v0.7.1 Alpha

Hotfix for incorrect dimensions on length-axis panels.

v0.7.0 Alpha - Return of the Parameters

This is a pre-release version of the Silvanus plugin to easily create boxes in Fusion 360 with different types of joints.

Added features:

• Parametric functionality has been re-added to the generated box. You can now update parameters, such as kerf, finger_width or box dimensions, after creation. There is still some duplication of formulas used in the model, so there will be cases where you will have to update formulas/values in multiple places in order to make changes to the box after the model is created. There will be improvements to the way that formulas are populated in future releases.

Removed features:

• Due to the performance of rendering a fully-parametric box now that formulas are generated and populated, Full Preview mode has been rendered unusuable, and has been removed. Preview functionality is still retained using Fast Preview mode, and has been renamed to just Preview.

Improvements:

• Various performance & code maintainability improvements.

New Issues:

• Enabling or disabling the visibility of a panel or sketch while the dialog is open will crash Fusion 360 when running on a Mac. This has been confirmed by Autodesk as a bug in Fusion 360.
• Input validation in the dialog box may not function correctly, due to a confirmed bug in Fusion 360. According to the Autodesk team, this should be fixed within the next two weeks.

Available Features:

• Add dividers along the height axes. You can now select if you would like dividers along the Length & Width axis, the Length & Height axis or the Width & Height axis. (Length axis will always be the X axis, the Width & Height axis are determined by which modeling orientation you have configured in Fusion 360--the Y and Z axes can be swapped).
• Added the ability to change the type of joint used between each outside panel.
• Added the ability to reverse joints between outside panels.
• Added the ability to specify different types of joints between the interior dividers and the outside panels.
• Improved the ability to specify which panel has a normal joint or an inverse joint, to improve how the Length & Width dividers join, and to support the new Height dividers.
• Configurable option for new joint types for dividers and outside panels (Tenon, Box Joint and Half Lap).
• Configurable option for half lap joints between width and length dividers, to determine which set of dividers appear on the top half of the joint.
• Create constant width finger sizes.
• Allow for creation of a box with no joints. Panels will overlap, to allow the user to create their own joints in Fusion360.
• Added a direct modeling mode for box creation. This mode is faster, but will not allow for parametric changes to the box or panels after creation.
• User definable length and width axis non-removable dividers
• Override ability for panel thickness for all outside panels; inside panels will currently be the same thickness as defined by the main thickness input value.
• Enabling or disabling any of the outside panels (top, bottom, left, right, front, back)
• Automatically sized finger joints based on a user-defined "desired" value of finger-width. These fingers will adjust to fit the size of each jointed face, with a target width as close to the user requested width as possible.
• Constant width finger joints based on a user-defined "desired" value. These fingers will be spaced from the edges when required to ensure that all fingers across a face are the same width. Fingers will always be sized to match the user's request, except when a face is too short/small. In those cases, fingers will be sized down to make sure that there are at least 3 fingers on the face (2 on one side and 1 on the other).
• Kerf adjust panels and joints based on user-specified value.
• User-triggered preview capability while changing parameters. There are now two preview modes. The fast preview mode uses Direct Modeling to provide a quick preview of the desired model. The Full Preview draws the model using parametric functionality, and is significantly slower. Because these two modes use different rendering techniques, it is possible for the model to be created differently than expected, if you uncover a bug.
• Use of imperial and metric measurements
  *Orientation of the box will be defined based on the default modeling orientation preference defined in Fusion.

To-do features:

• Allow for manual definition of divider placement
• Allow for panel-specific kerf adjustment
• Allow for different thicknesses of inside panels
• Allow for different finger joint sizes at each joint
• Create different patterns of finger joints instead of requiring all fingers to be equally sized along a joint (e.g. two small fingers, one large finger, two small fingers).

Known Issues:

• Adding too many dividers to the box, so that the cumulative thickness of all of the dividers is larger than the length of the box, may cause a crash.
• Creating multiple boxes within the same project will cause conflicts when parameters are eventually enabled. For now, if you desire multiple boxes in 1 project, they must be created separately and then linked into another project.

