Copy Paste Bodies - can't resolve warning

[juliangall]

I have a warning in my timeline on a Copy Paste Bodies command. Highlighted yellow as below:

The actual warning says "1 Reference Failures. The model is using cached geometry to solve. Please reselect reference geometry for failed features in the timeline."

However, when I right-click the timeline icon, there is no option to Edit Feature. How do I reselect the reference geometry?

Thanks,

Julian

[HughesTooling · Accepted solution]

@jeff_strater  This problem's been around for ages, is it likely to get fixed? I notice create components from bodies now has the option to edit and select a different body, this is what's needed with copy as well.

@juliangall  Think you're stuck when this happens. I always use Boundary Fill instead. It has the option to copy a body or create a component. Even though you only have a single body boundary fill will work and let you make a copy.

Mark

[jeff_strater]

@HughesTooling - depends on what you mean by fixing it - adding an edit to Copy/Paste bodies?  That one is not in our plans.  However, if the cause of the original dropped reference was from a bug, then definitely, we want to fix those if we can reproduce them.

[HughesTooling]

I maen edit. Here's an example that caused me a problem that only edit will "Fix". I used copy paste to create a copy of a body as a new component, later I needed to split the body before the copy. After the split you have no control over which body is copied and it's always going to be the wrong one, should be 50-50 chance but never is!😑

Another workflow I use. I have a mould tool design and the customer want a new version, I can import the new component but there's no way to swap it with the original. I have the workaround of using boundary fill for both of these so don't get caught out now but it is a gotcha waiting for new users.

Something else that would be useful is a copy option in Create Components from bodies.

Thanks Mark

[juliangall]

My (original) post was complaining that the Reference Failure warning asked me to reselect the geometry, but there is no way to do that. Either there needs to be a way (e.g. Edit Feature) or the message should say: "Sorry, you need to delete this and start again", or something like that. 

However, it isn't easy to see why there is an Edit Feature on most things in the timeline, but not this.

Julian

[jeff_strater]

the main reason why there is no Edit for Copy/Paste of bodies is that there is no command, as such to do the operation in the first place.  The usual paradigm in Fusion is:  The Edit for any given feature rolls back to, and re-creates the environment in which the original feature was created.  It re-populates the command dialog for that command so that you are in the same state as when that feature was created.  The same code is used for Edit and for creation.  But, it was never clear to us what an Edit for Copy/Paste Body would even look like.  There's no dialog to bring up, no UI to populate.  

It's not an insolvable problem, of course.  We could create a specific Edit command for this case that has such a dialog.  But, it was not seen as a high priority, because, really, this situation should be rare at best.  If you delete the source body for a Copy/Paste Body, the Copy/Paste Body feature should also get deleted.  Like if you delete an Extrude on which you place a Fillet, the Fillet should be deleted as well.

Anyway, it is a valid request, and I'll bring it up with the rest of team to see what they think.

[illfixitkc]

this is not as rare an occurrence as you would think.  I was creating a 3D model of my workshop so I could try rearranging it to see how I liked it without actually having to move all of my benches and tool box's around.  so because all of my tool boxes, tables and carts had similar wheels. I decided to make build one wheel and just scale it differently based on the tool box the wheel was being placed on.  however the first box I 3D modeled was an older one I had been thinking of getting rid of. my nephew told me he would buy the box from me so I went ahead and deleted it from my 3D model so I could rearrange my shop accordingly.  however that was the box that I had made the first wheel for.  but because the original wheel was deleted, all the rest of my wheels on 8 tool boxes, three rolling work tables, and 4 tool carts have now lost the reference geometry.  BUT I did not make 60 copies of the first wheel.  I made a copy of the original wheel, then after having it perfectly aligned with it's designated corner, I created a copy of the copied wheel because I only had 1 alignment action to do for the rest of the wheels on the item this way.  so when the original wheel was deleted with the deleted tool box, one of my wheels on another tool said it had lost the reference geometry. so i tried to just make a replacement. delete lost geometry wheel, create new one, simple right?  HORRIBLY WRONG!!!!  because all my wheels were a copy of a copy, of a copy, of a copy, every time I delete a wheel that has lost it's reference geometry then another loses it's geometry.  So needless to say I had to go back and one at a time replace 60 wheels. there has to be a way to fix this.  or a constraint that will not let you delete a body if it has been copy and pasted.

[martinYFAFK]

It becomes a problem when copying a body that was created using the combine tool - if you edit the body that was created using the combine tool it often changes name of the body. In my case I use combine to split a body, then remove one part and keep working on the other. It's a 50/50 chance that an edit of the combined geometry will cause a reference change.  Now you end in a situation where the copy has lost its reference due to the program seeing it as a new body, but the copy cant be edited.  

