Learn how to edit and group objects on the timeline in Fusion 360, using groups and component colour cycling for better organization and understanding of large projects. Discover tips on creating, expanding, and collapsing groups, selecting features, and how to understand which features reference each component in the model.
Key Insights
- The article guides on using the timeline in Fusion 360 to understand the chronological order of a model's build and editing features. It allows a snapshot of any part of the design by simply dragging the timeline between features.
- For larger projects, the timeline can be kept organized using groups, which also help to understand which features in the timeline reference the model's features. Component color cycling applies a color to each component in the model, providing further clarity.
- The article also provides detailed steps on creating groups within the model, explaining that Fusion's timeline only allows a feature to be in one group. Tips on including and deleting features from groups effectively are also discussed to maintain a well-organized timeline.
In this video, we will talk about editing and grouping objects in our timeline. Please scroll down and open up Step 11: Groups, and I will go ahead and hide the data panel. Let's look at the timeline at the bottom of our screen. We can see all of our features here on the timeline, and it is representing the entire chronological order of our build.
I can go here and play my timeline, and it will show me every step of building this lamp. This can sometimes be fun to do when looking at how your model was built. In our next workshop, we will talk about editing features in our timeline, which is part of Fusion's parametric design properties. For now, we can see that we can simply drag our timeline anywhere in between our features to see a still snapshot of that part of our design.
However, when working in larger projects, the timeline can sometimes run off the side of the screen. In order to keep our timeline organized, we can utilize groups. How do we know which features in our timeline reference which features in our model? If you hover over a feature, you will see the impacted geometry highlight in a dark color.
Also, if we go to Inspect > Component Color Cycling Toggle, this applies a color to each component in our model. Now I can see that all of these features reference the base. These features reference the arm.
These features reference my lampshade arm, and so on. You can see that we have groups in our model already, which reference multiple features in our model. These were automatically created when we imported and broke the links of our fastener assemblies.
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Let's go to the timeline and begin to create some groups. I can see that one group will be from this base component creation all the way to this fillet. So, holding Shift, I will select this feature and this feature to select all features in between.
I can now right-click > Create Group, and we can see that those features have now been collapsed into a group that we can expand by clicking the plus (+) icon and collapse by clicking the minus (–) icon. Let's continue creating groups throughout our model. I will create a group that goes from here to here, which includes our lampshade arms.
Next, I'll create a group that goes from here to here, which is our arm assembly and lampshade arm. I'll select all of my joints and create a group, and you'll notice that if I try to select a group and other features, I cannot create a nested group. The Fusion timeline only allows a feature to be in one group, so I will have to select these three items, right-click > Create Group, and then I can continue.
I'll select these joints and features, and select my entire lampshade, and finally, these three joints. This rigid group is all alone, so I can include it in this lampshade group. I first need to right-click > Delete, and we will see the group delete options.
I can either delete the group and expand its contents, delete both the group and its contents, or cancel. I will delete the group and expand its contents to keep all features in the model. Now I can include that rigid group, right-click > Create Group, and our timeline is now well organized into a series of small groups that I can hover over to see which features they apply to and expand as needed.
Using groups in your timeline keeps it short and concise, and using Component Color Cycling to understand which features belong to which component is a useful workflow when working on large projects. I will go to Inspect and turn off Component Color Cycling and save the file. We can see that there is one more step, and this is simply the final step I provided to make sure your file looks like our file at the end of the project if you worked alongside.
If you open up that file and hide the data panel, you will see that with the appropriate joints, our timeline will have all of the groups, and we can edit our lamp and move it into a different position as needed. Feel free to experiment by placing the light bulb in your file and using a joint to place it in the socket. I hope you’ve enjoyed this Fusion 360 workshop, and you can find more like it at vdci.edu.
