What the heck is going on here?

[ryder.febo]

Ok.... What the heck is going on here?

When I go to the higher level assembly all the brackets are just off floating in some space. No idea what space, or what is defining it to be this location. They aren't locked and can be moved around all willy nilly.

Why is this a problem? Because in the second picture you'll see that I have either mated or grounded EVERYTHING that is floating in the higher level. I'm at a loss for why this is doing this. Am I completely mistake on what grounding things does? Does it not fix things in place in the sub-assembly, and therefore in all assemblies the sub is used?

[TheCADWhisperer]

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

[jeff_strater · Accepted solution]

I assume you are talking about Insert Into Current Design (external components).  Ground is not maintained across Insert.  Instead, create a Rigid Group, or individual Rigid Joints in the lower-level design.  This relates the components to each other, whereas Ground relates to the global Origin of the model.

[ryder.febo]

The global Origin makes sense as to why they are shifted where they are.

Does this also apply to As-Built joints?

[jeff_strater]

As-built Joints will be propagated to the upper level design.  Rigid Group is just an As-built Joint that has more than two components.

[ryder.febo]

Hmmmm... That's weird. I tried As-Built joints and had the same result.

I did Rigid Group and am where I need to be.

[TrippyLighting]

If you are in a position to share your design, then please do so.

[jeff_strater]

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@ryder.febo wrote:

Hmmmm... That's weird. I tried As-Built joints and had the same result.

I did Rigid Group and am where I need to be.

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That is weird.  As-Built should be OK.  If not, that is a bug...    If you can re-create it, we would certainly like to see a design that shows this.

[TrippyLighting]

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e@jeff_strater wrote:

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...  If not, that is a bug...

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I would find that surprising. I use joints in my work heavily. The joint system in Fusion 360 has been rock solid for me!

[ryder.febo]

If I find it happen again I'll try. But I've used the Rigid Groups and it worked. So I'm beyond that point now unfortunately.

[ryder.febo]

Well. It isn't As-Built. But apparently Rigid joints don't hold now.

[TrippyLighting]

You still have not shared your design, so there is little help we can provide.

[ryder.febo]

Yeah. I will when I have the time to sanitize my work. There's a few trade secret items in this that I can't just throw up onto a forum willy nilly.

I'll just figure it out.

[TrippyLighting]

You can share it privately with Autodesk Employees. They are under NDA and cannot share your IP.

[ryder.febo]

I made the time. I have tried to redefine my sketch to be the face of the support plate a handful of times. I have had the plate grounded and ungrounded.

So my guess is I don't understand some nuance of F360 where I'm not allowed to use sketches to define things and have it hold across assemblies.

[TrippyLighting]

Grounding is local only. Once that assembly is inserted onto another design that grounding becomes NIL.

Grounding locks the grounded component and ONLY the origin of the grounded component to the top level component.

It does not involve any of the subcomponents.

So you grounded the conveyor plate  in the assembly, it became nil and then you grounded it again in the assembly file.

But you also assembled the support bars to a sketch located in the top level of the Conveyor Support Assembly. that sketch references the top level origin in that design and in that design that origin cannot move.

However, when you insert that design into another design that origin is floating and so do the three support bars.

YU can battel this two ways:

1. In the assembly design, also ground the Conveyor Support Assembly. I personally would not do that.

2. In the Conveyor support assembly, right after the first   component is created (S-10062 Conveyor Plate) use an as-built rigid joint between that new component and the top level origin.

Then in the Assembly design, you can either just ground the Conveyor Support Assembly, or if that assembly is part of yet another assembly, use an as-built rigid joint (or rigid group joint) between the origin of the Conveyor Support Assembly and the top level origin in the assembly design. 

If you consequently make sure that all of the origins in a design are involved in a joint your designs will behave as expected!

Thanks for taking the time to create these files. That makes support a lot easier!

Model is attached,

[ryder.febo]

So when exactly should you ever bother to use ground? It seems like the more I hear about it it's a worthless feature. Especially with the way that it works when you are doing complex assemblies as opposed to tinkercad level stuff.

[TrippyLighting]

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@ryder.febo wrote:

So when exactly should you ever bother to use ground? It seems like the more I hear about it it's a worthless feature. Especially with the way that it works when you are doing complex assemblies as opposed to tinkercad level stuff.

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It depends on what and how you design. When I do concepts using a top down design workflow I do use grounding, but for the most part I don't use it when my designs get bigger.

[ryder.febo]

My designs are always multiple sub-assemblies deep with a lot of external linked components. 
So I guess the answer is I should forget that ground is even a thing.

[TrippyLighting]

Yep!