360 LIVE: All About that BASE Feature

hello everyone and welcome back to another fusion 360 livestream I'm Jason Lichtman and I'm going to be your host for today and you have Bryce heaven--the all on the keyboard today's March 19 2020 and you'll notice that we are working from a different place than usual as many of you know the world is a very different place today than it was just a few weeks ago and so all Autodesk employees are working from home myself included lucky for me I'm surrounded by some pretty cool toys I've got a laser I've got a CNC machine I've got a leather sewing machine and I have using 360 today's topic is gonna be really fun today's topic is base features all about that base feature I'm mostly joking but really what it comes down to is we have a lot of features in fusion 360 that not a lot of people know about and base feature is a great example of that now you've probably seen that icon that says create a base feature and had no idea what it does or why anyone would use it so this particular livestream is going to be exactly for you it's going to tell you exactly what base features are why they exist how to use them and some ways you could use them you might not have expected or thought of so let's jump right into the live stream or well to the screenshare part of the live stream and we'll get into it so here you could see fusion 360 and we are going to be working with this trail 450 today and the base feature that we talked about that icon you could usually find it under create and then scroll down here base feature and you'll notice that it says here that it enters direct editing mode and inserts a history free feature in your timeline any action performed while in that base feature is not going to be recorded in that timeline and that's kind of a weird concept so before I actually dive into using that base feature let's talk a little bit about history versus no history now history is essentially parametric modeling the step-by-step instructions that your software is going to use to be able to create whatever it is you want to make an example of that let's actually zoom in here you could see I have a hub for this front wheel and let's jump into the actual file for it and here you could see at the very bottom of my screen what we call the timeline and I have all these different steps or recipe steps really to be able to make this thing I have a sketch that I end up revolving another sketch that I end up extruding I created a pattern so that I could create that shape on the very front end some chamfers actually fill it then champers more sketches and it just continues now when you have a file like this and you want to make a change it's as simple as going into one of those sketches or one of those features editing the sketch or editing the feature change a dimension hit the finish button actually let's do that real quick action once hit finish and then it'll update the model just like instant really quick but when you bring in models from other places you're not always going to get that history so an example same file this time show you what it would look like if it were imported it looks exactly the same but there's no timeline at the bottom there's no history and says people that come from other software that is like only parametric this is kind of like a crazy concept it doesn't make any sense to them why would you not have any history well the reason is because you can actually make changes to that file really quickly and easily even without that history so if I wanted to make this file itself like this front wheel hub longer I could use for example the Move command I just hit em on my keyboard make sure this is set to faces select all the faces that are on the back in this case and then drag this arrow over to the right and in this case it's adding an extra two and a half inches to the length of the part all right something like that it doesn't have to be as exaggerated of course but you can make some really quick and easy changes to your model without the history on but remember that you can actually switch back and forth between history or no history anytime you want so let's actually undo that change I can go and right-click at the very top over here where it says wheel hub this is called the root level infusion if you'd like render it out with me just a little bit you can right-click there and say capture design history and it's actually going to turn the history of this model on but just keep in mind it's only going to record the history from this point forward it's not going to just magically make history that doesn't exist now there is a second way to turn on the history I'm going to show you how to do that as well let me hit undo to go back to where we were you can also go to the bottom right hand corner of your screen and there should be a little gear let me actually make this bigger oh for some reason it is missing right now on my screen but there's a little gear in the bottom right hand corner of your screen if you click that little gear there's another option to turn on the history as well so there are two ways to do that now remember that these are two totally different approaches to designing having the history or not having mastery but the cool thing about what a base feature is is that it's a hybrid between the two different worlds so I want you to think of this like solid modeling versus surface modeling most people start off designing using solid modeling some people usually more advanced users will end up surface modeling quite a bit of their design but it's not really solid modeling or surface modeling it could be both you could design something using solid modeling use surfaces to be able to augment or supplement whatever you're trying to do use that surface to maybe do a split body command to the solid right and then move on and continue doing other solid modeling techniques so it can