When working with suppliers, contractors, etc., the first question I would always ask was “What format is that file?”. More often than not, the answer was not what I hoped. This meant I would have to do some rework to recreate some of the intelligence in my CAD tool. The associations between components do not transfer from CAD neutral files when working with assemblies from other CAD tools. Luckily, Fusion 360 has some awesome tricks to assemble imported assemblies to apply the correct mechanical motion.<\/p>\n
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Let’s start this quick tip\u00a0by explaining joints. Every component has 6 degrees of freedom: 3 rotations and 3 translations. In traditional CAD tools, mates or constraints are used to assemble components together. Typically, 2-3 mates or constraints are required to lock down\u00a0the correct degrees of freedom to simulate the right mechanical motion. That’s the OLD\u00a0way\u00a0of assembling. Now in Fusion 360, joints are used to assemble components together. Joints start by locking all 6 degrees of freedom with a rigid joint. Then the joint type can be changed to unlock degrees of freedom. This new way of assembling requires one joint to assemble components together.<\/p>\n
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There are two different types of joints: joints and as-built joints. Joints are more useful for the bottom-up assembly modeling approach, where as-built joints are EXTREMELY useful for the top-down assembly modeling approach. As-built joints do not<\/span> change the location of the components when the as-built joint is created, but it does<\/span>\u00a0make a relationship between the two selected components.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Now\u00a0let’s start assembling imported “dumb” CAD geometry. When importing assemblies from other CAD tools, the components are in the correct location, but they have no intelligence as to\u00a0how they move relative to each other. The two commands you need to learn for assembling imported assemblies are rigid group and as-built joint. Traditionally, I would have assembled an imported assembly by pulling it apart then mating everything together back to the original location. As-built joints remove the need to move components around in order to select the right face\u00a0to use for mating purposes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Watch this week’s quick tip to see how quickly imported CAD neutral files\u00a0can be assembled.\u00a0This video was not sped up.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n