Wonky Drawing Balloons

[matt.soule]

I am experiencing some wonky behavior in setting balloons and components lists in a Fusion 360 drawing. This has happened four or five times over the course of constructing the drawing. Sometimes, but not always, after changing and saving the parent model and then updating the drawing I end up with the following balloon issues:

* I am unable to set any new balloons on existing views and existing sheets.
* Any view created after the update, however, is able to have balloons applied.
* My component list becomes empty
* Already constructed balloons seem unaffected (they do not disappear or need to be re-associated) but I am unable to apply another balloon even to the component that already has one. I can, however, move the balloon to another spot on the same component but if I try to re-associate it to a different component the balloon number remains the same.
* Dimensions, edges, arrowed notes seem unaffected.

The last time this happened all I did was add a rectangle to a sketch in the parent file that shows up on the sheet described below. Also odd is that even if I back out that change and re-save the parent file (or load a previous version), the damage is done. The drawing file is somehow corrupted and the balloons are wonked out after update.

The issue with this is that if I realize I need to add a balloon to an already constructed view I must delete and reproduce the view including all dimensions etc. I also am a little concerned that since the balloons already in existence seem to have gone inactive they will not update properly with component number changes - for instance if a part is deleted or added. This means I have to go through all the views and check every balloon (which I haven't done yet).

The drawing file is large and unwieldy. There are forty something sheets. It takes several minutes to load and update each time. Sometimes Fusion goes away thinking about something for minutes on end. That is making the constant reconstruction of views even more annoying. Next time I will split up the sheets to multiple drawing files.

I have found no other posts with these issues but there certainly seems to be something wrong. Even if the problem is particular to this model, I would really like to know what NOT to do next time.

I have a saved drawing file that I can offer to someone on the Fusion team if desired. Not quite sure how to do this but it sounds like I can email a hidden link or something like that. On the last sheet (sheet 3700) after loading and prior to updating you can associate balloons to the components. On many other sheets you can not because as I said this has happened more than once and many of the views have inactive balloons. Notice that the second and third sheets the parts list is there, but empty. It disappeared after one of these occurrences. If you update the drawing file the issues stated above will appear on sheet 3700.

Also, I noticed that the drawing can not be re-associated away from the parent model that I am still working on. I hope this doesn't screw up any investigation that might be attempted.

Sorry for the long windedness. Just trying to be descriptive in case it helps.

[cmiller66]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the posting and no worries about the long windedness.  From your description this sounds like a problem we are currently working on.  One possible way of getting into this situation would be creating a multi-sheet drawing with parts list/balloons, then deleting a sheet.  This could happen if you were using a smart template with placeholder views/parts lists.

There have been a few posts about this, the symptoms seem to be the same, namely parts lists collapse to just header and sub-header rows, and trying to place a balloon brings up a pop-up about needing a component.

I would like to verify this is the same issue, and that our fix takes care of it.  We are trying to get a fix for this out ASAP (Internal reference number is FDWG-9686).  To Share or send the file (f3z will contain the drawing and design), click the version number for the drawing in the data panel > Open details on web then Export/Fusion 360 Archive and send or share with christopher.miller@autodesk.com.

Thanks,
Chris

[Anonymous]

Hi Matt,

I am experiencing the same symptoms, but I have only one sheet per drawing. It seems like the sheets deteriorate over time: initially everything works as intended, then some ballons become unassociated and components which I hid previously in the component tree reappear and move the view. These are fixable. Then the Title Block (custom one done in AutoCAD) acts up, the frame around the logo disappears and the issues described above become more frequent, basically every time I open a drawing I have to fix something before actually working on the drawing. Then, finally, the ballons implode and I cannot place new ones, as per your description. The only solution is to re-create the drawing, which is a lot of work because I create the parts list manually and cannot copy any items over to the new view.

I hope there will be a fix soon for this. I appreciate that Fusion is available to us as a Startup at no cost and we learned how to deal with the limitations (in contrast to SolidWorks especially), but such bugs are really annoying and create a lot of work on a daily basis for us.

Cheers,
Clemens

[matt.soule]

Thanks for the support, Clemens.  It's nice to know I am not alone.  I have experienced the other symptoms that you referred to but never got them so I could reproduce them and they could be submitted for easier examination.  I also appreciate greatly the free use of Fusion 360 although I have to say I am not so much starting up as trying to wind down in retirement.  I think Autodesk does this not only because they may be drumming up future paying business but because they get a larger group of people doing many different things to help them debug the code.  I oblige when I can.

I have come to really like the flow in Fusion 360.  I find going back to UG NX (for my retirement consulting job I can't seem to rid myself of) to be rather clunky by comparison but I imagine some of this is what you get used to after continuous long term use.  Fusion might be a real gem someday if they can keep up with the exterminations.