Unable to change sheet metal rules after the parts are created.

[WestonMFG]

I thought I had done this before and it actually worked... One of the projects that I'm working on is pretty much finished except I need to change 12 sheet metal parts from 1/4" to 3/16". The whole project has 110 parts and is super slow so I deleted everything except that sheet metal parts that I need to switch over.

If I try and change the rule on some of the parts it'll re calculate a bunch of stuff and then fail to actually change the rule, and the other parts it'll say it changed the rule and says it's the 3/16" rule but the part is still actually 1/4" and I can't pick a face to use as the flat pattern face.

I'm pretty fed up with nothing working in fusion as it should. I'm going to repeat my strong opinion that if you are going to have sheet metal in your program you need to be able completely clear your history timeline and have your sheet metal components independent of that. The timeline messes things up way more often than helping and every custom project that I work on the timeline just gets in the way and offers no benefit.

If fusion wouldn't have automatically renewed the subscription this last month I wouldn't have renewed it and would have learned a new CAD program. I've been wanting to do a video review and rant about fusion. Maybe that'll happen this week...

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@WestonMFGwrote:

.... the timeline just gets in the way and offers no benefit.

.... and would have learned a new CAD program. ...

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What non-history based software for Sheet Metal are you considering?

[ryan.bales]

In digging through the file, most or all of the extrusions I've seen are using a fixed distance. This makes it tough or in some cases impossible to adjust the rule when its based on that value. First things first i'd adjust your extrusions to be 'TO' rather than a distance. Correcting these did allow me to fix the select bodies that would not adjust prior to that. This is especially true when doing extrusions and joining bodies. Use the to function to extrude to the other face and where necessary use "extend faces" under Chain Faces to clean up the bodies.

Secondly you have a lot of sketches that are missing the proper planes. This tends to have a domino effect down the road as more and more objects are using cached information that has been removed or deleted. You are going to run into problems fixing some of the bodies without correcting the sketches. 

Lastly some of the Sheet model bodies are listed as Base Features, can you elaborate on how you did that?

[WestonMFG]

I was just starting to explore other options when the subscription renewed for fusion... At this point I might just get my old version of Softimage 2015 installed again and make a deformer in the ice tree to turn meshes into flat sheet metal patterns. It's not "CAD" software but works better by far than anything else I've seen.

ON shape looks good but is probably priced a bit higher than my boss will want to pay for a CAD program.

It doesn't have to be a program without a history bar, it just needs to work and the scene needs to not bog down to a snails pace once it gets a bunch of parts in it. This is usually done in other programs by clearing your history periodically, which in fusion can't be done if you have any sheet metal components in your scene.

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[WestonMFG]

I think I have To/From extruding PTSD from using Inventor for a few years. Those would reliably break in inventor so I learned to never use them.

With the sketches missing the proper planes you mean to say when I start a new sketch on a face I should be putting a plane on it then starting the sketch on that plane instead of the face?

The sheet metal bodies that are listed as base features are from exporting an importing those sheet metal files from the main file to another one and back. I did that because my scene was becoming too slow to work on it and I had 90 other parts to make and modify that weren't sheet metal. I did the work needed to those parts to bring them to an almost final state without design history and then imported the sheet metal parts back into the scene and positioned them where they needed to be. Then our customer changed his mind on the thicknesses of some of the metal parts and I ended up with a big mess.

I just redrew those thinner sheet metal parts over top of what I had instead of messing around with all the stuff in the timeline.