A few days ago I started writing about my experience using configurations. After writing a couple pages I decided to pause and use them for a while longer before submitting my thoughts.
In this post I want to focus on one specific use case and how I am using configurations and what is easy vs. hard.
I suspect that I am going to get the response "you are not using them correctly" and that is fine. I might not fully understand the intended use as I am using Fusion 360 to create designs for 3D printing. I would like feedback and other perspectives, but I also want to show how my use case could be improved.
Because my background is software development, I am always trying to find the simplest way and the most efficient way to do things. In addition, I often think of the orthogonal aspects of a system. In software that might be something like debug logging, which is configured independently from other aspects, such as which operating system that it will run on.
I think some specifics will help to make my application of aspects clear. Here is an image of a configuration for a design for parts bins. Bins have many independent aspects.
- basic dimension units (I will discuss this in another post)
- bin size
- bin height
- whether the bin has a label
I had planned to use a script to generate all the themes and configurations, but write access for configurations is not yet part of the API. I had to manually enter all the data in the above table. I had also planned to use a script to change configurations and export the desired bodies as STL files, which is what I have done in parameterized designs.
From the documentation it appears that every possible configuration should be a row in the top configuration table. However, that could result in a huge number of rows, possibly in the hundreds for some designs. My solution was to just put the different aspects in them tables which allows just changing each aspect in the top configuration table to product the body that I would like to export for printing.
In the Browser it is very easy to switch to a different configuration. This is extremely useful. However, it requires that every possible combination of theme values be added as a separate configuration.
While I could add all the possible configurations, the simplicity of using the browser to change configurations would be impeded by having a very long list to scroll when choosing a configuration.
One possible solution that would work well for the way I am using a single configuration with themes would be to have the browser have a tree of configurations and themes values so that in my single configuration case I could expand the bin configuration, like I currently expand a component, and the have the columns presented with each of those providing a dropdown to select the value for the column's theme. This would keep the drop-down menus short and provide the simple access that opening the configuration table does not provide.