be a hybrid of solid and surface modeling just like it could be a hybrid of history modeling or parametric modeling versus no history modeling which is also called direct editing or direct modeling so you guys just learned a whole lot of terms right there but this hybrid this base feature allows you to be able to bridge both worlds really well so let me give you an example here we have this imported wheel hub and I'm gonna go and turn the history on for a moment so I go to the top left corner right click and say capture my design history just like I did before my timeline shows up at the very bottom of my screen but that timeline always in this case because I have an odd E or an object in my model starts off with this icon here and if you hover over it it says base feature 1 so without even knowing it when I turn the history on I actually automatically created a base feature and what that base feature really is is kind of like a folder for objects that you want to put in it that don't have any history and I can go into that folder and make changes if I want to or go out of that folder and make history changes so let's give us an example here right now I have the history turned on and if I want to go and make let's say the whole or the shaft of this part bigger and be able to have the history so it's editable of that change all I'd have to do is use let's say press pull command choose this face and if you want the history even in the history mode you have to change this from automatic to new offset and I could change this blue arrow drag it whichever way I want when I hit OK I wind up with a feature here in this case it's the offset face command and I can always go back and edit this and change it to some other value whatever it is I want it to be now I can keep doing this as many times as I want so if I wanted some sort of keyhole I can also come in here right click and say create a sketch I can draw a quick centerline a vertical one just like that then I'll also go and draw a quick key way and maybe I'll set this point right here to be the midpoint of the bottom line and we'll make that construction as well pick some sort of dimension for my keyway maybe that's pretty big point two five is probably great and then I'll also pick some sort of gap here and then now we can go and extrude this as well so let's zoom out a little bit extrude this through the model and I'd like to change this to all the way through so this way it always updates and now I have a key way and remember I've been doing all of this with the history so you could see here I have the offset face command I have the sketch or the key way and then I have the extrude for the key way as well but what if I want to make some changes to the original model before I ever even made the key way well we all know that with parametric modeling you can actually go back in time so I have this timeline vertical bar here I drag the bar before I made all those other features and then I could actually create another feature in and of itself to modify the part so as an example if I wanted to make this part longer I could use that move face command just like I did earlier select this back half I can extend this maybe we'll just go like an inch something like that and hit OK and then I can roll the history at the very end and I'll have all the rest of the features update so that keyway is still there and because the keyway was set to all the way through the model evil in the model about longer it updated and everything looks great but what if I don't care about the history of that change I just made what if I really don't care about it at all all I want is the keyway because I'm probably gonna have to change the keyway from part to part or product product and the material or like the geometry I'm starting with is oh this doesn't really matter all that much well then there's another approach you can use to be able to change that model and not keep the history so let's go and show you that first of all let me get rid of that move command I'll just go and select it and delete it now back to where it was a moment ago again remember that I have this feature here called a base feature and I told you from the very beginning that that base feature is a way to kind of have a hybrid between those two worlds and I also told you that it's like a folder and when you enter that folder anything you do there is not recorded so if I right-click on this base feature and I say edit now I'm in this base feature environment or Island some people like to call it an island and I still have all my features available here you'll see under the solid modeling I have create a whole bunch of solid modeling features I have a whole bunch of modifiers I have the same thing for surface but you will notice that it says here base feature solid and base feature surface and it also says here finish base feature this is kind of similar to when you're in the mesh environment and you have like mesh specific tools or when you're in the form environment and you have form specific tools and when you exit then you go back into that normal parametric environment is exactly what we have here so I can still go and use that move copy just like I did before I'm gonna go and select faces it's already selected actually selected the faces I want drag this back we'll call it an inch and hit okay and now it changed the geometry and when I hit finish I wind up with exactly this finished geometry before I created my offset before I created my sketch for the keyway or the extrude for the keyway but there is no feature to actually edit to be able to change that one inch to half an inch or three inches or whatever it is now that might seem like a negative but actually it's not there are a lot of positive reasons why you might want to edit an object and not keep the history so as an example maybe you import a file from a vendor and you just need to