Proper use of selection filters

[Kee_Tom]

Hello

I am new to Fusion 360 but have experience of CATIA V5 and Solidworks, so I bring with me all of my habits from those systems..

I am really struggling with the selection filters in Fusion. I can rarely select the thing I want to.. e.g. an edge or a face, and I need to jump into the selection filters and fiddle with the settings to ensure I can select the thing I need to for that particular command, whether I am creating a sketch or adding fillets etc.

Selection filters seem to reset regularly or get completely cleared, which I've seen from another post is a bug that the dev team are looking to fix. This means that I am constantly fiddling with selection filters, and it is extremely frustrating and slows down progress significantly.

Am I doing something wrong? This is not something I ever think about with CATIA or Solidworks and I can always select the edge or face or body I require.

Any hints or tips would be much appreciated..

Thanks

Kieran

[jeff_strater]

@Kee_Tom - can you show some cases of "Selection filters seem to reset regularly or get completely cleared,", or provide a link to the post that you refer to here?  I'm not aware of any general filter problems in Fusion.  Personally, I almost never touch selection filters at all, the defaults seem to work pretty well for me.

Commands will definitely change selection filters while they are active (for instance, Extrude changes the filter to only select profiles and planar faces), but those setting should be reset when the command completes (OK or cancel).

[TheCADWhisperer]

---

@Kee_Tom wrote:

This is not something I ever think about with Solidworks and I can always select the edge or face or body I require.

Any hints or tips would be much appreciated..

---

I use SolidWorks more than I use Fusion and I have never noticed an issue when going to Fusion.

One tip that might help in Fusion is Longggg  (actually, not that long) left click to get to Select Other (whatever they call it in Fusion, Depth/Parents).

Also, I have these Preferences set - 

I came back to add suggestion to Screencast Recording, but I see @TrippyLighting made that suggestion while I was gone.  Might help in diagnosing the issue.

[TrippyLighting]

Maybe you want to share a screencast and narrated it to explain the selection troubles you are having.

While I do use the selection filters, it is reserved for special cases. I rarely have a problem not being able to select what I want.

[Kee_Tom]

Hello, thank you for all your replies. Please see screencast showing an example of how selecting the same position on the feature sometimes selects the whole diameter, sometimes the cut out feature. In many cases I have not been able to select the right geometry at all so have had to modify the selection filters or selection priority to make the correct selection.

@jeff.strater  I had not realised that the selection filters were situational, so that might be why I thought they were being cancelled or reset, thank you.

[Kee_Tom]

I have recorded another screencast below.

In Fusion 360 do you always have to select the command first (fillet / chamfer / extrude etc.) before selecting the geometry? In CATIA you can select either the geometry or the feature first, it does not matter. If this is the case, then this might be why I am having difficulty as I typically select features first, then the command.

Thanks for the help.

 

[jeff_strater · Accepted solution]

@Kee_Tom - the issue in both of those videos is:  You have a visible sketch sitting on top of the geometry.  With the default selection filter, Fusion selects the first thing it can which meets one of the selection filter criteria.  In your case, that is a Profile (shaded sketch area that can be extruded).  You can tell that because the sketch highlights in the browser when you do that:

If you want to select things behind the sketch, most people will just turn the sketch visibility off.  Or, if you click and hold the left mouse button for 1/2 second, you get the "select other" UI:

which will let you select anything under the cursor along the view direction by just clicking it in that dialog.

Yes, you can do "action/object" interactions in Fusion, where you start the command first.  This will set the filter to only objects that command can act on (for fillet:  edges and faces) as an easy way to select what you want.  That's how I tend to use it, but you can pretty easily use "object/action" by understanding what things are in the model under your cursor, turning on and off objects, and using Select Other

[Kee_Tom]

Thank you @jeff_strater. This makes sense now. I will bear this in mind and see how I get on!

Thanks all for the help.

Kieran