Silhouette split not working

[anthony.a.douglas]

Heya, I have been hobbling along moving things back and forth between solidworks and fusion, but want to finally try to get this resolved.  The split line generation feature does not work right at all in fusion.  I am trying to do some machining, and I need to distinguish between the upper facing surfaces and the lower facing surfaces in the model, and to separate them from each other so I can select them.

I explain in the video the wacky behaviour.

video: https://streamable.com/6l6uk

[karina.harper]

Hi @anthony.a.douglas 

Can you please share this model with me? I'd like to take a closer look. It looks like this has been reported before but it is always model specific. When I make a similar shape, I sometimes get a closed line and sometimes do not. I think it has to do with when bodies are blocking itself, a line is not produced.

Thanks,

Karina

[anthony.a.douglas]

of course, sorry, here it is https://a360.co/2OxP37O

[anthony.a.douglas]

I investigated further, and it does this sort of thing with a range of geometries.  It really doesn't work at all in all but the simplest cases.

[anthony.a.douglas]

Any ideas?  It seriously is totally non functional even for simple geometries as far as I can tell. Maybe a problem with my system? I don't think so.  Can anyone reproduce it/ or get it working at all?

[karina.harper]

Hi @anthony.a.douglas 

You're right - it's behaving very strangely. We're trying to nail down what it really should be doing (the solidworks example helps) so that we can log this internally. I'm working through this and I'll let you know when I have it logged with development. 

Thanks for bringing it to our attention. This is really valuable and I would like to see this tool working properly.

I think it would be good if we had @jeff_strater look at this one. He would know the intended use.

I've been seeing some strange results on organic shapes:

Cheers,

Karina

[anthony.a.douglas]

Ok, awesome, I'll stay tuned and keep checking back, I know it's a lot of work and may take a while, but here is hoping it can be done soon, fingers crossed, and thanks a million for letting me know and proceeding on it.

[anthony.a.douglas]

btw it is widely and mostly used for making injection molds, but I believe strongly in the importance of making general purpose tools.  Solidworks for instance is pretty good that way, and that's where a lot of it's power comes from despite bugs.  I am just saying so because I fear slightly that cases in which the solid occludes itsself will be considered unimportant.  But those cases I need. It's that functionality to create upward facing and lower facing surfaces, regardless of occlusion.     Solidworks can do it.  I haven't tried onshape yet.  But I cannot export the resulting  solid with split faces from solidworks to fusion, I tried every combo of files and options conceivable.

[anthony.a.douglas]

Ok, I discovered a good, accurate technical term for what I am talking about.  It's important to have a good term, as there are a lot of terms like split line, parting line, draft line, etc. being thrown around.

It's called an isocline split line, or an isocline curve.  Anyway, the key term is isocline curve.  This has to the split the faces of the solid body, so it can actually be used for modelling.  Some software only shows a view of it.  

It is fairly common, NX, CATIA and other software sounds from their help files like it can do it.

It's not the same as silhouette, really.  

This is de facto what solidworks appears to be doing.  I think it's a good way to do things, not to try to make this feature give an actual parting line for an injection mold; make powerful general purpose tools, starting with primitives.  Someone can write an add in to trim away parts of the isocline and join other parts, or whatever, once they have it.  To start with making solid, general purpose building blocks, then stack them together, rather than makind one tower shaped block that can't be used for anything else.   

[karina.harper]

Hi @anthony.a.douglas 

Well, after reading your post I was just going to send you information about the draft analysis tool when I found something interesting.

It looks like the silhouette split tool is using the draft analysis tool to inform where the line will be generated.

So - if I put this into a body that has overlapping features like yours, it looks like the draft analysis appears correctly but the silhouette split doesn't align, or skips certain lines.

So, I think as a workaround for now, if the silhouette split fails we can look to the draft analysis to give us some information on how to split manually. I will include this info in the ticket as I think it will be super helpful.

Thanks for keeping up on this post, your thoughts are valuable and your findings are interesting.

Cheers,

Karina

[karina.harper]

@anthony.a.douglas 

I have logged this with the team (FUS-49031) and I have also requested that information be added in the tooltip about how the split line is generated and how it can be used with draft analysis.

Cheers!

Karina

[anthony.a.douglas]

0k, thanks a ton for the info maybe I can figure out how to use that to work around for a bit, I hope the full functionality is working soon, though, and they use the isocline split sort of thing, the general purpose primitive building block, so I can build on that.

[anthony.a.douglas]

hey is there any progress?  It still is not working any better.  It sounds like this feature has been in a state of partial completion for a long time, here is a post from 2014 when it was called the parting line tool.  The tool in solidworks that does what we mold makers need, as described above, is also called the parting line tool.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-design-validate/issues-with-the-parting-line-tool/td-p/490...

[karina.harper]

Hi @anthony.a.douglas 

Nothing to report here. It's logged with the team and it's on the list!

Cheers,

Karina

[andrewECD2B]

Karina,

Thanks for following up on this. I design mold tooling for work, and to be honest, while I have found techniques for manually creating parting surfaces for complex shapes- (think pringles chips with radiused edges) - I often just switch back to Solidworks. It is just more productive than making the parting surfaces from scratch, or even using the workflow below....

I am attaching a file showing how I sometimes use the silhouette split. I find the key is to just use split face. The parting surface in the file isn't perfect, but it shows the workflow. Obviously, once you have the parting line, there are a bunch of ways to approach drawing the surface in Fusion depending on the requirements of your tool. If the split surf only option works on your geometry, it is still a much easier way to get the parting line than doing it with intersecting projected surfaces.

I hope this helps in someway! Cheers!

[andrewECD2B]

PS,

Silhouette split body only works when the entire parting line is coplanar, and split shell pretty much breaks everytime except on the most simple shapes.

[billywho2]

Hi Karina,

 Let me start with that I absolutely love and have been thoroughly impressed with Fusion and what it can do as well as how much effort and continuous improvement you guys have done to the product over the last 2 years, thank you for that! What Anthony and Andrew are asking for in this thread about having the ability to split the part via Z axis ( or what ever direction is needed ) on a somewhat "complex" shape to create an injection mold tool from that part is beyond imperative. I Strenuously ask and plead ( yes that line is stolen from Demi Moore in a Few Good Men lol ) with you to push for this much needed function with the higher ups as it is vital to mold making and desperately needed as soon as possible in Fusion! 

 Even if the Product Development team can get this function to only work in one Direction/Axis ( let's say Z Axis ) for now and we have to re-orientate our part to use that specific (Z) axis for the Split/Silhouette Split to work on any part I'm all for it!

This ability to split a part for injection mold making I have to imagine will open up so much opportunity for this product and is desperately needed! You could also create that function as a pay to play add on for a price if the concern is about Fusion competing with Autodesk's other higher end products, I'll pay for that add on option all day long and twice on Sunday!

Right now my only option is the same thing as the others which is to send my part to my buddy that uses SolidWorks so he can split it and send it back to me.. and I just do not want to do that!

Thank You for your time Karina,

Billy Frank

[karina.harper]

Hi @anthony.a.douglas  @billywho2 

Thanks for adding to this conversation. I have reached out to development with your words and I will see what I can do. Your words are very powerful, thank you for sharing! I'll let you know once I have an update.

Cheers,

Karina

[anthony.a.douglas]

Hey, they spent a bunch of time redoing the user interface, but silhouette split still does not work?  .  Solidworks can do it, but not fusion 360.

[anthony.a.douglas]

Hey, any progress on this?