be able to get rid of a logo or make the thing a little longer or change the wall thickness you can just go and edit that base feature and make all those changes and not have to worry about the you know the exact amount you offset and having it be editable because you're not going to ever edit it again and don't forget that we have version management is part of fusion so if you ever decided later that you really did want to go and change one of those features you could always go back and grab an old version anyway but this base feature is a great way to be able to have a mix of both parametric modeling and no history or direct editing direct modeling as well you get both now I just want to repeat again that when you bring in a model from some other software like SolidWorks creo inventor you name it whenever it comes in it comes in without that history and it comes in not only without the history it comes in with the history turned off by default you can actually change that if you want to so when you go to your name in the top right corner and you go to preferences there is a preference here for when you create a new file whether you're gonna have that history turned on automatically I believe it's under general and then design and then here you could see design history captured design history is turned on for me you could also change that or even make it so it prompts you every time all right so just know that that's available to you as well so just again to repeat you bring in a model you turn history on and you have a base feature automatically from the beginning now the same is also true for assemblies so let's go look an example here I have the front wheel assembly this includes that wheel hub that we just looked at you can see it right here as well as quite a few other components if we look at the structure of this file it turns out it has a sub assembly called wheels a sub assembly called brake pad I guess and if I look at this wheel sub assembly wow there's a lot of different components in here a lot of them and if we scroll down even further under brake pad it turns out there are actually a couple of bodies and then there are also quite a few different components as well so now I'm going to show you the same thing but it's gonna look a little different than when it was just one body it's gonna look just you know now we have an assembly so it's course it's gonna look different so let's go to the root level the very top here right click and say capture design history it's gonna do exactly the same thing as before but I'm now gonna get a little bit more information than I had earlier first of all it groups everything that it did into a folder we call them groups in fusion 360 if I hit this plus sign at the bottom it expands that group and now I see a lot of those base feature icons but I also see a lot of these white square icons and if any of you haven't seen those before this icon means that it's a creation of a component right so every time you create a component like that hierarchy of you have assembly and then your sub component then you have another component under it or you have a sub assembly all of those different levels every time there is a different level you'll get one of these white things this white icon that says that this is creating a new component there's no geometry in there right it's just saying this is creating the hierarchy so for the geometry it actually brings in that base feature so let's go and I'll actually change I'll go back in time here a little bit all the way let's say around here actual let's go way further back it'll simplify this model quite a bit I'll make this easier for us let's say around here so this is the very first base feature well you'll see here is the first icon is creating this wheel's sub-assembly the second icon is creating this front wheel sub-assembly the third icon here is creating this mm wheel rim component and then within that the base feature is actually creating the geometry for that particular wheel on the rim in this case so if you scroll through this history that's exactly what's happening over and over and over again for all of the structure that's in here now I do have a tip later that I'm going to show you guys for being able to clean up the structure but just know that when you turn something from the know history to turning on the history you'll automatically get the structure now if you want to go and actually let's go all the way to the very end there we go so now we're at the very end we have all of our components just like with the last part that I showed you where it was just one body you can create a new history at the end of your timeline any any moment you want so I can go and create a new sketch and I can extrude cut through my models I shall just give you a quick example of that let's go and create a quick sketch here I'll go and draw actually its project this circle so I could line up my new circle perfectly I'll go and draw a new circle that'll be way bigger on purpose just so you could see and we're gonna extrude cut all the way through our model just like that I'll change that to all and hit OK and now I have another cut through my hub something like that now the key here is that I just created a sketch it's at the very low you can't see that hold on one moment give me a second I can fix this there we go okay so in the very bottom right hand corner you could see I have a sketch of the circle and then I have the extrude of that cut out and this is again in my timeline but if I didn't want that history I just wanted to be able to make that whole in that particular part without the history I can still do that the key is identifying which of those base features is the one you need to edit because you saw my screen and you could still see it now I have lots of different base features there's a different base feature for each of your components right or