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

I'm glad you liked the video. I don't like to watch videos where they spend more time talking about nothing rather than showing what you came there watch in the video. Glad it turned the light on for you.

Thanks, hopefully it helped to clear up the difference between as-built joints and joints.

Good. I know a lot of people struggle with the difference between joints and as-built joints. So I was looking for a simple and practical example to demonstrate.

I should have addressed this better in the video. When you ground a component, it is only grounded in that design file. So if you insert that design into a different design, nothing is fixed in space. Maybe I’ll do a little video on this. Imagine if you assembled a hydraulic cylinder and grounded the first component. When you inserted that cylinder Into a new design, it wouldn’t work they way it was meant to because the first component would be free to move in the new design. I’m not 100% sure on your second question, but the answer may be a motion link. That would work if you had sliding component and a rotating component. You could add a ration that says for exert x distance of motion, rotate x number of times.

@@MechanicalAdvantage Thanks for your reply, that makes sense and I'll give the motion link a go (once I find out what it is and how to use it 🙂).

Thanks Kevin your suggestion to use a motion link worked a treat.

I'm not concerned about realistic

It’s in all versions. You aren’t in history mode. Right click on the design name at the top of the browser and choose capture design history. As-built joint will then appear.

Ground works, but ground is only persistent in the file for the clamp. If you insert the clamp into a different assembly, the ground doesn’t make that trip and you run into issues.

Got it, so much to know, glad you know! A related question can you use the joint command to join two subassembly. By subassembly I mean a component with say 5 components under it in the browser. The joint command in that case only seems to join a single component in each subassembly instead of the entire subassembly even though the each subassembly is a rigid group.

That functionality is not currently available in Fusion 360.

@@MechanicalAdvantage are you sure? I saw some video with part list and so on

I think I misunderstood the different position part. Parts lists are available for sure. I thought you were asking about something like a hydraulic cylinder being shown in a drawing in an open and closed position.

@@MechanicalAdvantage I meant that infact. Have you ever tried to do the 2d drawing, set the view, modify position and create another view?

Usually this is called positional representations or overlays. You might be able to make something to resemble this, but to my knowledge, Fusion doesn't have this specific capability built in yet. If you have a video that shows differently, I would love to see it. help.autodesk.com/view/INVNTOR/2022/ENU/?guid=GUID-34C28C35-45CA-4476-9336-30146F7C9471 And then look at the bottom example here that shows an Overlay View help.autodesk.com/view/INVNTOR/2022/ENU/?guid=GUID-C53DAB48-BA5F-4377-842D-BB8F3E5962A0

Hi Billy. Thanks for the comment and I’m glad you found it useful. Question for you. Let’s pretend the rest of the world with the exception of your country decided to switch the Imperial system. Would you make the switch or would you stick with what you know? After 46 years, it’s hard to make the switch away from a system you have been using your whole life. The good news is the system of measure doesn’t impact the concepts shown in the videos I guess.

@@MechanicalAdvantage The world was using that system however as progress was made and more logical systems were developed other peoples' adapted, I was born 55 years ago in a country that used imperial but learned to use the metric system as the world did. Progress is not hard, just takes an open mind. ...

That wasn’t the question :)

@@MechanicalAdvantage I answered it and gave an actual account to emphasize the answer. "country that used imperial but I learned to use the metric system as the world did"

as a canadian...we use both lol...divde by 2...divide by 10 ...both easy

When two components aren’t in the right place, a joint is used to define the position between those two components. When a component is in the correct position an as-built joint defines the relationship between the two components (rigid, or type of movement)

With as-built joints, you can define motion but you can’t with rigid groups. With as-built joints, only two components can be included. Rigid groups can contain many components in one group.

Thank you. I hope you were able to put the info to good use.

Listen. When your country leads the free world we’ll use whatever unit you want 😋

I love it. Yes you can. I am from Canada, so most of our construction measurements are inches and feet. Thanks great video explaining. Much appreciated. It helped me.

See, your first mistake as assuming that I was intelligent : D

I'm glad you picked up on the humor. You would be surprised by the number of emails and comments I get from people pissed off because I dared to show a tutorial using imperial measurements.

I don’t know. I think people will tell you I’m pretty damn funny. I get tired of the emails as comments about not using metric. So that was a preemptive strike.