Create and manage assemblies

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create and manage assemblies.

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After completing this video, you'll be able to create a component,

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apply joints to create motion and manage an assembly

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Infusion 3 60 we're going to be taking a look at two separate data sets,

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A wheel assembly dot F three D.

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And 05-0404 Vice with hard jaws dot f three D.

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We're going to first take a look at our wheel

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assembly to better understand bodies and components in fusion 360

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in this current design.

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If we take a look in the browser, we have a body's folder which contains a spindle,

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a chassis and the wheel.

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And we also have a controller base and a controller lever

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components.

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Infusion 3 60 contain their own bodies and sketches,

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folders as well as their own coordinate systems.

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Notice that the controller lover coordinate system is

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located at the center of the wheel.

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If I were to move this around,

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we can see that the coordinate system moves with the

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block even though they're not in the same location.

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Fusion 3 60 uses this relationship to manage the orientation

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and location of the coordinate systems relative to its components.

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Once you move a component in three D,

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you can either capture its position or you

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can revert it back to the original position.

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In this case I'm going to hide the origin for my controller lever.

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The controller base also has its own coordinate system.

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However, there's a pin icon because this one has been grounded.

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This means that it's locked in space in 3D and can't move.

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This can be ungrounded at any point in time but this is a great

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way to ground a single component that's meant to be stationary in your design.

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When we take a look at this structure,

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we can see that these components have their own icons.

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These block icons are representing the component

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and the body's still contain a cylindrical extrude

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for the solid body and there'll be a different icon if it's a surface,

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a mesh or form body.

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When we take a look at the bodies at the very top level,

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we'll also notice that the wheel assembly has a different icon by default.

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All designs will have at least one component and

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all bodies will be created inside that component.

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As soon as we have a second component created,

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we now have the icon which represents a multi body component.

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We can also create components by going to assemble and selecting new component

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when we do this we need to determine whether

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or not it's a standard component or sheet metal.

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We can give it a name in this case I'll say wheel assembly.

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We can determine if we want it to be from bodies and if we want it to be activated,

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I'm going to deselect the activate option and I'm going to leave the

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parent at the very top level which is the current active component.

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We'll say okay and now we have a wheel assembly component.

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Anything that we want to be inside of that component

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can be moved as a body or as a component.

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Keep in mind that everything is still history and timeline based

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the creation of that new component is seen here at the end of our timeline.

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If we were to roll back the end of our timeline,

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that component would not exist.

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So even though we have bodies and other components in this design,

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we are able to restructure and move them around.

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The next thing that we want to do is select all of the components in our bodies folder.

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We're going to right click and select create components from bodies.

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This is going to invoke the same dialogue for creating components.

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However, it automatically chooses the option from bodies.

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When we select create a component,

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we can use the from bodies option to manually select bodies we want to convert.

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So these are two different ways in which

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we can create or convert bodies to components.

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Now that we have our spindle, our chassis and our wheel.

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These are free to move about because they now contain their own coordinate system.

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The next step for us is to take the chassis

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right click and ground it.

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Now that the chassis has grounded the wheel and

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the spindle can move but the chassis cannot move

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when we revert the position will note that the wheel and the spindle are

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going to need something called a joint in order to replicate mechanical motion.

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Let's go ahead and rotate this around and start to apply a few joints

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Infusion 3 60. There are two main types of joints,

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the joint and the as built joint option.

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There are other things that we can do, such as creating a tangent relationship,

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creating rigid groups between components and even linking joints together.

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But right now we want to focus on the difference between a joint and an as built joint.

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The resulting motion of either of these options will be the same.

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However,

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the joint option will mean that you need to select

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not only the components to join but also their locations.

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The as built joint is going to make use of its current designed location.

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So for example if we want to take the joint type set to revolutionize

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the components will be our chassis and our spindle

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and then we need to pick the snap position.

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In this case it's going to be a

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cylindrical reference that represents the rotation axis.

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You can see that the chassis is moving around.

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The animation happens based on the selection and it doesn't

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take into account the fact that our chassis is actually grounded

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once we say okay.

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However,

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now the spindle is only going to rotate

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around that component because the chassis is grounded.

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This is the only motion that we can get.

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Let's go ahead and revert the position

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and let's go back to as built joint one more time

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again we're going to use

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this time between the wheel and the spindle and just pick a revolution axis.

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Now because we pick the wheel first,

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it's going to be the component that gets animated.

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We'll say okay and now we can see that this is able to rotate about the

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chassis but we're having a little bit of

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difficulty rotating the wheel about the spindle.

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If that happens,

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sometimes it can be because there's too many degrees

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of freedom to simply just grab a component,

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we can always go into the joints folder and we can find

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the joint we wish right click and we can animate the model.

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We can see that it's revolving that and we can hit escape to stop the animation.

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The next thing that we want to do is apply a joint between these two blocks,

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the controller base and the controller lever.