each of your objects or body so that they all have a base feature so the way that I like to do this is I like to select the object itself that I want to edit and I look in my timeline to see what ended up getting highlighted and I hope you guys can see that it's a little small but this icon right over here this base feature just highlighted and this icon here just highlighted and that's telling me that this icon is creating this component that I selected and then the base feature to the right of it is actually is responsible for the geometry that came in for that particular component so if I do want to edit that same thing without the history first of all let's get rid of our sketch and our extrude done those are gone let's select our component again let's select the base feature itself that's responsible for it right-click and say edit and now I'm in that exam just like before I'm in that base feature island or zone where I can make any change I want and the history is not going to be recorded so I can even go and create sketches by the way this isn't just for direct modeling the traditional method I can also go and use sketches and do the same thing so let's go and do that here I have a quick extrude and I suppose I can't see that sketch let's go and find that sketch here and we'll extrude all the way through it there we go so now I have the same thing again I had finished base feature and now I don't have the history of that change so really quick and easy I don't have to worry about my history now there are plenty of other ways or reasons you might want to get rid of the history maybe you've actually already designed something that has a huge amount of parametric features and you realize that something about the way you designed it isn't very robust and if you make a change to a sketch it actually blows up your model that is a big problem right because the whole point of parametric modeling is that those sketches and those features help you to be able to make changes to your model easily but if for whatever reason maybe your models too complex or maybe and I mean this in the nicest of ways but maybe the design method you used just isn't the best choice just possible I make mistakes too by the way if you design something in a way that's like super meandering and like not very linear and you have to actually be cautious that your models gonna blow up on you because you know you make a change and it just cascade blows up everything you might want to consider getting rid of that history and there are a couple of ways you could do that because that history by the way at that point is a liability more than a help to you so let's go look at an example so I have that same wheel hub and this one is parametric you could see here that I have all of my sketches I have my revolves I have my extrudes and everything that I showed you earlier to be able to make this well one way to get rid of the history is to simply right-click at the very top and say do not capture history it will warn you that you're turning off history and just say yeah I know what I'm doing thank you for the warning fusion you continue now it's gonna turn the history off it does create some things on the left-hand side that I will explain later I'm gonna skip that for now and what I could do here is actually I could turn this tree back on let's go do that I'm gonna go and turn the history back on and now just like I did with that imported file I wind up with that base feature that has in it my actual geometry like the final results so to speak so this is a really easy way to be able to clean up your history if you have like this giant history and it's blowing up on you turn the history off turn this ray back on and now you're actually just have one based feature that has all your geometry in it and everything is like super clean and now you can create new history from now on just like with that imported file so that that's a great way to be able to take advantage of that base feature and using the history in the non history environment but let's take that a little bit further because that's what we do here we try to take things as far as we can possibly take them so let me undo a little bit of what I just did so let's undo that here I have that history but you'll notice that my timeline is actually scrolled or rolled back a little bit there's some more stuff in here that I haven't shown you yet so let's go and scroll to the very end and now you'll see that I modeled up some extremely basic screws just for the purposes of this demonstration it doesn't have to have all the detail but you'll notice here that I have some ridiculously basic screws and the way that I modeled them is not dependent on the part itself so I have separate independent sketches and extrudes you'll see all of them right here that's everything that I had not shown you a few moments ago all right if I scroll back just a little bit to right here no screws to the very end I have all those screws in the pattern so let's say for a moment the history of the wheel hub itself is problematic like it for some reason it keeps blowing up on me and I want to get rid of the history of that model but just that model and the screws or some other components I don't want to get rid of the history of those well then you're kind of in an interesting predicament right because if you just go to the very top left corner and you say don't capture the history and you hit continue now I'm going to end up with the history free environment I go back to the history again and now I have a base feature that has everything in it but the screws are not editable at all because the whole thing is just a big base feature so there's another way to go about things that I think you might like and that way is to come Verte something into a bass feature so let's go and undo all of this and I'll show you how to do that oh let's go back to the end