Cannot use Active Component Visibility

[aluriel00]

After googling for several hours, I still cannot make this feature function for me. I am trying to move up from just creating everything with bodies and not using components, but it is very frustrating. I had a lot of trouble setting up components altogether, so I might have made a mistake.

I have a canvas of the image I'm trying to create in my base assembly/layer. The canvas is too dim when I go into a component to work.

1. I can put it in a different component, but then it wouldn't show up in a second component?

2. I can't put it in every component as it is scaled and I can't copy/paste it. How would I line them up accurately?

3. Clicking off Active Component Visibility doesn't change things, even when I restart.

4. Moving opacity of the canvas to 100% doesn't seem to  change anything.

I am using the free version, but I haven't seen indications that this feature is excluded.

Please help!

[dsouzasujay]

Hi @aluriel00 ,

Thanks for the detailed description.

First, just to clarify, the free version is not the problem here. Active Component Visibility and canvas behavior are available in the Personal license as well.

Here are a few things to check and some guidance that may help:

Possible explanation and things to try

1. Canvas visibility and Active Component
Canvases are owned by the component they were created in. When you activate a different component, Fusion intentionally dims geometry and canvases that belong to other components. This is expected behavior to help indicate which component is active.

Active Component Visibility only affects solid and sketch geometry, it does not always fully apply to canvases, which is why toggling it may not change the canvas appearance.

2. Recommended workflow for canvases
If you need the canvas visible while working in multiple components:

• Place the canvas in the top level (root) component

• Keep the root component active while sketching reference geometry

• Then create sketches inside child components using Project or Include Geometry from the reference sketches

This avoids relying on the canvas itself inside each component.

3. Avoid copying canvases
Canvases cannot be reliably copied and pasted between components, especially when scale matters. Instead:

• Use a single canvas as a reference

• Build reference sketches from it

• Reuse those sketches across components

4. Canvas opacity
Setting opacity to 100 percent only affects transparency, it won’t override the dimming that occurs when editing another component.

Next step, a video would really help

To better understand exactly what’s happening in your case, could you please share:

• A short screen recording showing how the canvas behaves when switching components

• Whether this happens in a new test file as well, or only in your current design

A video will help confirm whether you’re seeing expected behavior or if something isn’t working as intended.