Branching and Merging - How to merge designs

[gavbath]

So, my colleague Scott Moyse and I have been messing around with Branching and Merging, and trying to understand it. I was hoping to use it for a workflow at my Fusion 360 Meetup this week. Unless we are doing something wrong, it seems extremely limited.

Picture this:

1. I have a master branch that contains a design, and that design contains one component.
2. I create 2 new branches, off the master branch.
3. On each branch, in turn, I add a new component to the original design. The added components are not the same. So at this point, the master branch has 1 component in the design, and the 2 new branches each have 2 components in them.
4. I merge both branches back to master, and now I expect the design in the master branch to have 3 components in it.

Well it doesn't. Each merge shows a conflict, and overwrites the design that was merged from the other branch.

If we use the source code analogy, adding files to a project in a branch will be added to another branch when merged to it. If a merge results in a conflict for a file, then (in git anyway) you get a merge conflict that you can resolve by picking and choosing which bits of each version of the file you want.

I think it needs to work the same way for Fusion. If components (code files) have been added to a design (code project), then the merge should just add them, or at least give you the option to choose. So multiple branches merging into one branch should add all the components from each branch if they are unique.

That was really difficult to explain, so I hope it makes sense to somebody... 

[charegb]

Hi Gavin,

This makes perfect sense. You are describing a scenario of merging an assembly at a component level. The preview doesn't support this yet and it is a future item.

We definitely see a lot of value in this workflow but its a hard problem to solve, especially getting the timeline squared away after the merge. We are on it but its not something that will be supported soon.

Thanks,

Bankim