Resolved Issues:

• Parameters are not yet used for dimensions, extrusions, etc. Updating parameter values in the User Parameters after creating a box will currently have no effect. This is currently under development.

Previously Resolved Issues:

• Finger sketches are not fully constrained, and may break if parameters are changed in the model after creation.
• There are patterns of dividers & joints, where fingers may overlap, causing artifacts in the model that have to be manually corrected; for instance, using Half Lap joints with dividers when the Top panel is enabled may cause some abnormal fingers to be formed where the Half Lap joint meets the side and top. This can usually be resolved by changing the joints or swapping the top/bottom divider.
• Using imperial units in the model may cause cut off artifacts to appear in the model due to conversion between metric and imperial behind the scenes.
• While you can create dividers along the Length and Width axes, there is currently a bug with the way that joints between Length and Width dividers are created. You will have to manually fix those joints if desired.
• Triggering a preview of the model requires the user to click on the Preview button at the bottom of the dialog. This was done to prevent major performance issues when changing parameter values in the dialog.
• Specifying a non-zero number of dividers in the dialog and then changing back to zero does not properly remove the dividers from the box. The dialog must be cancelled and re-run in order to resolve this issue for now.
• Some sketch names may be incorrectly defined when panels of different thickness exist along the same axis (e.g. a left panel of 3.2mm and a right panel of 5.8mm)..
• When in Y-up orientation within Fusion 360, the Front and Back panels are named incorrectly (i.e. the Front panel is named 'Back' and the Back panel is named 'Front').
• The add-in must be restarted after changing Fusion 360's distance display units in the Design general preferences (e.g. switching from metric to imperial units, or imperial to metric).
• Toggling a panel thickness override multiple times in one run can cause a plugin error to appear. This may or may not impact the results of clicking on "Create"
• Panels and cut features will be sized appropriately when using kerf adjustment; however, if you check the placement of panels in the Fusion360 environment, the outside panels will be slightly off position; this has no impact to using the profiles for laser cutting, it is just cosmetic in the model. This will be fixed in a later release.

v0.6.1 Alpha

This is a quick fix update to reenable the dialog sizing when running the add-in.

v0.6.0 Alpha

This is a pre-release version of the Silvanus plugin to easily create finger/box-jointed boxes in Fusion 360.

Added features:

• Add dividers along the height axes. You can now select if you would like dividers along the Length & Width axis, the Length & Height axis or the Width & Height axis. (Length axis will always be the X axis, the Width & Height axis are determined by which modeling orientation you have configured in Fusion 360--the Y and Z axes can be swapped).
• Added the ability to change the type of joint used between each outside panel.
• Added the ability to reverse joints between outside panels.
• Added the ability to specify different types of joints between the interior dividers and the outside panels.
• Improved the ability to specify which panel has a normal joint or an inverse joint, to improve how the Length & Width dividers join, and to support the new Height dividers.

Improvements:

• Various performance & code maintainability improvements.
• Begin moving to a calculated collision detection model to allow for odd-shaped boxes, or angled sides in a future version.

New Issues:

No new issues known.

Available Features:

• Configurable option for new joint types for dividers and outside panels (Tenon, Box Joint and Half Lap).
• Configurable option for half lap joints between width and length dividers, to determine which set of dividers appear on the top half of the joint.
• Create constant width finger sizes.
• Allow for creation of a box with no joints. Panels will overlap, to allow the user to create their own joints in Fusion360.
• Added a direct modeling mode for box creation. This mode is faster, but will not allow for parametric changes to the box or panels after creation.
• User definable length and width axis non-removable dividers
• Override ability for panel thickness for all outside panels; inside panels will currently be the same thickness as defined by the main thickness input value.
• Enabling or disabling any of the outside panels (top, bottom, left, right, front, back)
• Automatically sized finger joints based on a user-defined "desired" value of finger-width. These fingers will adjust to fit the size of each jointed face, with a target width as close to the user requested width as possible.
• Constant width finger joints based on a user-defined "desired" value. These fingers will be spaced from the edges when required to ensure that all fingers across a face are the same width. Fingers will always be sized to match the user's request, except when a face is too short/small. In those cases, fingers will be sized down to make sure that there are at least 3 fingers on the face (2 on one side and 1 on the other).
• Kerf adjust panels and joints based on user-specified value.
• User-triggered preview capability while changing parameters. There are now two preview modes. The fast preview mode uses Direct Modeling to provide a quick preview of the desired model. The Full Preview draws the model using parametric functionality, and is significantly slower. Because these two modes use different rendering techniques, it is possible for the model to be created differently than expected, if you uncover a bug.
• Use of imperial and metric measurements
  *Orientation of the box will be defined based on the default modeling orientation preference defined in Fusion.

