Fusion 360 - What is the difference between Joints and As-Built Joints?

[Music] hey everyone Kevin from mechanical advantage.com a common question I get asked during support sessions and also I receive emails on the subject from time to time is what is the difference between a joint and an as built joint I've downloaded this simple clamp where I'm going to try to demonstrate the differences between joints and as Bill joints and when you might use one over the other I'm also going to attempt to cover rigid groups and Joint origins in this video if you'd like to follow along I'm going to put a link to the website where I downloaded this model the manufacturer website and once you click on that link it will take you to their page you're going to go to the cad section and under the choose CAD format you can choose dot STP then choose download CAD that's going to download a zip file to your computer unzip that file and inside of that zip file will be a step file when you have that unzipped go back into fusion and from the file menu you can choose open and then choose open from my computer browse to where that file is located and then you're going to choose open and when you do you're going to have the same file on your screen that I show right now before I get started there's a few things that I'd like to do the first thing I'm going to do is go change this the document settings because I'm not a psychopath so I'm going to change it from millimeters to inches which you know every self-respecting person in the world should do sorry that's a little humor right there I'm not really serious about that I'm only using inches because that's what I'm familiar with but you can certainly use whatever unit you want to use I'm also going to change the orientation of the model this isn't required it's just one of those things that I like to do the handle is not on the line with my z-axis so I'm going to use the move copy command and right now it's set to move bodies but if I look at my browser all of these are components so instead of bodies I'm going to choose components I'm going to select the first component hold the shift button and select the last component and that will grab them all and under the move type I'm going to use rotate I want to rotate it about this Edge right here and now I can just grab the slider and rotate it to negative 90 or I can type in negative 90 in the input box and hit OK and now my clamp is positioned where I want it if I look at the assemble menu note that I only see join there is no as build joint so in order to see The asbel Joint history has to be enabled when you open neutral formats like igis or step they're going to come in without history being captured so I'm going to right click on my design name and choose capture design history when I do that the timeline is turned on and when I go to the assemble menu now I see joint and as build joint this would also be a great time to save my file so I'm going to click on the save icon and I'll just name it the default thing that I opened it as and hit save and now I'm ready to do some work when we look at this file you might think that we're already done because it looks like everything is already assembled however if I just start clicking on components and dragging them note that they're just positioned in space but there's no relationships between the components that's what I want to do I'm going to start out by doing something called an asbill joint and if you look at most of the components or all the components in this design they're all located where they need to be they're just no relationship information between them so instead of positioning them they already are positioned in that case that's my first step off that I'm going to use in as built joint it's as the design has already been built so from the assemble menu I'm going to choose as build joint and my first selection is going to be the flange body I can grab that in the browser or I can click on in the graphics window my second selection is going to be the origin folder when I do that a rigid joint is going to be applied and remember a rigid joint is as if you welded the part in space it no longer can move so if I try to click and drag on that base it is stuck there or the flange body I guess is what I should call it now I want to go through and add more as build joints so from the assemble menu I'm going to choose an as build joint between this arm and the base I don't want this to be rigid I want it to have movement so from the drop down I'm going to choose revolute and I'm going to click on the edge of that cylinder and that's the axis that's going to choose to revolve around once I get that done I can click and drag on the part to see how the motion is going to work and when I'm done you're going to see two new icons that pop up capture position and revert 99 of the time you're going to want to revert something back to where it needs to be instead of captioning the position captioning position is usually something you is a more specialized thing that you want to do later on so I'm just going to revert it to put it back in the position where it needs to go and now I can continue adding as build Giants to this design so I'll do another as built joint between this arm and the flange I'm going to select this Edge right here as the point to revolve around now it revolves and I'll hit OK and if I flex that to test it I can see that it it moves the way I want it to but it's moving too far it probably doesn't go much past vertical and it doesn't go past the stop that's located on that flange so I'm just going to revert that if I expand up my joints what I will see is there is a joint limits icon I'm going to click on joint limits and I'm going to set a minimum which is going to turn on the maximum as well so 0 is good for the minimum I don't really know what the maximum should be I'm gonna try 45 that's not enough I'll try 60 not quite enough let me try 65 and that's looking pretty close I can maybe open it up another degree or so but for