something here, because this system seems so inconvenient. 

Please let me know what I am missing here.

Thank you,

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There are some users (like myself) who have no choice but to clear out our machine magazines for every job (simply not enough space to keep static tools (other than the Renishaw probe)). For folks such as us, we typically leave all our tools (in the libraries) numbered at zero, and then they are automatically assigned a sequential number when they are pulled into the active document.

And then, there are other users, such as yourself (and many others) who prefer static numbers. For those folks, they tend to maintain tool libraries that are machine specific, and tools inside of those libraries already have numbers assigned to them.

Hope this clears things up a bit?

[ltomuta]

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@myerpaul wrote:

I set up tool numbers based on where they are in the tool changer, and they never change. [...] I do not want to have to move all the tools around in the tool changer and reset all of the offsets for every job.

What I need is to set the tool number when I select it for an operation. 

Now I must be misunderstanding something. Why do you need to change the tool number for an operation if the tool number never changes 🙂

But likely you to are using a mix of fixed and floating tools, like many of us do. Frequently used tools are always on the machine or, if they go away briefly, return to their fixed position. Other tools, take whichever slot is available, replacing other less frequently used tools from that slot.

I did in the past ask that when a tool is added to the program I should immediately be told if there is a tool number conflict and an available free tool number should be suggested, preferably one that I used for that tool recently. So far all we've got is the duplicate number check before posting and I'm not extremely happy with that solution.

[jaredSADUH]

On renumbering tools, sometimes when I'm programming a job I move the order of operations around/add another tool/operation in between various ops.  Because I like to see my tools sequentially with my operations, I often renumber my tools.  The tool library, however, doesn't group all tools together (milling operations separate from drilling) which causes some tools to end up with the same tool numbers.  I'm sure I'm missing something, but is there a way to show all of the tools in a given job as opposed to separating milling from drilling?

[ltomuta]

Just clear the filters 

and now the list shows every tool in the setup or document.

[programming2C78B]

I also keep t1 as my spot drill, and chamfer mill as t10. I keep them labelled as such in all templates and tool libraries....The only annoying thing is if I program a new tool before the spot drill, and it ends up taking spot 1 - it would be nice to somewhere in the machine config of post setting set a "priority" for tool numbers. 

Thats why I usually now start a program with all my template paths first, ie spot drill, face op, 3d adapt, before adding in any job specific tooling.