Ability to modify object after creation

[alemore]

Thank u very much for this addin!

Would it be possible to have the ability to modify the object after it was created? I often find myself designing something to find out that I needed the bin to be too smaller/bigger. Starting from scratch might be a pain if you already spent time creating features and expressions.

Please let me know if I am doing something wrong or if there's a workaround.

[Le0Michine]

Hi, not sure I understand the request completely. If that's about being able to reopen that dialog to alter previously entered values I afraid that might not be possible. If that about making model more parametric in a sense using global parameters and expressions instead of precalculated values like suggested in this issue https://github.com/Le0Michine/FusionGridfinityGenerator/issues/49, I'm currently thinking about how that could work, but can't promise I'll come up with a usable solution.

If that's none of those please could you provide more details about your use case and what workflow you have in mind?

[alemore]

Thanks for your reply. My request is about having the ability to change the generated bin once it has been created. I am not opinionated about how those changes could be made. You have suggested user interface but that might not be doable as you said, and maybe creating user parameters after the model was created could be the way.

Your generator is a really good solution for creating generic bins and baseplates and it would be nice to have some more room for further postprocessing.

For instance, at the moment I am making holders for router bits, drivers bit and the like. Commonly these are a simple array (rectangular pattern). With the current generator I have to:

1. in order to generate the rectangular pattern correctly, I have to browse through the hard-written parameters of the features until I can find the ones that reference the width and length somehow. I think by memory commonly these are d27 and d26 (might be wrong though, is not the point) but they sometimes change.
2. after doing this, since the modelling is procedural, i can change for instance the amount of bit i want, the sizes, etc. But if i need the bin to be 1 row/column bigger i have to do everything again.
3. What I do as a work around is saving the user parameters I created using parameter I/O (another add-in) and reimporting them on a new project where I'll generate a new bin with different dimensions.

Some feedback about #49:

1. Probably using user parameters will do the trick since most users doing this level of design should be comfortable with that.
2. RE multiple components. I don't know if having a multi-bin/component support is necessary. You can always create separate designs for each one of your custom bins.

Some general feedback:

1. In terms of workflow, I use another add-in called Nifty dogbone, which creates dogbones for cncs. I believe this plugin works like yours, "hardwiring" the values into the features. But it has this second command which allows you to change/update the dogbones afterwards. link
2. This plugin as well groups the features like it's mentioned in #36
3. You might want to check the original Zack Freemans Fusion 360 files for these bins (I might be preaching to the choir here). His drawing is fairly parametric, although not as elegant and quick as yours to set it up. Probably a mash between the two concepts could be the way. Link

Thank you very much for your work. Let me know if you want to discuss further.

[Le0Michine]

Thanks for the detailed feedback, I’ll try to research this and see if some of it can be integrated into the app

[CullenJWebb]

I'd like to second this. When I design custom bins I'd like to easily create variations of the same exact bin but presently that either requires tediously replacing certain values in the timeline with my own parameters or generating multiple bins and modifying each of them separately.