Project that had no issues before now have missing selection errors in every component and cannot activate components in Design

[pierre4generic]

Fusion 2701.1.18 x86_64

Active Plan: Personal
Windows 11 Home 25H2 (26200.7840)

Fusion 360 Personal: Project that had no issues before now have missing selection errors in every component in Manufacture and cannot activate components in Design.

All components in this project were fine when I last accessed it back in Oct--Nov 2025.

After re-opening the project Mar 6 2026 in Manufacture, every component in this project show missing element errors.

In Design, I can see and edit the elements but I cannot activate the already existing components. I created a new component which I'm able to activate and deactivate as expected.

Is this related to an update? Is there a setting I need to set? It isn't happening with my other projects.

[lauri_barnhart]

Hi @pierre4generic,

I wanted to check in and see if you still needed assistance, or if you found a solution to your question already? Let us know if you need further assistance by providing an update or if you have found a solution, please share it with the community so other members who may have the same question could learn from your experience.

All the best,

Lauri | Community Manager

[pierre4generic]

I haven't received any replies. I've been very happy with Fusion 360, but I
have to tell you, I find this type of issue pretty disturbing. I use the
project which is giving me problems for ad hoc components and some learning
activities. Should this be happening with an important project I care
about, this would be a serious issue. I have no idea how to fix the
inability to activate a component in Design nor why all the manufacturing
operations I created would have lost their references. I have no idea what
to do about it.
Pierre

[TheCADWhisperer]

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It isn't happening with my other projects.

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@pierre4generic 

Sounds like an issue specific to this project.

Can you File>Export your *.f3d file to your local drive and then Attach it here to a Reply?

[pierre4generic]

Hi CadWhisperer,

Here's the project in question. Thanks for having a look...I appreciate it.

Let me know if you need anything or if I can help in any way.

Pierre

[TheCADWhisperer]

@pierre4generic 

I have never worked with unconstrained sketches before (except for the artwork), so I didn't spend a lot of time on this but a Compute All returned a list of 25 issues.

[pierre4generic]

I'll check out the missing plane issues and also restore an older version to see if the errors exist there too. It's 9pm here, so this will be something for tomorrow.

As far as unconstrained sketches are concerned, yes I need to take some training on that. I typically work with irregular curves so have been unable to constrain the sketches and I now have the habit of not trying.

Have you been able to activate and deactivate components in Design? I don't know enough to ascertain what is preventing me from doing so.

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@pierre4generic wrote:

Have you been able to activate and deactivate components in Design? I don't know enough to ascertain what is preventing me from doing so.

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If I keep clicking stuff it sort of starts to work, but there are so many unresolved issues I don't know if it can be saved.

Run Compute All frequently while modeling (shortcut Ctrl b or CMD b).

Especially before save and close.

[davebYYPCU]

I can confirm that I can only activate the last component in the browser, for my download it is named Kitchen Shears.

That none of the others can be activated, is for Autodesk to sort out. @lauri_barnhart 

Might help....

[pierre4generic]

I did more investigations today and documented the results in a PDF. v291 of the project is error-free while v292 is riddled with missing references. v292 dealt with a single component with not correlation to any other component except that they all reside under the same project. I'm at a loss to figure out why so many references were lost and out of my depth. I might need Autodesk resources to investigate the issues I'm having.

For some reason, I'm unable to upload the PDF(520kb)...maybe the forum doesn't allow PDF uploads.

[pierre4generic]

Update: New issues with Kitchen Shears component now:

I may have found the source of the problems: version mismatch between the Manufacture and Design workspaces.

Now there are issues with v300 with the Kitchen Shears Top Palm Handle which I machined yesterday. Comes up clean when opened. In the Manufacture workspace, project thinks it’s at v298 while the Fusion header shows v300!!! They are in sync in the Design workspace at v300.

Here are the steps I used to consistently reproduce the missing reference issue.

1. I started Fusion. In Design, the version numbers are in sync: v300. Changed to Manufacture and it thinks it's at v298.

There is nothing wrong with the operations I created yesterday. Note: I machined the handle using those operations.

2. I went back to the Design workspace and version numbers are still in sync:v300

3. Went back to Design and made the Kitchen Shears-Top Palm Handle body and sketch visible.

4. Went back to Manufacture and bingo! Generate symbol next to one operation Step 4. When opening the operation Fusion complains about a missing reference.
There’s an issue with the handle hole.

I think the issue is the version mismatch between the Design and Manufacture workspaces.