my purposes that looks pretty good so I'll hit ok now that I move that it only moves between 0 degrees and 65 degrees and it's limiting the range of motion of this particular joint so I'm going to use the revert to put that back into position and I'm ready to move on and continue to add more joints from the assemble menu I'm going to do an as build joint between the inner side and the bottom clamp and now I want to choose an edge to rotate about and I'll choose that edge right there and it's going to be another revolute joint I'll hit OK and I should have one more joint before I can check the motion I'll do another as build joint again between the inner side and this time I'm going to use the uh the handle as the component and then I'm just going to move my mouse over to the center of that cylinder and you can see it snaps to this to the axis in the center of the cylinder when I click on there now it rotates around if I did everything right I should be able to grab the handle and move it and the clamp starts to operate as if it would if I had it bolted Duo a table and so I'm just going to revert everything and I've got a few more as build joints to do I know the grip is going to be attached to the handle so I'm going to do an asbill joint between that and the handle and not a revolute this time I want it to be rigid it doesn't need to move and now when I move the grip or the handle they both move together so my clamp is starting to work really well I'll just revert that if we look at this assembly of the the bolt and the nuts and the spacers here um they're really all just one big thing now we could make this fancy and make this move up and down but for the instance of this video I'm just going to do the minimum required to kind of make this all move together and so what I want to do is something called a rigid group from the assemble menu I'm going to choose a rigid group and I'm going to choose the first component and then I'm going to tell Fusion all the rest of the components that should sort of be fused together when I create this rigid group so I'm going to select all those components visually that way and then I'm going to hit ok now if I try to move this if I move the bolt notice that everything moves along with it so I've created a rigid group of all those components and now what I can do is do an assemble and I'll do an as build joint and I'm going to try to choose this component first and this component second and under the move type I'm going to try to do a slider this time now it wants to know where should it slide from I'm just going to use that point right there which is good for me it's looking like it's sliding the right direction can't be sure of that yet um now I can see as I move it it moves back and forth I'll just revert it and I'm again going to edit the joint limits for this I'm going to set a minimum and a maximum so we're going to go from 0 to 2 inches in my case and I'll hit OK and now as I flex this it moves back and forth between the zero and the two inches to allow me to adjust that I can get fancier with this location uh just like I've done with the parametric Vice if you ever go back and look at that video now when I move the handle everything is moving together um this assembly seems to be moving more than I would like but like I said we could control that in other ways so I could revert that and here you can see we have a file where none of the parts were designed inside of fusion it was brought in as a dumb step file and I've added motion to make this actually function as if I bought the clamp now let's jump over and look at a different version of the same clamp and we'll use joints to to talk about what the differences between as build joints and Joints now let's take a look at a different example of basically the same file only in this case I pulled everything apart I opened up that step file and just ranged everything and moved it away and then saved it as a new Step file and then open that infusion so I'm going to go through pretty much the same steps but now the components aren't located where they need to be so just like before I'm going to right click on this design and say capture design history so that I can be able to use an as built join if I want to and under the document settings one more time I'm going to switch it to be inches instead of millimeters because that's what I'm comfortable with everything is already aligned the right direction so I don't need to worry about that and now I'm ready to start using joints to put this together this time I'm going to do one as build joint and then the majority of it is going to be using the join command so again I want to have that one component that doesn't move to do that I'm going to do an as build joint between the flange body and the origin and now that's my component the design that doesn't move and then I can start using joints to position the parts the reason I have to use the joints is because they are not in the right position so I need to tell one part how to be located relative to a different part with as built joints the parts were already positioned I just needed to tell them how they moved so from the assemble menu I'm going to choose to do a joint and I want to go and grab the inside of the cylinder now a little tip is if I hold my mouse over that cylinder if I hold control on Windows or command on Mac I can lock that in and you can see I can grab the center of that cylinder pretty easily and now I can come down and choose where that attaches again I can grab that same center part of the cylinder it brings it in as a rigid joint under the motion type so I'm just going to go to the motion Tab and this time I'm going to tell I want to revolute and when I do that that joint revolves around so I'm good with that everything is good there I'm gonna do another joint and this time I'm going to use the between two faces option so I'm going to click on this inside face and this other inside face and then I'm going to choose the edge that I want and that puts the