Cannot select, edit, or modify dimension - disconnected from user parameters

[Anonymous]

‎Andy Katayama‎ to Autodesk Fusion 360

17 mins · 

I noticed that one of my parameter-driven dimensions no longer is connected to any subsequent parameter changes. When I investigated and found the controlling sketch; this is what I found.

The dimension in question is the 25 mm height on the left of the sketch. It no longer seems to be selectable, clickable, or otherwise manipulated, and seems to have frozen an old value and subsequent changes to the user parameter have no effect. As you can see it doesn't even show any dimension lines, only its value in light text and smaller font.

I need to adjust this value and not sure what to do. I do acknowledge that I have several warnings that I need to address, but short of that is there anything I can do to get back control over this dimension?

Many thanks in advance!

[sanjay_jayabal]

Hi Andy,

That looks like the grid spacing value and not a dimension.  Looks like you either haven't dimensioned that entity yet or perhaps accidentally deleted it!?  If you selected that edge and added a dimension, it has to be quite bit more than 25.  Your sketch also looks fully constrained, so adding that dimension maybe redundant and end up as a driven dimension.  If I have misunderstood your problem, do post your design so I can take a look.

Best regards,

Sanjay Jayabal.

[Anonymous]

Thank you Sanjay for your quick response.  It was my first post on the forum and you answered within a day, lucky me!

In any case I am as certain as a Fusion newbie can be that it is one of the first dimensions that I had started with for this design.  However I see your point and yes, perhaps the 25 I see is the grid value labeling (which I had never noticed before).  ...and if so I see your other point that this height must be quite a bit larger, likely something like 45 mm.  (I am on travel w/o my computer so cannot verify this against my design.)

So yes, I see your point, and it is possible that I had deleted the dimension.  But when I try to add a new dimension, it says that it is over-constrained, though I cannot see how.  Perhaps there is something I am not seeing, but can you explain how the height I speak of is already implicit in the other visible dimensions?

I would upload the design but I am on travel w/o my main computer and only have browser access.  How can I access my design via my browser, or perhaps there is a special web client I can use?  I have not done anything "extra" to save my designs on the web, but notice Fusion always synching to the cloud so there should be a way to reach my designs that way, no?  Unfortunately I could not find the right place to find my designs so I may have had to do something from within Fusion to make them available via the cloud?

Sorry to morph this into a side issue, but if I can access my designs via browser than I can upload it to this thread even as I am on travel.

Best, and look forward to your reply.

[sanjay_jayabal]

Hi Andy,

Apologies for my tardiness in responding.  I didn't realize it was your first post on the forum, welcome to the group.  Regarding why the dimension you are trying to add is implicit is hard to tell without looking at your design.  My guess is there is an implied geometric constraint.  Check the two sketch points - the one in the upper left corner (on the left edge) and the one in the lower right corner (on the bottom edge).  It looks like those points were perhaps created in another sketch that you attached your current sketch to!?  If that is not the culprit, I would need to take a look at your design.

Best regards,

Sanjay Jayabal.

[sanjay_jayabal]

I missed answering your second question.  Regarding browser access of your design, go to myhub.autodesk360.com, sign in if required and browse to the design.  To share the design, either right click on the design or use the drop down to the right of the file name and click Share.  Make sure "Allow viewers to download to their computer" is enabled under Privacy Settings. Copy the link provided and paste it here.

Best regards,

Sanjay Jayabal.

[Anonymous]

Wonderful Sanjay! Thank you - I was able to obtain a link to my design and change the permissions.

Thank you much for offering to take a look at it.  I hope the design's not too shabby and that a solution can be found.

FWIW here's the link to my design: https://a360.co/2KYHLXm

Looking forward to hear what you have to say about getting back access to that dimension!