To-do features:

• Allow for manual definition of divider placement
• Allow for panel-specific kerf adjustment
• Allow for different thicknesses of inside panels
• Allow for different finger joint sizes at each joint
• Create different patterns of finger joints instead of requiring all fingers to be equally sized along a joint (e.g. two small fingers, one large finger, two small fingers).

Known Issues:

• Enabling or disabling the visibility of a panel or sketch while the dialog is open will crash Fusion 360. This appears to be a Fusion 360 bug, so the solution for this is unclear at the moment.
• Adding too many dividers to the box, so that the cumulative thickness of all of the dividers is larger than the length of the box, may cause a crash.
• Parameters are not yet used for dimensions, extrusions, etc. Updating parameter values in the User Parameters after creating a box will currently have no effect. This is currently under development.
• Creating multiple boxes within the same project will cause conflicts when parameters are eventually enabled. For now, if you desire multiple boxes in 1 project, they must be created separately and then linked into another project.

Resolved Issues:

• Finger sketches are not fully constrained, and may break if parameters are changed in the model after creation.
• There are patterns of dividers & joints, where fingers may overlap, causing artifacts in the model that have to be manually corrected; for instance, using Half Lap joints with dividers when the Top panel is enabled may cause some abnormal fingers to be formed where the Half Lap joint meets the side and top. This can usually be resolved by changing the joints or swapping the top/bottom divider.
• Using imperial units in the model may cause cut off artifacts to appear in the model due to conversion between metric and imperial behind the scenes.

Previously Resolved Issues:

• While you can create dividers along the Length and Width axes, there is currently a bug with the way that joints between Length and Width dividers are created. You will have to manually fix those joints if desired.
• Triggering a preview of the model requires the user to click on the Preview button at the bottom of the dialog. This was done to prevent major performance issues when changing parameter values in the dialog.
• Specifying a non-zero number of dividers in the dialog and then changing back to zero does not properly remove the dividers from the box. The dialog must be cancelled and re-run in order to resolve this issue for now.
• Some sketch names may be incorrectly defined when panels of different thickness exist along the same axis (e.g. a left panel of 3.2mm and a right panel of 5.8mm)..
• When in Y-up orientation within Fusion 360, the Front and Back panels are named incorrectly (i.e. the Front panel is named 'Back' and the Back panel is named 'Front').
• The add-in must be restarted after changing Fusion 360's distance display units in the Design general preferences (e.g. switching from metric to imperial units, or imperial to metric).
• Toggling a panel thickness override multiple times in one run can cause a plugin error to appear. This may or may not impact the results of clicking on "Create"
• Panels and cut features will be sized appropriately when using kerf adjustment; however, if you check the placement of panels in the Fusion360 environment, the outside panels will be slightly off position; this has no impact to using the profiles for laser cutting, it is just cosmetic in the model. This will be fixed in a later release.

More Joint Options

This is an alpha release converted to C++ to address some performance issues, and prepare for future functionality. This may not replace the original Python version. It is being provided for testing purposes, but does have fixes for bugs that currently exist in the Python version.

This is a pre-release version of the Silvanus plugin to easily create finger/box-jointed boxes in Fusion 360.

Improvements:

• Various performance & code maintainability improvements.
• Finger sketches should now be fully constrained; reducing the creation of extraneous artifacts in the model (especially when using imperial units).