You say that you dont see it as something that's worth fixing as it should be a rare event. That might be the case, but when your program is littered with these "rare" bugs you stumble upon them very often once you are using the program 8 hours a day. In my case I'm loosing a few hours of work.

The solution to this bug seems obvious. Just add a "manage references" for the copy-feature just as you have with lost projections in sketches. When I enter the "manage references", roll back the history marker to the copy-feature time and let me select the body it should be referencing. 

[bradyDW3ZC]

Is this still not getting fixed, years later? This is a real problem and it's not uncommon. Part of the problem, as mentioned, is that Fusion seems to sometimes decide to rename a body if you edit the feature that created it. I don't really know exactly. But I regularly run into the issue where a copy/paste operation loses it's reference body (even if it still exists under a different name) and tells me to reselect the geometry, yet that's impossible to do. It's a dead stop to your workflow and you have to restart your project at the point in the timeline where the reference was lost. That's crazy. Is it not a trivial task to create a quick little dialog to let a user reselect the geometry, since that's exactly what you tell them to do?

[martinYFAFK]

Just ran in to this issue again. You even tell us in the dialog to reselect the geometry. Yet there's no option to do it. 

Will this ever be fixed ? I'm loosing confidence as fusion 360 as a tool to perform actual work. 4 Crashes so far today, and then this **** again. Why have a feature that is totally useless ? Will Autodesk even acknowledge that this is a bug ?

[Bleugh]

have seen this quite a bit, mainly when copy/pasting multiple copies of something - I'm making keyboard keycaps.

If I need to go back and alter the geometry of the original master keycap, often the following copy/pastes fail as they're referencing geometry that's not there, and using the cached original keycap prior to my changes.

it's an annoyance as any downstream changes often get errors because of the need to re-do the copy/paste and then get new body names

[HughesTooling]

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@jeff_strater wrote:

the main reason why there is no Edit for Copy/Paste of bodies is that there is no command, as such to do the operation in the first place.  The usual paradigm in Fusion is:  The Edit for any given feature rolls back to, and re-creates the environment in which the original feature was created.  It re-populates the command dialog for that command so that you are in the same state as when that feature was created.  The same code is used for Edit and for creation.  But, it was never clear to us what an Edit for Copy/Paste Body would even look like.  There's no dialog to bring up, no UI to populate.  

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@jeff_strater  I don't think this excuse really stand as create components from bodies has no dialog when you create them but there is an edit option so surely you could use the same dialog to edit a copy\paste. It does exactly what I'd want for copy\paste body, allow reselection if the reference is lost or to change the selected body if I want to change the selection.

[bradyDW3ZC]

Is this being ignored now?

[matt.johnson1253]

Would love to see a resolution to this issue.  It's forcing me to do major re-modeling after a basic geometry change early in the timeline. 

[moranosaure]

same here : incredible this is not fixed. What's the point in having a timeline if you can't solve this issue which causes major damage ?

[heuristic42]

Warning: CopyPasteBodies2
<b>1 Reference Failures</b><br/>The model is using cached geometry to solve. Please reselect reference geometry for failed features in the timeline.

and yet it looks like there is no way to "reselect reference geometry" 🙄 so close yet so far 

If you delete the source body for a Copy/Paste Body, the Copy/Paste Body feature should also get deleted.

I'd argue that point too. Seems perfectly reasonable to edit history to copy from another object instead. Or for example, when a slightly different ordering of joins happens, the original body changes and the copy/paste command would have no idea what the source body is. Would be so easy to allow me to re-select it. Sure, better that it can guess which one I wanted but an explicit fallback means we wouldn't all be dead in the water.

 Why is this thread marked as solved???

Are there any workarounds?

[HughesTooling]

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@heuristic42 wrote:

 Why is this thread marked as solved???

Are there any workarounds?

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The workaround is never use Copy\Paste body because it's like a ticking time bomb in your timeline! I always use Boundary Fill, you can use it to create a copy as a body or a new component (note, it works fine with a single body). It allows editing to reselect if the selection breaks and it also allows you to select a different body if you want to experiment using a different selection.

Mark

[moranosaure]

Welcome to Fusion 360: "it's not working but it's not a bug, it's just meant to be like that" .....

[heuristic42]

Will do. Thanks for being patient with me - I see you've mentioned Boundary Fill already as a preventative measure 🙂

[stanislav.kanev]

I'm absolutely furious about this issue. I have 100% repo in all my designs and there is no fix.

Even cleaning the cache, restarting fusion and starting a new project ends runs into the same issue.

Imagine you have a simple extruded circle that you want to create multiple sketches from with different diameters.

Copy/paste the component into a new one, edit the diameter, then move the sketch under the original component. 

Only the sketch is copied, not the body. If you move the body and then try to delete the 2nd component, that error pops up.

And the sketch is not linked to the body.

With this issue, you now have to create everything from scratch for each new dimension. This is absolute madness.

$550 a year for this - seriously!