Gain insights on the browser and timeline in Fusion 360, essential features for working with parametric design and capturing design history. Familiarize yourself with how the browser organizes your model and how the timeline helps in understanding the design history of your model.
Key Insights
- The browser in Fusion 360 organizes the model into different folders containing bodies, components, construction geometry, simulation information, etc. thereby easing navigation through different components of the model.
- The timeline in Fusion 360 captures all design history of a model. This feature includes a slider bar which helps in navigating through the design history, making it possible to edit features, understand the progression of the model, and visualize changes.
- Using a combination of the browser and timeline in Fusion 360 is crucial for organization, design history capturing, and editing features with parametric design. It is also possible to use them for creating new components, drawings or selection sets, physical material, appearance and texture map controls, among other options.
In this video we will talk about the browser and timeline in Fusion 360. You will see that I have opened my LAMP file in my data panel and we can hide our data panel.
The browser and timeline are essential features for working with parametric design and capturing design history in Fusion 360. The browser organizes our model into different folders which contain things such as bodies, components, construction geometry, simulation information, etc. etc.
In my LAMP file we see that at the top it says my file name, LAMP version 1, and underneath we can see the other components in my model. As I hover over a component, you will see that the component highlights in the canvas. There is a button next to my LAMP V1 that is currently highlighted, showing that this is the active component.
If I go to my base and activate that component instead, you will see the rest of my model become grayed out and my component that is active base is the only model showing in true tone. I can switch between my active component as I work through my model so that I understand which component I am working in. I will go up to LAMP V1 and right click.
We can see the top option is activate. I will activate LAMP V1 and right click again to look at these other options. We can see here that we can create a new component, drawing or selection set, physical material, appearance and texture map controls, and other options.
%20(1).png)
Learn CAD
- Nationally accredited
- Create your own portfolio
- Free student software
- Learn at your convenience
- Authorized Autodesk training center
We can show slash hide our model by hitting the V key or selecting show hide and we can change the opacity control of each individual component. We can also find the component in the window or in the timeline. If I unroll one of my assemblies, we can see that there are folders inside and more components and bodies.
We will go over bodies and components in a future video, but just know that I have organized this model so that all of the sketches that apply to these bodies and components for the bulb assembly have been sorted into this component for easy organization. At the bottom of the screen, you will see the timeline. The timeline captures all design history for our model.
If I expand these groups, you will see a variety of different tools and options and you will notice that a slider bar has appeared. When you fill your timeline all the way across the screen, a slider bar will appear, which will help you slide back and forth. By selecting a feature in our timeline, we can right click to edit the feature, delete this feature, roll the history marker here, or suppress feature.
Again, we can find our features in the browser and in the window. Be careful when deleting features in Fusion 360 because they may have been referenced by future features in our model. If I roll the history marker here, you will see my history marker move from the front of my timeline to here.
This has not deleted the features that are in front of the marker, but I can now see where I was when I added this feature. I can click and drag my feature along the timeline to understand the design history, but also to edit sketches or features that may have influenced future objects. I do not need to roll the timeline marker to the specific point to edit these features, but it can be helpful when trying to visualize the changes in our model.
In the lower left hand of the screen, I can play my timeline along the features to better understand the generation of my model, and hitting the stop button stops at the point you were originally at. I can move through my timeline one feature at a time, and I can move to the beginning and end of my timeline. This LAMP file has groups already established in my model, and I will collapse those groups now, and you can see how groups can be used to help organize your timeline.
If I hover over this group, you will see it will bring up all of the features involved in that group. I will right click, delete, and you will see that I can either delete the group and expand its contents, delete both group and contents, or cancel. I will delete and expand contents, and now if I hold shift, I can select multiple timeline features, and I can right click create group to put them back in a group.
It is important to use a combination of the browser and timeline for organization, design history capturing, and editing our features with parametric design in Fusion 360. In the next video, we will look at the data panel in integrating Autodesk 360 into our workflow. I will see you in the next video.