Added features:

• Configurable option for new joint types for dividers and outside panels (Tenon, Box Joint and Half Lap).
• Configurable option for half lap joints between width and length dividers, to determine which set of dividers appear on the top half of the joint.

Available Features:

• Create constant width finger sizes.
• Allow for creation of a box with no joints. Panels will overlap, to allow the user to create their own joints in Fusion360.
• Added a direct modeling mode for box creation. This mode is faster, but will not allow for parametric changes to the box or panels after creation.
• User definable length and width axis non-removable dividers
• Override ability for panel thickness for all outside panels; inside panels will currently be the same thickness as defined by the main thickness input value.
• Enabling or disabling any of the outside panels (top, bottom, left, right, front, back)
• Automatically sized finger joints based on a user-defined "desired" value of finger-width. These fingers will adjust to fit the size of each jointed face, with a target width as close to the user requested width as possible.
• Constant width finger joints based on a user-defined "desired" value. These fingers will be spaced from the edges when required to ensure that all fingers across a face are the same width. Fingers will always be sized to match the user's request, except when a face is too short/small. In those cases, fingers will be sized down to make sure that there are at least 3 fingers on the face (2 on one side and 1 on the other).
• Kerf adjust panels and joints based on user-specified value.
• User-triggered preview capability while changing parameters. There are now two preview modes. The fast preview mode uses Direct Modeling to provide a quick preview of the desired model. The Full Preview draws the model using parametric functionality, and is significantly slower. Because these two modes use different rendering techniques, it is possible for the model to be created differently than expected, if you uncover a bug.
• Use of imperial and metric measurements
• Orientation of the box will be defined based on the default modeling orientation preference defined in Fusion.

To-do features:

• Add dividers along the height axes.
• Allow for manual definition of divider placement
• Allow for panel-specific kerf adjustment
• Allow for different thicknesses of inside panels
• Allow for different finger joint sizes at each joint
• Create different patterns of finger joints instead of requiring all fingers to be equally sized along a joint (e.g. two small fingers, one large finger, two small fingers).

New Issues:

• Using imperial units in the model may cause cut off artifacts to appear in the model due to conversion between metric and imperial behind the scenes.
• There are patterns of dividers & joints, where fingers may overlap, causing artifacts in the model that have to be manually corrected; for instance, using Half Lap joints with dividers when the Top panel is enabled may cause some abnormal fingers to be formed where the Half Lap joint meets the side and top. This can usually be resolved by changing the joints or swapping the top/bottom divider.

Known Issues:

• Enabling or disabling the visibility of a panel or sketch while the dialog is open will crash Fusion 360. This appears to be a Fusion 360 bug, so the solution for this is unclear at the moment.
• Finger sketches are not fully constrained, and may break if parameters are changed in the model after creation.
• Adding too many dividers to the box, so that the cumulative thickness of all of the dividers is larger than the length of the box, may cause a crash.
• Parameters are not yet used for dimensions, extrusions, etc. Updating parameter values in the User Parameters after creating a box will currently have no effect. This is currently under development.
• Creating multiple boxes within the same project will cause conflicts when parameters are eventually enabled. For now, if you desire multiple boxes in 1 project, they must be created separately and then linked into another project.

Resolved Issues:

• While you can create dividers along the Length and Width axes, there is currently a bug with the way that joints between Length and Width dividers are created. You will have to manually fix those joints if desired.