Best,

Andy

[sanjay_jayabal]

Hi Andy,

I took a look at your design.  Seems like there are many issues with it that needs to be corrected.  Several sketches seem to have lost references and some of them have lost the sketch plane reference.  You have feature failures as well with some of the features that are missing profile definitions.  I am happy to spend some time to see if I can get these fixed for you, but I don't have enough information on your design intent - such as relationships between features, what user parameters to use where, etc.  Please let me know if you want me to take a crack at cleaning up the sick sketches/features at least to get the design to a healthy state.  Alternately, if you have any existing documentation on design intent and you feel comfortable sharing that with me, I can get this cleaned up a little better.

Best regards,

Sanjay Jayabal.

[Anonymous]

Hello Sanjay,

Thank you for your kind offer.  I was afraid that all of the warning statuses on my sketches would get in the way, though I have not had enough experience or time to fix them  As a beginner I've fixed just a few sketches in the past on  other designs, and I think I'm slowly getting the hang of it, though much of it leaves me 2nd guessing what it wants me to do to remove the warning.

(The design was a last-minute one to fix a broken part that I needed for travel.)

As I'm on travel and without a laptop to run Fusion360, I may not be able to give much input until I return home.  However if it is of any help, here is the object that I was creating with this design: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3046886

Perhaps that will convey enough with respect to a design intent?  (Though admittedly my naming of user parameters leaves much to be desired!)  If not, I still very much appreciate your sincere offer and am left very much impressed with the level of your support to a Fusion360 Newbie.

Best,

Andy

[HughesTooling]

@Anonymous If you get a warning in the future fix it straight away, if you can't figure out what's wrong post the design file to the design forum and ask for help, use Export not the share links.

Trying to fix an error at a later date is always likely to be a problem because you've probably forgotten what you did that caused the error and even harder for someone else to help.

Mark

[sanjay_jayabal]

Hi Andy,

I walked through your entire design and felt the modeling can be simplified.  So, instead of trying to fix the errors in your design, I used the dimensions and geometric relationships from your design as best as I could to recreate your design with less complexity.  It looks like the holster clip in your design is not centered on the face it is on, not sure if that is intentional.  In my version I centered it.  I am attaching a copy of the simplified version here.

Best regards,

Sanjay Jayabal.

[Anonymous]

Oh my... I don't know what to say but thank you for your individual initiative.  Unfortunately I cannot do anything with your file until I return from travels which is still a few weeks away, but will immediately take a look at it and hopefully put it to good use as soon as I return.

And thank you for all of your advice regarding warnings.  I do hope to get better at this, and have done a few forays into fixing some of my earlier designs.

Perhaps you can help me with a follow-up question - is the generation of warnings considered inevitable with using Fusion360 in the course of a changing design, and what perhaps separates the novice from the pro is the quick repair of them as soon as they are created?

[Anonymous]

Thank you very much for your advice; I will certainly keep this in mind as I progress learning the tool.

[sanjay_jayabal]

Hi Andy,

You are most welcome, glad I could help and hope what I did is close to your design intent.  Regarding whether or not failures are inevitable, it really depends on your modeling practices.  There are a lot of factors that can influence robustness of your design which is too involved to type here.  That said, few things that are good to adopt where possible,

1. Pay attention to the relationships you create.  That is, don't infer accidental inferences.  Example, if you want a sketch entity or feature to reference another, make sure you establish those references explicitly.  That way, if you change the parent feature, you'll hopefully have a pretty good idea on what reference(s) you lost.  If your design is complex it might be a good idea to put it in isometric view and then pick the references.

2. On a related note, keep things like unconsumed sketches, construction geometry turned off until you want to use them.  Similarly, if you have multiple components that are local to the assembly, make sure you don't accidentally reference inactive components.

3. If you need to delete a parent feature (or significantly change its geometry) that is early in the timeline, take the time to understand what child features will be impacted.  I would recommend making a quick note of the references.  One way to identify child features would be to suppress the parent feature and see which other features get suppressed.

Best regards,

Sanjay Jayabal.