Grid dissapears

[hato54]

Some time when I working the grid dissapears, why?

Now when I try to o insert the printed screen I get "Sorry, unable to complete the action you requested."

[Jon.Dean]

Hi Hato54,

Could you please describe your workflow in more detail, up to the point of getting the error.

When you say "Insert a Print Screen". Do you mean insert a .PNG file?

Jon.

[hato54]

Hi Jon

Working in sketch mode, suddenly the grid disappear.
Closing the object, an open again, the grid is ok.
I think it's hard to track.
Yes it's a png file, not allowed?

regards 

/Håkan

[Jon.Dean · Accepted solution]

Hi Haken,

Sounds like it is very hard to trrack and unpredictable.

Try fixing the grid to see if that helps, video link below:

http://autode.sk/1COyXwh

Jon.

[MartinMajewski]

I have a similar problem with the most current Version of Fusion 360 on my MacBook Pro 2015 - 13'' (not the Mac Store version of Fusion 360).

The grid behavior is absolutely useless and I have a hard time to sketch precise geometry.

To demonstrate my issues I put together a quick video demo, that can be found on my YouTube channel (as a not listed video):

https://youtu.be/oHGtm78FSQU

[colin.smith]

Hi @MartinMajewski

Could you please provide your Mac specs from "About this Mac"?

Thanks

Colin

[MartinMajewski]

Hi Colin,

I sent you a PM with a download link to my specs.

[MartinMajewski]

This is currently my working situation while sketching... absolutely unusable. I have no idea how to finisch this project, because I can hardly see my geometry, the grid or what I am doing - and this is the best looking "Environment", the others are worse.

 

The performance is also very, very bad. I'm guessing that I have way under 10 frames per second - on a freshly rebootet system without any other big application open.

My 10.10.5 system installation is also not that old. I installed it as version 10.10.4 two weeks before 10.10.5 was released. No old clutter from previous versions on my disk.

[colin.smith]

Hi @MartinMajewski

Unfortunately I wasn't able to access the link you sent me.  Can you email be the snapshot of your machine specs directly?

colin.smith@autodesk.com.  Thanks

Colin

[MartinMajewski]

Sent!

[colin.smith]

Got it.  I will forward this information to the graphics team and get back to you ASAP.

Colin

[MartinMajewski]

I made another short video to show you the odd behavior of the grid.

This is maybe something for a completely new thread, but I want to share it here first:

[Phil.E]

Hi, I'd like to follow up on this.

Most of what you are reporting is technically as designed, aside from the washed out display. I've forwarded your carefully considered feedback about grid numbers etc. to our UX team for them to digest. If you want to try the Idea Station you could post there about improvements you'd like to see and let others vote on them.

I didn't get to see your system specs, but I can assume you have a retina display. Have you tried any other troubleshooting such as running Fusion without retina?

1. Right click on the dock icon

2. Show in Finder

3. Right click on the app > Get Info

4. Check "open in low resolution".

If the washed out appearance goes away, this would tell us alot about your problem.

Did you try any other environments to see if there is more contrast?

Did you go to preferences > Graphics driver > switch to the other flavor of OpenGL that you aren't using?

Can you use the graphics diagnostic and paste the info here?

Thanks!

[MartinMajewski]

Hi Phil and thank you for your response.

Sure, the Idea Station is a good place to go and I have shared already a few Ideas in the past there.

I wanted to wait with a new grid topic until I get some feedback here. Maybe some of the things are bugs and can be fixed without voting.

Regarding Retina displays: Yes, both video where made on displays with high resolution. The first one was made on the Mac Book Pro's Retina Display (2560x1600) and the second one on a Asus PB278Q (2560x1440). I will try the low resolution workaround tomorrow and report back.

For now I have made a screencast of Fusion 360 running on a DELL 24'' with 1920x1200 pixel.
I played with different environment settings and noticed something strange:

My problem with the disappearing grid seems to be related to the Infinity Pool environment, but only if Infinity Pool was selected before activating sketch mode. Switching into another and back to Infinity Pool makes the grid look surprisingly well. Leaving and reentering sketch mode makes the contrast of the grid low again.