joint origin centered between those two faces now I can just come down to where this is going to latch on and for the second one I will again do would do between two faces I'm going to click on that face right there and that face and now I just need to choose some Edge that specifies where the axis is and that brings that part into position and lets it rotate around and I'll hit okay and just like the last time I'm going to expand out my joints go to my joint limits for that joint and turn on the minimum and maximum and set this to be 65 degrees in this case it doesn't move the right way so I'm going to say negative 65 and 0. and that should Now give me the uh rotation that I want so that time I had to switch it up a little bit still got what I wanted so I've got that positioned so now I'm going to do another joint and this time again I'm going to go and select the midpoint of that cylinder and I'm going to position myself around get my mouse over that cylinder hold down the control or command key and now I can easily grab that Center Point there's gonna be my revolute joint and I'll hit okay and now in this case it's actually sort of set up where it needs to be to make my life easier I'm going to rotate this around a little bit and I'm not going to capture a position or revert I'm just going to do another joint and I'll start out by doing between two faces and click on this face and this face and then I'm going to choose this Edge and now I just need to choose where it latches to which is the center point of that cylinder and click on that and now that rotates as it should and I can hit OK and now I should have the motion I need to be able to flex this assembly and test it out so I can see that everything is sort of working the way it's supposed to it's opening and closing I'll just revert everything back and the a couple other ones that I need to do is I need to do a joint uh to put the grip on I'm again going to use the between two faces I'll just select that face right there and rotate around and grab that inside face and now I'm just going to come up and grab that Center I'm just kind of grabbing the top of the dome right there and for the second part I'm going to do between two faces I'll click on this face and I'll click on that face and grab that same Center Line it's going to bring it down it's going to try to make it a revolute joint I don't need it to be a revolute I can just make it rigid and I'll hit OK and now my grip is put into position and here's where we have the challenging one on this part so in order to Joint this to this uh end of this arm I need to have some kind of a center pointer Point located and I don't have what I need right there so I'm going to make what I need I'm going to find which component that is and I'm going to activate it and I'm going to put a sketch up on that face now that it rotates around I'm just going to create a point and locate it and I know I want to Center that point and I'm just going to vertically Center it between the point and the origin right there and then I'll horizontally locate it I'm going to pull this up a little bit so it's easier to do and I'm going to horizontally located between there and the end point of that line and now I have a point that I can use I'll finish the sketch and the new command I'm going to use is something called The Joint origin so I'm just going to click on that point and that's going to place half of a joint at that position and I'll hit okay before I move on I need to make a rigid group out of these right now these are all just individual pieces so I'm gonna from the assemble menu choose rigid group and click all the parts that I want to become part of that rigid group including the little rubber stopper at the end now that I've done that I can do a joint and I'll just rotate around I'm going to hover over this face hold down my control or command key to lock down to the center and then I'm just going to move this over to that joint origin that I've created and it's going to snap itself to that particular location I can also make this a slider if I want to under the motion type so now it's going the wrong direction I could choose the y-axis that looks to be the right one if it wasn't I could choose the X that's the wrong way so I'm going to do a y-axis and I'll hit OK again I can change the joint limits for this so minimum and maximum let's try two inches and see if it goes the right way it looks like it's going to and now this component slides back and forth as it's supposed to I'll revert that click on the home button and now I'm going to move my handle my whole assembly moves just like the one did that I used the as build joints on so really there's not a lot of difference between as build joints and joints that have the same functions it's just a matter of is the position is the part located in the position it needs to end up in or do you have to move it into position if it's located where it needs to be you're going to use an as built joint if it's not located where it needs to be then you're going to use a joint to position the parts relative to each other and as you also see sometimes you don't have the proper uh points you need to locate things and in that case you can create your own join Origins where you can locate anything from any point any other point without actually having the geometry there that you need I hope you guys found this one useful if you have any questions on this please leave them down in the comments below you can always email me Kevin mechanical advantage.com I always like to hear from you guys know you're watching the videos it's great to think that you guys actually are and as always thanks for watching

Channel: Mechanical Advantage

Views: 1,725

Keywords: Autodesk, Fusion, Fusion 360, Inventor, SolidWorks, Inventor HSM, HSM, HSMWorks, Joints, Rigid, Rigid groups, As-built Joints, As-built, as built, as built joints, revolute, joint origin

Id: yi72BQ9M3qI

Length: 17min 51sec (1071 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 30 2022