there we go so you'll notice that if you right-click on things in the timeline itself there's this icon here that says convert to DM feature DM stands for direct modeling feature and basically that is a base feature base feature and direct modeling are kind of synonymous they're the same thing so what I'd say you should do in this particular case is find the very last feature or the wheel hub itself which I believe would be this extrude here for the center shaft right click there and say convert to DM feature direct modeling feature and magic what it just did was it took the entirety of that history for that particular model and turned it into a base feature so what it actually did for me is turn the history off and then turn history back on again so I have exactly that same result with one exception is that it doesn't have to apply to everything in the file when you turn the history off and turn it back on it's going to apply to everything in the file whether it's one component or one body or 50 of all of the above right when you convert to DM feature or that base feature it's actually doing it for a specific body and the way you choose it is usually the very last feature for that object so in this case I have a base feature for the wheel hub itself and if I hide the wheel hub for a second you'll see I still have those screws and I still have all of the history for creating those screws so I have the sketch I have the extrude the second extrude the next sketch the last extrude and then the pattern of the bodies so that's another really interesting way that you could use base features right I'm gonna summarize for a second because that was a lot of stuff right so the first thing I showed you was you know I explain the difference between history and no history I also showed you how you can take a model that has no history and just turn it on turn that history on and how you can create new features in that history and you could still go back to that base feature and make changes to it show you the same thing using just a body and I showed you the same thing using an assembly which is just slightly more complex because it also has that hierarchy stuff in there too I also showed you how you can convert multiple parametric features into a single base feature right so that's pretty cool too and we're not done we still have two more cool things I'm going to show you so let's get to those two cool things now some of you have probably already figured out that there are certain things that you just cannot do when the history is turned on and I'll tell you why that is and then I'll give you a couple of examples of some things you you probably find that you can't exactly that I'm describing you could only do with the history turned off so the reason that you can't do them unless the history is turned off is because they're just incompatible with the method or like the methodology of how parametric modeling works it just like they don't work together so if you turn the history off now you're in this direct modeling environment and you could do some things that you couldn't do otherwise so let's give you an example so if I have that wheel hub let's go look at the imported one and let's actually turn history off for a moment there we go now the history is off under modify you'll see that there's a command here called edit face that does not exist with a history on and again the reason is because this is simply not a parametric feature it just doesn't work in that environment if I choose edit face it lets me select a face that I'd like to edit like maybe it's the back face of this particular this is not a very realistic example I'll admit but I think it still shows you what you guys want to see it automatically converts that face into a t spline it lets me go and grab any of those edges of the edges vertices or faces of the T spline to be clear and I can drag this anywhere I want and I can twist things and I could do all sorts of manipulations to it and we'll go and grab this edge we'll make this a little bit longer as well and when I hit OK it automatically is going to bring me back to the solid modeling direct modeling environment but you'll notice is that this face is now actually not flat it is that like super warped bunny surface that you saw a second ago to be clear if you wanted to do that with history these are the steps you'd have to use let's actually undo that for a moment with the history on you would let's actually turn that history back on there we go you would go to create a form go to utilities and say convert let's say a beer app to a tee spline like this then you go to the Edit form or edit face command it is a deform out of it face I misspoke so you go to the Edit form command and you drag your faces however you want to drag them and manipulate that geometry when you're done you hit finish form now you have that surface but it still hasn't affected the solid body then you could go to modify and say I want to do a replace face command your gonna replace this face with this surface it's actually yelling no it's not it is yelling at me because this face is a little too small so let's actually go I'll go and fix that real quick so you do whenever you're doing replace phase command there's a great little tip make the face you're using to replace with bigger than the object or replacing always so let's go and grab this edge bigger and just to be safe I'll probably just make the whole thing actually select the whole thing and just double click to do that by the way and I'll scale it up try it again so we're going to go back to modify we're going to say replace this face select that face this is my target there we go that time it worked of course and then now I'm gonna go back to the bodies here and I'm gonna remove that faith that surface from my list so right off the bat that was like six steps or something like that and if I just don't