I am coming from a SolidWorks background and this has got to be the most time I have spent in Fusion360 modeling. I think I am doing the top down assembly right? I see that “ground” seems to be the same as “fix”. I see the parameters (equations in SW) and started to use them, need to clean it up some more.
I guess if you could have a look at my basic table and let me know if I did anything correctly for modeling an assembly of a table.
I have a ton of questions, but that is probably the best place to start.
I have zero design background, and all I know of Fusion 360 came from the internet, so I cannot claim a “better” approach, but here are some of the things I would have done differently.
If it is symmetrical, the Z axis goes in the middle. I would have used a Center Rectangle for the glass top so the glass would be symmetrical about the axis. This would have also eliminated the need for your two mid-planes.
Seems like this design should be driven by the size of the glass, and that size should be a user parameter.
I rarely promote a body to a component. I almost always create an empty component, and do all the design and creation of that component with that component active. This results in the entire history of just that component being available when that component is the active one. It greatly simplifies complex designs when going back to make changes.
I try to make the origin planes meaningful when I can. In this case I would have made the XY plane the top of the glass, meaning I would have extruded the glass downward.
I almost never use joints to create relationships between parts. The relationships are more often driven by sketch constraints. For example, I would have started with an empty leg component, create a sketch using the top of the glass as the plane, projected the outline of the glass into my leg sketch, placed the top profiles of the legs boards using sketch constraints, then extruded downward the two leg boards.
Given a leg component that had two bodies or two sub-components for the legs, I would mirror that leg across one origin plane, then mirror the resulting two legs across a different origin plane to create the four legs. I would not have copied the the boards, nor used joints to position the boards, nor used a circular pattern to position boards.
I do have it as a user parameter. So far it is glass size, table height. Later I plan on making some CNC’d legs so they will be as well.
Good to know. I watched a few videos on this and honestly they never seemed to actually explain it, “components vs bodies”. Ha, you explained it in 3 sentences. This is new to me, they say top down but really if what you are saying is true it is just like Solidworks except you are expected to create a new part while in the assembly. Odd.
I did start that way I think during my first “Joint”/mate I moved it. That is when I learned about grounding. Shoot I will go back and ground it before the move. (I hope)
The legs should get more features giving them a direction. I originally did mirror them, v8 and earlier, but the realized the BOM will show extra components that way. To keep the BOM in check I had to circular pattern everything.
If you see that last sketch/cut is from the previous version as I roll forward into components from bodies. That sketch/cut doesn’t work because it is not in the component. I stopped because I was trying to figure out how to make that component a new one, since it is a copy. Once I figure that out I will be okay.
Thank you! You pointed out a lot of things I had put thought into and things I did not notice. I really appreciate it.