Additionally you can see that at the beginning the gird dis- and reappears on different zoom levels. Later, after switching the environments, this effect is nearly not noticeable.

What you can definitely notice is the thinning of the grid lines on zoom change. Here is definitely a problem with pixel alignment and interpolation of the rendering engine.

And last but not least you can see in the Dark Sky environment, that unselected geometry blurs into the background. I thing that you should revisit the coloring palette of this Environment.

Bye bye

[Phil.E]

Please let me know how it goes.

In your description you mention other displays. Are you running your MacBook display at the same time you run the other displays? Please note that you should be able to do so, especially if you have a 1 GB video card or greater. Your video card specs will help a lot.

Thanks,

[MartinMajewski]

Hi Phil,

i sent you a link to my OS X systemreport via Email.

---

@Phil.E wrote:

In your description you mention other displays. Are you running your MacBook display at the same time you run the other displays? Please note that you should be able to do so, especially if you have a 1 GB video card or greater.

---

Both! Same result. Currently I am at my Asus PB278Q (2560x1440) and my MBP (13'' Early 2015 with Retina display - 16GB RAM - Intel Iris Graphics 6100 1536 MB) is closed. The Asus monitor is attached via DisplayPort. The grid disappears in sketch mode and the Infinity Pool Environment, reappears on other zoom levels. It looks good after switching from another Environment back to Infinity Pool. Leaving sketch mode and reentering it again while using Infinity Pool makes the grid behave odd again.

Please let me know if you need more testing or other information.

Bye
Martin

[MartinMajewski]

Okay, now I made a quick test with the low resolution workaround.

It seems to not have any impact:

Figure 01: Sketch mode in Infinity Pool - low grid-contrast but grid is visible

Figure 02: Sketch mode in Infinity Pool - zoomed out a little and grid is gone (only visible on the object) - sketching outside of the object is now inconvenient

Figure 03: Sketch mode - switched from Infinity Pool to Dark Sky (same zoom level as in Figure 02) - grid has reappeared...

Figure 04: Sketch mode - ... switched back from Dark Sky to Infinity Pool - same zoom level as in Figure 02 and Figure 03 - grid stayed visible and has a much better contrast in comparison with Figure 01.

Figure 05: Sketch mode - Infinity Pool - after switching to and back from another environment grid stayed visible and with good contrast on all zoom levels...

Figure 06: Sketch mode - Infinity Pool - ...until I left and reentered sketch mode.

Figure 07: All the screenshots from Figure 01 to Figure 06 were made with the low resolution workaround on my Asus PB278Q (2560x1440). The same behavior appears on every other monitor I tried so far (HD and UHD resolution - without the low resolution workaround).

Hope that helps!

Martin

[Phil.E]

Thanks Martin.

At this point I have turned over the investigation to another QA who is more responsible for Sketch.

Thanks,

[FrankCao]

Hi Martin,

Thank you very much for providing so many good findings and suggestions about sketch grid. Now I have basically reported 3 different problems to our develop team as follows:

1. Sketch grid is not clear in some special direction like YZ, XY face under environment of "Infinity Pool".

2. Sketch grid will become clear when switching to other environment then switch back to "Infinity Pool", but it becomes unclear again if quit sketch and then re-enter sketch.

3. The starting reference number for "fixed grid setting" should be shown more logically. Now it is displayed as "Grid spacing" mulitplies "subdivisions", which is not good.

You also mentioned some other problems which is current limitations, might needs some improvement as follows:

1. Snap to grid is not working when dragging sketch objects out of the sketch. 

Currently the design is as above, so user should only be able to snap to grid while dragging sketch objects.

2.If set grid spacing with very small value, the sketch view performance is bad and grid is not clear to see.

Currently if user sets very small value to grid spacing, there would be too much grid shown for sketch. To display all the small grids, many graphic resources would be consumed, so some performance degrade can be expected. We currently do not limit user to input very small value for grid spacing. Do you have any suggestions to improve it? 

I may miss some other important problems here for sketch grid, please notify me if there are still some other issues I am not aware of in this thead.

Thanks,

Frank

[MartinMajewski]

Thank you Frank.