care about that history then it is a lot faster to just say you know what let's turn that history off let's go and modify that face by editing it and then choose whatever the model forgot the modifier is going to be so this is one example there is another one I'll show you in a moment that I think you guys probably have seen in my reverse engineering video to take meshes and turn them into useful stuff so let me give you that example and then I'll show you another way to do all of this that's that's why I'm showing you this so here's the same real hub as a mesh and let's go and see how many triangles I have in this mesh that's the first thing I always like to do with meshes and it looks like 16,000 triangles which is less than 50,000 so I can actually convert this directly into a solid object but if I try to do that in this history environment I'm not gonna find any kind of convert this mesh into a B rep as an option it's just not there right i have created mesh section sketch but that's not the same thing as i want so for what i want i would have to go to turn history off it okay and now when i right-click on that mesh there's a new option here that says mesh to be wrap and i can convert this mesh into a b rep solid pretty cool helpful by the way if you want to learn more about this there is a mesh reverse engineering video that I've created a few months ago that I think you'd really like but I'm going to show you an alternative to be able to do this without having to turn your history off because there are plenty of occasions where you don't want to turn the history off maybe you're midway through designing and assembly and you inserted a mesh into the assembly and you want to convert that mesh into a solid but you don't want to take the entire assembly and turn that to not have any history anymore so there's another way to do it and it's all based on a features exactly so let's go back to the same file let's actually undo all of this I'll just reopen that same file oh that's the wrong one that one's already open there we go let's open the mesh file so remember the alternative to what I'm about to show you is to turn the history off and then convert from mesh to be rep but if you have a full history and you don't want to get rid of it what you could actually do is say I want to create a base feature now remember that the whole point of the base feature is that it's a hybrid between the history and the non history environments so you could do things in the base feature that you can't do with history so in this case we'll go to modify I have a mesh menu at the bottom that wouldn't be there in any other area and I could say mesh to be rep select that mesh and hit OK it'll give me the same warning on the number of triangles that I had and when I hit OK it's going to go and convert that into a solid but in this case I still have my history well it's pretty darn cool another example would be the edit face so if you want to go and edit face for an object you can actually copy let's go back in there so here I have my dumb imported model let's go and turn on the history here alright so I have a model and let's no no we're not going to pretend there's a history let's go and grab the one that actually does have history let's close that and reopen it and we'll give you a better example all about doing things right rather than quick so give me a moment here okay so this is the parametric environment right it has the full history of my model if I want I can actually go and select the body itself it controls C on my keyboard copy it I can create a new base feature I can paste my body into that base feature and then I can go and use that edit face command that I couldn't use otherwise because you can't use it in the parametric environment so that's yet another way you can use base features to access normally inaccessible features or commands it's a great way to do it now there's only one other method that I like to use basic features for and it's actually very similar to what I just showed you so it's a great segue let's say for a moment that I download a model whether it's from McMaster car or my vendor or my customer and it has all that hierarchy stuff in it and it's like really complex let's go and look at that so this is the front wheel assembly and you'll see here that it has all this hierarchy in it and maybe I want to get rid of the hierarchy because I I just don't care about the hierarchy it's true sometimes I don't care about it I'm just using it as like a tool maybe I want to combine all these bodies together so I could do a combined cut with something else or maybe I want to do a combined you know join with something else there any number of reasons I might want to join all these different bodies together and in that case the hierarchy just doesn't matter at all so here's a couple two ways you could do that one is you could turn the history of the model off it'll give you that warning just like before and then one by one I can go and find those bodies that I want and I could drag them to that top level or root level of my file and I could do that over and over and over again and I have the feeling you would understand that this is gonna take me a long time that's like a long long time but I can do it which is helpful once I get rid of the body from the hierarchy from that component I can select the component and I could just hit delete and rid of it so I could go do that one by one but I think you guys have the feeling that this is gonna kind of take me forever so here's another alternative that bass features really does a good job of helping with so I'm going to zoom out just a little bit and I'm going to use my selection filter and I don't know if you guys actually use the selection filter but you should so I want to show you what these options are you can choose to select only bodies only faces only vertices or you know a couple of those