Introduction to design history with Fusion 360
In Chapter 1, we briefly touched on how Fusion 360 can capture the design history of model changes. In this chapter, we will dig a little deeper into this topic and showcase some of the benefits and drawbacks of capturing design history (parametric modeling) versus not capturing design history (direct modeling).
In the context of Fusion 360, Parametric Modeling is a methodology based on features and constraints. All features you add to a model are captured over time and any changes you make to a given feature propagate downstream in your timeline and impact the subsequent features and ultimately the final outcome of your design. This makes parametric modeling a powerful tool for creating design alternatives based on rules.
In contrast, direct modeling is a methodology where the features you add to your model are not all stored or editable. A subset of direct modeling features can be edited. However, those features do not interact...