Previously Resolved Issues:

• Triggering a preview of the model requires the user to click on the Preview button at the bottom of the dialog. This was done to prevent major performance issues when changing parameter values in the dialog.
• Specifying a non-zero number of dividers in the dialog and then changing back to zero does not properly remove the dividers from the box. The dialog must be cancelled and re-run in order to resolve this issue for now.
• Some sketch names may be incorrectly defined when panels of different thickness exist along the same axis (e.g. a left panel of 3.2mm and a right panel of 5.8mm)..
• When in Y-up orientation within Fusion 360, the Front and Back panels are named incorrectly (i.e. the Front panel is named 'Back' and the Back panel is named 'Front').
• The add-in must be restarted after changing Fusion 360's distance display units in the Design general preferences (e.g. switching from metric to imperial units, or imperial to metric).
• Toggling a panel thickness override multiple times in one run can cause a plugin error to appear. This may or may not impact the results of clicking on "Create"
• Panels and cut features will be sized appropriately when using kerf adjustment; however, if you check the placement of panels in the Fusion360 environment, the outside panels will be slightly off position; this has no impact to using the profiles for laser cutting, it is just cosmetic in the model. This will be fixed in a later release.

Languages, Languages Everywhere

This is an alpha release converted to C++ to address some performance issues, and prepare for future functionality. This may not replace the original Python version. It is being provided for testing purposes, but does have fixes for bugs that currently exist in the Python version.

This is a pre-release version of the Silvanus plugin to easily create finger/box-jointed boxes in Fusion 360.

Available Features:

• User definable length and width axis non-removable dividers
• Override ability for panel thickness for all outside panels; inside panels will currently be the same thickness as defined by the main thickness input value.
• Enabling or disabling any of the outside panels (top, bottom, left, right, front, back)
• Automatically sized finger joints based on a user-defined "desired" value of finger-width. These fingers will adjust to fit the size of each jointed face, with a target width as close to the user requested width as possible.
• Constant width finger joints based on a user-defined "desired" value. These fingers will be spaced from the edges when required to ensure that all fingers across a face are the same width. Fingers will always be sized to match the user's request, except when a face is too short/small. In those cases, fingers will be sized down to make sure that there are at least 3 fingers on the face (2 on one side and 1 on the other).
• Kerf adjust panels and joints based on user-specified value.
• User-triggered preview capability while changing parameters. There are now two preview modes. The fast preview mode uses Direct Modeling to provide a quick preview of the desired model. The Full Preview draws the model using parametric functionality, and is significantly slower. Because these two modes use different rendering techniques, it is possible for the model to be created differently than expected, if you uncover a bug.
• Use of imperial and metric measurements
• Orientation of the box will be defined based on the default modeling orientation preference defined in Fusion.

Added features:

• Create constant width finger sizes.
• Allow for creation of a box with no joints. Panels will overlap, to allow the user to create their own joints in Fusion360.
• Added a direct modeling mode for box creation. This mode is faster, but will not allow for parametric changes to the box or panels after creation.

To-do features:

• Add dividers along the height axes.
• Allow for manual definition of divider placement
• Allow for panel-specific kerf adjustment
• Allow creation of removable dividers
• Allow for different thicknesses of inside panels
• Allow for different finger joint sizes at each joint
• Create different patterns of finger joints instead of requiring all fingers to be equally sized along a joint (e.g. two small fingers, one large finger, two small fingers).

Known Issues:

• Enabling or disabling the visibility of a panel or sketch while the dialog is open will crash Fusion 360. This appears to be a Fusion 360 bug, so the solution for this is unclear at the moment.
• While you can create dividers along the Length and Width axes, there is currently a bug with the way that joints between Length and Width dividers are created. You will have to manually fix those joints if desired.
• Finger sketches are not fully constrained, and may break if parameters are changed in the model after creation.
• Adding too many dividers to the box, so that the cumulative thickness of all of the dividers is larger than the length of the box, may cause a crash.
• Parameters are not yet used for dimensions, extrusions, etc. Updating parameter values in the User Parameters after creating a box will currently have no effect. This is currently under development.
• Creating multiple boxes within the same project will cause conflicts when parameters are eventually enabled. For now, if you desire multiple boxes in 1 project, they must be created separately and then linked into another project.

