This weekend's "maintenance" has made Fusion nearly unusable

[Agtoo7]

Is this a problem isolated to me, or is this widespread?

Since the "scheduled service downtime" yesterday, I've had nothing but constant problems using the software... my level of frustration is off the charts right now.

Saving designs from the editor almost never succeeds. Probably nine out of ten times I get a generic error that says it was unsuccessful at sending data to the server (no, there are no problems with my internet connectivity at this time). Sometimes it will work if I keep trying - but to get the Save button to re-enable you need to perform an action that modifies the workspace - like create an extra cube or something. The error usually doesn't show up until a minute or two after issueing the save - so you don't always know if it failed or not. Refreshing the dashboard is of little help because it seems to be having problems with updating data too.

Save As Copy likewise does the same thing - but even worse, because it immediately gives you a message saying that your copy was saved to the current project (even though it probably wasn't!).

Importing and placing an assembly from another existing design is also very unstable. The first attempt almost always fails with an error message that provides no information other than that it failed. Trying it again right away has a 50% chance of failure too, and on the third try it almost always works.

Crash recovery hasn't worked a single time for me this weekend. I've lost hours and hours of work because of the combination of manual/automatic saves not working and crash recovery not working either... because sooner or later the designer is inevitably going to freeze up during some random otherwise benign activity, leaving no option other than to Kill the process.

The dashboard itself has been unreliable. Often, the data shown isn't up-to-date, even after refreshing the view. I've also seen a few instances where the Recent Data pane fails to load, and the Design tab of the New Data pane is not visible - both were problems I recall seeing a few months ago when the service was unstable. Similarly, there have been UI problems in various corners of the dashboard - dialogs that don't fully appear, buttons that aren't operable, etc.

I realize that I can't complain too much because this isn't a paid-for product right now. But had I been paying money for a subscription to this software (as is planned in a few months) then I would have been FURIOUS. The inability to save to an external file directly from the designer workspace (for cases when you are getting errors uploading to the online servers) is probably the worst part of it. There is nothing quite like the disappointing sinking feeling when you've worked for hours to get a design to exactly where you want it - only to discover that nothing has been getting saved and you are only one UI freeze-up away from losing everything - with no way to save a local copy of the design (except for export to STL, which has a slew of problems when you try to reload back into Fusion).

[Agtoo7]

And add to that list of "things that are newly broken" - simple operations such as a Push-Pull on a very simple solid (not much more complex than a cube) are failing with "operation unsuccessful" as the only explanation given. Also, simply toggling the visibility of a body seems to have an above average chance to freeze the entire application.

I feel like I am fighting against the current today. I see that there is now another "scheduled maintenance" planned for Tuesday - is that to back out whatever changes went live over the weekend?

[keqingsong]

Hello Agtoo7, and thank you for reaching out. 

You are not the only one that was experiencing issues, and I apologize for the fact that our maintenance has caused you so much frustration. This was not our intented experience for our users and I agree that offering our users a solution where maintenance shouldn’t interrupt their workflows is absolutely paramount. 

Everything should be up and running now; are you still experiencing issues? If so, can you describe what you are experiencing at the moment, version of Fusion 360 (by going to file>about) and your system specs? We'll get this sorted asap. 

[sanjay_jayabal]

Hi Agtoo7,

I am really sorry to hear that you are having so many issues since the weekend maintenance.  There were a few hours of intermittent stress past the maintenance window as we had to validate sanity of customer accounts.  This should have cleared up by now, please do let us know if you are still experiencing issues.  I would suggest logging out of your account and logging back in.

If you could help me understand a few things, we will work to try and get you back.

1. Are you running Fusion 360 on a Windows system or Mac?  In either case, can you include the OS version?

2. Can you share your hub name?  You can find this under your name drop-down.  You will see something like "ue29cd179.autodesk360.com"

3. Can you also include the log file from your machine? you can send this to me directly at sanjay.jayabal@autodesk.com

- Windows location: C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Local\Autodesk\Autodesk Fusion 360

- Mac location: ~/Library/Application Support/Autodesk/Autodesk Fusion 360/8LSLMWTJDLEA/AppLogFile20140118T212035 (your log file will be called something different).  You could have more than one log file, so if you could send me the latest, that would be great.

Thank you very much for being a Fusion 360 Customer and our sincere apologies again for the frustration the maintenance has caused you.

best regards,

Sanjay Jayabal (Autodesk)

[kingson138]

Keqing, can you look at my other request on some referenced GMT time on your maintenance message? It is very important to us in Europe and Asia.
Kingson

[keqingsong]

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@kingson138 wrote:
Keqing, can you look at my other request on some referenced GMT time on your maintenance message? It is very important to us in Europe and Asia.
Kingson

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Hey Kingson, can you post a screenshot of the maintenance message you see on your end? Or did you already close it out? 

[kingson138]

OK please see attached. As you can see, there is no way for us from other parts of the world to know what time frame it is:

[keqingsong]

Gotcha Kingson, I believe the banner is adaptive in that it is showing your local time. This is what I see here on the U.S. West Coast.

WIth that said, I do agree that we need to be more clear it in reference to GMT. Thanks for the heads up. 

[kingson138]

Hi Keqing,

You just saved my day. I put your reference time into my iCal (Apple) as "Portland Oregon" time and changed back to Hong Kong time.

I believe it is a good idea to add a tail at your message stating that it had been converted into our local time. That is the problem with users not able to use

your program. I believe most of us actually changed your time to our local time. Ok i change back in my iCal.

Can you add you message to my other request so i can just check "Accept as solution"  Please change your message on our Fusion360 as soon as possible. Tuesday is tomorrow and I believe most users will be in errors over here.

[SJayabal200]

Hi Agtoo7,

Just following up on my previous email, we were able to isolate a problem on our side in the backend and apply a fix.  There are usually occassional glitches in the connection pipeline that could produce PLM 404 or 500 errors, but not to the extent you were seeing.  Also, these errors have built in retry mechanisms to make sure your files do get uploaded albeit it requires additional time.  Our internal testing with this fix shows a significant drop in these errors.  If you could give Fusion 360 another spin and let us know what your experience is, we would appreciate it very much.  Thank you for being a Fusion customer and I sincerely hope your experience is much better now.

Best regards,

Sanjay Jayabal (Autodesk) 

[kingson138]

Hi Sanjay, yes you might have found a fix for the problems but the time reference that Keqing and I had found should also be fixed. The banner should clearly stating that it is our local time and is adaptive. According to my banner the maintenance should be Tuesday from 2:30pm to 10pm. Now I know that it is my local time but before I did not know. I am sure lots of users worldwide are kind of confused. I think this is more important since most of us are commercial users and it is not very good to mess up on the maintenance schedule. Thanks.

[SJayabal200]

Hi Kingson,

I completely agree that this can be very confusing to customers and trust me, we are on it.  Unfortunately, this will require some redesign and proper implementation which will not make the current maintenance window.  One of us will post an update once we have a solution worked out, implemented and tested.  Thank you for escalating this, we are taking your input seriously.

Would it help if we posted a proactive message on this forum stating that the time references are adaptive to your local time zone?

best regards,

Sanjay Jayabal (Autodesk)

[kingson138]

Hi thanks for the reply. I think a proactive message on this forum would really help !

Kingson