I answered your points inline:

Thank you very much for providing so many good findings and suggestions about sketch grid. Now I have basically reported 3 different problems to our develop team as follows:

1. Sketch grid is not clear in some special direction like YZ, XY face under environment of "Infinity Pool".

2. Sketch grid will become clear when switching to other environment then switch back to "Infinity Pool", but it becomes unclear again if quit sketch and then re-enter sketch.

3. The starting reference number for "fixed grid setting" should be shown more logically. Now it is displayed as "Grid spacing" mulitplies "subdivisions", which is not good.

-> Right, this covers the three major issues I have with the grid. 🙂 If this would be fixed I think it would improve my workflow drastically.

You also mentioned some other problems which is current limitations, might needs some improvement as follows:

1. Snap to grid is not working when dragging sketch objects out of the sketch. 

Currently the design is as above, so user should only be able to snap to grid while dragging sketch objects.

-> Maybe I missed your point, but aren't your both sentences contradictory?

I mean: It is per-design, that dragged sketch objects should snap to the grid but they don't snap when the user tries to drag them out of the old sketch's boundaries - e.d. extending the sketch spatially.

2.If set grid spacing with very small value, the sketch view performance is bad and grid is not clear to see.

Currently if user sets very small value to grid spacing, there would be too much grid shown for sketch. To display all the small grids, many graphic resources would be consumed, so some performance degrade can be expected. We currently do not limit user to input very small value for grid spacing. Do you have any suggestions to improve it? 

-> As I have no insight to you rendering engine nor the grid implementation I cannot give you any specific suggestions obviously.

Looking at the current behavior of the grid subdivision I suppose that you work with absolute values and create the grid somewhat rigid into the worldspace. So I suppose you do all the fogging to limit the grid-object size in a "visually pleasant" way. 🙂
You have no dynamic correlation between the camera's frustrum, the object-distance and the grid - you generate it once for the given situation (sketch mode on the given plane) and that's it, am I right?

(No subdivisioning when getting "closer")

Therefore it becomes a performance issue if the user enters a high subdivision factor, because the grid object (worst case: the entire group individual grid lines) has to be available the hole time even if not inside the user's view - see last picture above (10cm^2 of grid area with 1cm per major line and a subdiv. factor of 100 makes 2000 line objects, +2 for the 0-lines - in case you draw one line per unit from edge to edge).

Generally speaking a performant and dynamic grid implementation should be generated depending on the distance of the camera to the targeted surface aka. sketch plane and it should not (excessively) extend the frustum of the FOV pyramid of the camera. The subdivision is then a limit of the max. visible amount of gird lines inside the camera's frustum. So the subdivisioning should work for both, zoom and dolly. If the user wants to have a more detailed snap control aka. see more grid lines he gets closer to the point of interest. This way previously visible grid lines leave the FOV, get eventually disposed if they are too far away and the count of currently visible grid lines decreases. So new lines can be generated without a big impact on the object count inside the scene graph. If the user moves away from the target, the max gridlines count overflows and the grid lines at the deepest level (aka. the most detailed level) get disposed while grid lines higher in the hierarchy get recreated. With a buffer for a few levels above and below the current detail level the user wouldn't even notice that (re)creation. It would result in a dynamic grid that gives the user a preceize controll on each detail level without having to adjust the grid continously and manually.

The grid settings should not contain an absolute major grid spacing value and a directly depending minor subdivision factor. It should have a factor per "unit" and a subdivison factor to generate lines between "units". So if I design my object in the metric system, the major lines should be e.g. every 10cm, 1cm, 1mm, 0.1mm etc. if the factor is chosen as 1/unit. With 0.5/unit it would be 5cm, 5mm, 0.5mm, 0.05mm etc. and the same goes for factors > 1 but the other direction. The subdivision factor would create the minor lines.

I hope that it is somehow readable and understandable what I mean and what kind of grid I would like to see. No fog and no grid truncation.

I may miss some other important problems here for sketch grid, please notify me if there are still some other issues I am not aware of in this thread.

-> I will continue to report additional problems and odd behavior in this thread as soon as I become aware of it. Thank you.