Resolved Issues:

• Triggering a preview of the model requires the user to click on the Preview button at the bottom of the dialog. This was done to prevent major performance issues when changing parameter values in the dialog.
• Specifying a non-zero number of dividers in the dialog and then changing back to zero does not properly remove the dividers from the box. The dialog must be cancelled and re-run in order to resolve this issue for now.
• Some sketch names may be incorrectly defined when panels of different thickness exist along the same axis (e.g. a left panel of 3.2mm and a right panel of 5.8mm)..
• When in Y-up orientation within Fusion 360, the Front and Back panels are named incorrectly (i.e. the Front panel is named 'Back' and the Back panel is named 'Front').
• The add-in must be restarted after changing Fusion 360's distance display units in the Design general preferences (e.g. switching from metric to imperial units, or imperial to metric).
• Toggling a panel thickness override multiple times in one run can cause a plugin error to appear. This may or may not impact the results of clicking on "Create"
• Panels and cut features will be sized appropriately when using kerf adjustment; however, if you check the placement of panels in the Fusion360 environment, the outside panels will be slightly off position; this has no impact to using the profiles for laser cutting, it is just cosmetic in the model. This will be fixed in a later release.

Too much of a good thing

This release fixes a bug introduced in v0.5.1_alpha that could cause duplicate or additional panels to be created.

Almost there take 3

This should resolve an issue with creation of panels with differing thicknesses and selecting/deselecting panel overrides.

Almost there

This is a pre-release version of the Silvanus plugin to easily create finger/box-jointed boxes in Fusion 360.

Available Features:

• User definable length axis (X) non-removable dividers
• Override ability for panel thickness for all outside panels; inside panels will currently be the same thickness as defined by the main thickness input value.
• Enabling or disabling any of the outside panels (top, bottom, left, right, front, back)
• Automatically sized finger joints based on a user-defined "desired" value of finger-width.
• User specified kerf adjustment
• User-triggered preview capability while changing parameters
• Use of imperial and metric measurements
• Orientation of the box will be defined based on the default modeling orientation preference defined in Fusion.

To-do features:

• Add dividers along the width and height axes.
• Allow for manual definition of divider placement
• Allow for panel-specific kerf adjustment
• Allow creation of removable dividers
• Allow for different thicknesses of inside panels
• Allow user-selectable consistently sized finger joint sizes
• Allow for different finger joint sizes at each joint
• Create different patterns of finger joints instead of requiring all fingers to be equally sized along a joint (e.g. two small fingers, one large finger, two small fingers).

Known Issues:

• Finger sketches are not fully constrained, and may break if parameters are changed in the model after creation.
• Adding too many dividers to the box, so that the cumulative thickness of all of the dividers is larger than the length of the box, will cause a crash.
• Parameters are not yet used for dimensions, extrusions, etc. Updating parameter values in the User Parameters after creating a box will currently have no effect. This is currently under development.
• Panels and cut features will be sized appropriately when using kerf adjustment; however, if you check the placement of panels in the Fusion360 environment, the outside panels will be slightly off position; this has no impact to using the profiles for laser cutting, it is just cosmetic in the model. This will be fixed in a later release.
• Triggering a preview of the model requires the user to click on the Preview button at the bottom of the dialog. This was done to prevent major performance issues when changing parameter values in the dialog.
• Enabling or disabling the visibility of a panel or sketch while the dialog is open will crash Fusion 360. This appears to be a Fusion 360 bug, so the solution for this is unclear at the moment.
• Specifying a non-zero number of dividers in the dialog and then changing back to zero does not properly remove the dividers from the box. The dialog must be cancelled and re-run in order to resolve this issue for now.
• Some sketch names may be incorrectly defined when panels of different thickness exist along the same axis (e.g. a left panel of 3.2mm and a right panel of 5.8mm).
• Creating multiple boxes within the same project will cause conflicts when parameters are eventually enabled. For now, if you desire multiple boxes in 1 project, they must be created separately and then linked into another project.
• When in Y-up orientation within Fusion 360, the Front and Back panels are named incorrectly (i.e. the Front panel is named 'Back' and the Back panel is named 'Front')
• The add-in must be restarted after changing Fusion 360's distance display units in the Design general preferences (e.g. switching from metric to imperial units, or imperial to metric).
• Toggling a panel thickness override multiple times in one run can cause a plugin error to appear. This may or may not impact the results of clicking on "Create"