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So we're going to go to assemble as built joint

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and this time we're going to have a slider joint,

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it's going to be between these two components and then I need to select a linear edge.

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We're going to say, okay,

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and now we have a slider joint that can move back and forth.

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The next thing that I want to do is create a link between multiple joints.

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This can be done from assemble by creating what's called a motion link.

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We can create a link by selecting the joints on the screen or from the joint folder.

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I want to link the slider joint with the angle in this case revolution one

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notice that we have a distance traveled and an angle

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I'm gonna change the angle to something a little bit

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smaller as five degrees and then I'm going to say,

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okay

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now if we slide this block backwards and forwards,

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you can see what we're actually doing is we're turning the wheel.

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This is allowing us to move the wheel as if we were moving a steering wheel.

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Creating these motion links can be a great

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way to replicate mechanical motion in a design.

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There are other ways in which we can do this again from the assembled menu,

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we have options to create a tangent relationship.

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We also have something called contact sets.

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Contact sets will allow us to take a look

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at creating a set of contacts between solid bodies.

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This means gear pairs or anything that has

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physical interaction can cause another object to move.

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We're not going to be looking at this for our specific course but it's

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important that you explore these options and

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understand how they work in fusion 360.

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Now that we've set up our wheel assembly,

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let's go ahead and do a quick save here and let's take a look at our Vice.

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This is something that's a little bit more applicable to us.

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When we're setting up a camp program.

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Camp programs often require us to set up our fixtures so

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that we can avoid collisions between the tool and tool geometry

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Infusion 3 60, you'll note that we have a lot of different components.

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And if you download a vice model from a manufacturer typically what you'll get is

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a lot of bodies or individual components

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that have no relationships with each other.

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And the way that we take care of this is by creating

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rigid groups between all of the separate components that need to remain solid

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rigid groups between all the bodies that need to move and then we

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can create a joint that allows them to move back and forth.

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Now you will notice as you play around with this that the vice stops when it hits the

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other Jaw and it stops when it gets to the back of the body of the vice.

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Now this is because we have what's called a joint limit.

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If we right click on the joint in the joints

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folder we can take a look at the joint limits.

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This one has been allowed to move a distance of 9" in the

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negative direction and this is how much travel this vice will have.

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Keeping in mind that if we were to change out for thicker soft jaws,

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they would begin to overlap because this is not looking at physical contact.

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If we turn off the minimum and maximum limits,

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we're now able to move this as much as we want and go through other solid bodies.

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We can however, go to our assemble and enable contact sets

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in our contact sets that are now located in our browser,

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We can right click and create a new contact set

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in this case, I'm going to go between both of the hardened jaws on our vice and say okay

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now we can still move this back and forth but once

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we get to a position where they begin to contact each other

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they'll stop.

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This can be extremely helpful,

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especially when you're setting up advice with stock or

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if you're trying to replicate mechanical interference between components

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at this point, the contact set is not going to be the best way for us to do this.

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So I'm going to disable contacts.

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Go back in and edit my joint limits

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and I'm going to set my minimum at minus nine inches and the maximum at zero

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once again this is using that mathematical relationship between

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its current position rather than looking for solid body interactions

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at this point, let's make sure that we also save the vice

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and let's move back to the wheel assembly for one more example,

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when we're talking about components in fusion 3 60 there is

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a great way that we can divide up the components visually

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rather than having them all be the same material.

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You can go through and apply different materials

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and appearances but under the inspect drop down,

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we can also turn on something called display component colors.

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This component color cycling will highlight the features in the timeline

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as well as the components in the browser and on the screen.

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This can help you identify different components.

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For example, the wheel assembly doesn't have any components in it.

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The spindle,

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the chassis and the wheel do and we can see those colors represented next to it.

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If we want to select the spindle the chassis and the wheel,

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we can drag them into our wheel assembly,

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making it a component that contains sub components.

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The colors are still there but you'll notice that in the timeline we now have

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an orange color because those components were cut

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and paste underneath that top level wheel assembly

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using component color cycling can be a handy way

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for us to identify different components in the design.

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In this case however,

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you'll notice that the chassis and the controller base are sharing the same color.

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We can always right click on a component and use cycle component color to allow

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it to go through the various colors until we get to a situation where we're

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not seeing the same color between multiple components.

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The same is true here for the controller lever we can cycle through

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until we get a color that does not mimic what's on the wheel.

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Once again, there are many different things that we can do with our assemblies.

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It's important that we play around with the

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assemblies and we understand how joints work.

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We can see now that we still have joints for our wheel, our revolution

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but the motion link between our controller base and the spindle in this

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case have been broken because we moved their position inside of our assembly.

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We would need to reconnect them by going back and creating

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a motion link between our slider joint and a revolution joint.

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And once again we're going to put a small value of 5° as we move this,

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it's going to rotate the wheel 5° in each direction for every .4".

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Let's go ahead and revert that back.

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Go to inspect and turn off our component color cycling

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and make sure that we save this before moving on.