Create groups and organize a timeline

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Create groups and organize a timeline.

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In this video, we’ll create a timeline group, rename a timeline group and expand a timeline group.

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In Fusion 360, we want to carry on with our gear reduction housing assembly.

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At this point in time, our browser is starting to fill up with components.

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We have a lot of different components in the browser, a lot of hardware.

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And if we look at the bottom in the timeline, we actually have enough here that we can scroll back and forth.

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This becomes problematic when we need to identify different elements in the timeline or in the browser.

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Of course, if we activate a component, it will isolate those specific features inside of the timeline.

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However, that only works if you were creating them while you were using an active component.

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Let's take a look at different ways that we can organize the browser and the timeline to help us simplify our workflow.

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First, let's take a look at the timeline.

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You can see here that we have a lot of different joints and capture positions that were used.

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We have some patterns for things like the hardware and the creation of components by using copy paste.

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Some of these elements can be combined into what's called a timeline group.

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And when we create timeline groups, you'll notice there are small plus icons underneath specific elements.

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Some of them get created automatically depending on what we're doing.

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For example, if we insert a component from McMaster-Carr, a base feature and a component are created as its own group.

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When we do things like have a sheet metal component,

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notice that elements are already created in a group and this is because we brought this in from an external file.

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So when we created that distributed design and we broke the link, it automatically put that in the group.

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Let's start at the very end from the creation of our joints, capture positions and motion links.

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I'm going to select the last motion link, shift select the first rigid group, then we're going to right click and use the option to create group.

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When we create a group, we now have those items nested inside of a group in the timeline.

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This makes it a bit easier for us and we can always right click and we can edit the group or we can rename it.

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In this case, I'm going to call this one Gear Joints.

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So that way, if I'm hovering the cursor over this, those entities are going to be displayed and gear joints is also going to be shown at the bottom.

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There are some limitations when we go to create these different groups.

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Let's take a look at trying to create this capture position and also encompass some of the elements that we use to create that idler gear.

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If we select all these entities and right click, we can create a group that encompasses both those different entities.

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You'll notice that it has a small green bar and a red bar at the top.

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The limitation comes when we try to create a group that is going to encompass another group.

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You notice that if we right click, the only option we have here is to expand groups.

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If we right click on a group, we can expand the group and bring those elements out or we can use the minus and plus icons to expand or contract them.

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But we aren't able to create groups that contain additional groups.

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So that is a limitation that we need to be aware of and something that you should do when you're planning out what items to create groups with.

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I'm going to go ahead and take this base feature all the way back to this capture position, right click,

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and notice that this also does not allow me to create a group.

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Because it contains these two base feature items that were used during the creation of the hardware for McMaster-Carr.

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So once again, that limitation means that we can't just simply grab everything in the timeline and condense it into a group.

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There are some things that we can do in the browser to help as well.

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We can create a component that can be the top level component for all things such as hardware.

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We can do this by creating a new empty component.

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The new empty component, I'm going to name Hardware.

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When we create that empty component, we can then select all of the hardware in the browser and drag and drop it into that component.

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Noting the timeline now contains all of these different cut, paste, drag and drop items.

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So that means if I go back to the top level, those are going to be at the end of my timeline.

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But when I activate my hardware component, they're all inside.

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If we expand this, you want to note that when we do this, the hardware is now free to move because it's broken that rigid group.

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So that is a limitation we need to be aware of.

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When we're restructuring the browser if we've created any joints between things like hardware as a rigid group between our housing,

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that link is going to be broken and we need to reapply those.

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At this point, let's make sure that we save the design before moving on.