at a time and the select through checkbox that one's really great so I usually have that on just so you know I'm gonna uncheck the select all and I'm gonna check just the bodies and that means now that I cannot select sketches I cannot select axes I cannot select construction planes I can only select bodies now I'm gonna go and zoom out a little bit and I'm gonna use my window selection to select everything that's inside of this particular file I'm gonna hit ctrl C on my keyboard I'm on a PC but if I were on a Mac which of course fusion works on I would use command C for copy now I'm gonna go and open up a new design here real quick and I'm gonna go and say create a base feature just like we did a few moments ago and if you haven't guessed it yet I'm gonna go and hit paste or ctrl B and what it's actually gonna do is it's gonna go and paste all of the bodies into this base feature and it's the bodies themselves it's not the hierarchy or the components or the faces or the edges or the sketches it's just the bodies now I don't see them for some reason so let's go and maybe I'll do the zoom to fit there we go I by the way double clicked the middle mouse button on my mouse right that actually automatically zooms to whatever is in your design and now I could see all of my bodies and I have this giant folder of all my bodies this would include surfaces just as much as it would include solids by the way but I have all these bodies all just in one folder and now my life is so much easier right now all I have to do is hit finish base feature and now I have this as like a single object it's still multiple bodies at the moment but I can use this for a whole bunch of things if I don't care about the hierarchy and if I also just want it all to be one body well I could use the combined command after the base feature or if I just really don't care about that history I could always go back again to that base feature and hit edit I can go to the combine command and I could select this is my target and I can go and select all those other bodies as my my tool bodies and I can go I could I should just window select this for the record but once you hit the ok button it's gonna go and join everything together and you'll have in theory one body let's actually go and do that let's go and I'll pick this one's gonna be our target so let's go and do combined I'll pick body one then for my tool I mean actually gonna hide body one for a second I'll go and select everything besides body one this will take a moment because there are a lot of bodies there and I'm gonna go and say ok now we disappeared for my screen because I hid body 1 to select everything else let's actually go and show that again wallah now I have a single body that has absolutely everything in it and now I could say finish base feature and I could use this for anything I want now remember that the examples I showed you today those just happen to be examples that I'm picking really the key here is that this technique can serve you very well in a whole variety of different ways so let's actually go and summarize for a second so base features are a bridge between parametric modeling with your history and direct editing or direct modeling without any history and there are a variety of different ways you can use it you can bring in imported geometry and turn history on and you'll still have a base feature you could go and edit so you have the ability with those objects to be able to create new features with history or not the same thing is also true with your assemblies you also have the ability to combine multiple parametric features into that already exists you've already created or someone else already created into a base feature and have that not affect any of your other components as well so that's really helpful you can also use base features to be able to access somewhat locked or somewhat hidden features that are only available without that history in the direct editing mode only so the two examples that I showed you are the edit face command so our edit form I believe is how it was called the Edit form command and also the convert or mesh to be rep I use the mesh to be wrapped one a lot by the way so look at that one in more detail again and I also lastly showed you how you can use history free mode or the direct modeling mode to clean up your hierarchy but if you actually want to do it even faster select all those bodies hit ctrl C create a new document or even just a new base feature in your existing document would work as well and you can paste those in there credit by the way for that particular technique goes to Kevin Schneider if you guys have never heard that name Kevin is one of the founding fathers of fusion 360 he's known at autodesk as the godfather of fusion 360 and he showed me that technique just a couple of years ago so credit to him thank you Kevin for that cool tip I hope you've all enjoyed learning about base features today if you liked what you saw please feel free to let us know in the comments section please feel free to like this video and also tell all your friends we have a lot more content coming it is our absolute pleasure to deliver that to you so that you can learn how to use our software and make some incredible things I don't forget with fusion 360 you can make anything thank you so much your time today you

Channel: Autodesk Fusion 360

Views: 7,192

Keywords: fusion 360, autodesk, design, engineering, mechanical design, mechanical engineering, product design, software, CAD, CAD software, Computer Aided Design, Modeling, Rendering, 3D software, Autodesk fusion 360, cloud based CAD, CAD in the cloud, cloud, Free CAD, Free CAD Software, free CAD program, 3D CAD solution, computer aided design, free software, 3d modeling tutorial, manufacturing, Jason Lichtman

Id: raDeHUliNUY

Length: 46min 12sec (2772 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 19 2020