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Fusion360 still crashes too much OS X

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Message 1 of 90
cekuhnen
1489 Views, 89 Replies

Fusion360 still crashes too much OS X

The past days I gave fusion a lot of tests and encountered many crashes. The software is still extremely buggy and prone to say good by even with very simple files.

Claas Kuhnen

Faculty Industrial Design – Wayne State Universit

Chair Interior Design – Wayne State University

Owner studioKuhnen – product : interface : design

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89 REPLIES 89
Message 21 of 90

I'm also experincing alot of crashes/hangs on my mac. I also use a windows machine which seems to handle F360 alot better.

I've tried turning all the graphics options right down to achieve optimal performance that that doesn't seem to make any difference.

It would be nice to get the same performance on both platforms.

 

I would hope my hardware would be capable of handling fusion?

 Mac Spec.jpg

 

 

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Message 22 of 90
Helmi74
in reply to: rpagewood

@rpagewood from what i have seen on different macs so far i guess you won't have too much fun with this machine and Fusion360. I have seen it running on newer iMacs than yours where performance completely was unusable for a daily work.

Apart from that crashes don't seem to be performance related as i have loads of them on a newer machine where everything basically runs okay with all the graphic options enabled.

There seem to be some general Mac OSX problems still that need to be mangled out. Unfortunately i'm missing a Windows PC for a direct comparison but it looks like the Mac OSX version of Fusion360 is generally a bit slower and takes a pause here and there. From what i can see on screencasts this isn't true for the Windows version. Maybe i'll boot into Windows 7 on Bootcamp later to see if there are differences. It's hard to test this on a virtual machine.
---
Frank / @helmi

Established 1974. Internet addicted since 1994. Collector of Kudos.
Message 23 of 90
cekuhnen
in reply to: Helmi74

I have to agree the windows interface of Fusion is drastically faster and Fusion does not crash so quickly if at all.

The Mac port is really problematic.

Claas Kuhnen

Faculty Industrial Design – Wayne State Universit

Chair Interior Design – Wayne State University

Owner studioKuhnen – product : interface : design

Message 24 of 90
Helmi74
in reply to: cekuhnen

I don't know the exact things behind the Mac applications but it looks like Autodesk is using some kind of application framework for its newer apps. I had a discussion lately with some guys that tested some of the 123D apps for their stuff and they said the same things for the Mac version of these apps.

After all they came to the conclusion that using them doesn't make any sense at all. Why they loved the idea they weren't able to reliably work with the apps due to the instability.

Looks like there's some work left to do. I hope this gets some priority during the next weeks as i think it's the basic foundation for success on a platform.
---
Frank / @helmi

Established 1974. Internet addicted since 1994. Collector of Kudos.
Message 25 of 90
roambotics_scott
in reply to: Helmi74

That doesn't seem surprising - Fusion has a distinctly non-native feel and it's always tantalizing to write once and run everywhere (though even when it's stable, I've never seen that done well).
Message 26 of 90
Helmi74
in reply to: Helmi74

well what shall i say - i've just booted up bootcamp and i've kinda seen the light 😞 Though Windows was ugly to me (booted the first time in about 3 months and took around half an hour to complete all updated and stop nagging my disk) Fusion360 was a complete difference on Windows. Though things nearly look the same the 3d view is much more performant and i've done some things where i know the mac version always has to "think" for a second and didn't see anything similar on the windows version.

 

I think this is difficult especially because Autodesk is advertising Fusion360 for beeing the only real CAD/CAM-Solution on a Mac. We all know that it's not Mac OS X's fault as there are loads of performant Apps running quite well. Maybe it's a bit like Scott said - the difficulty with cross-platform apps is nothing new. Though i don't need it to be a Mac-Look-and-Feel app i think it's crucial to be stable AND performant. That's what Mac users love their OS for and what works with lots of other professional apps quite well.

---
Frank / @helmi

Established 1974. Internet addicted since 1994. Collector of Kudos.
Message 27 of 90
Abelzyl1
in reply to: cekuhnen

Regarding internet connection: I sometime experience quantities of crashes (one after another, say 10 in a single hour, for example) while I am connected to the internet. If I shut off my internet and continue to work offline... I get way less crashes. I can log in later if I want to let Fusion 'cloud' my work. 

 

I will also echo: More crashes if I work faster. The more I 'pause'... the less I seem to get.

 

I am using a Dell PC, windows 8, and 8GB ram. My older (2008) Macbook Pro is way too crashy to use with Fusion, other than viewing a project.

 

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Message 28 of 90
roambotics_scott
in reply to: Abelzyl1

I hadn't noticed the correlation with speed before but that does seem to be a factor.. that makes me wonder if there might be an issue with how they've implemented multi threading. If it's common to other Mac apps, maybe we'll get lucky and the bulk are coming from some race condition in their framework..? (Not that those are easy to find but it could be at least a place to look).

One nice thing about that theory is that it explains why I've heard wildly different reports about stability. The only possible **** I can see is that I'm sure the tech evangelists are faster at some things than customers (though maybe they've just gotten so used to crashes and hangs that now they don't even register them; I know I've seen demo's with crashes and personally I've noticed that as annoying as the instability is, when I keep track of it, it actually happens much more often than I realize).

It's not ideal but I don't mind the non-native UI. For me the attractive thing is a (hypothetically) polished and functional CAD system that works in OS X.. actually for me that's almost more important than coat or usability vs Solid Works or Inventor (though I'm expecting that when we hire an engineer to take over the mechanical work in the fall, we'll have to bite the bullet because it's one thing for me to be annoyed and enormously frustrated but there is no way I can justify it to someone I'm paying).

The thing that kills me about the stability and performance is that as much as people complain about Microsoft, if they shipped Word that crashed like this there would be a mass-exodus.

F360 is such a great program and I'm still recommending it to someone new every few days.. but it's always with this huge caveat that my experience with it is that it's incredibly unstable and even with that I feel somewhat icky telling people to use it given my experience (it's mainly that there isn't yet another serious alternative for OS X).
Message 29 of 90
cekuhnen
in reply to: Abelzyl1

So Fusion crashes 10 times in an hour on windows for you? Not just on the Mac side?

I have the feeling that this internet thing is one of the odd drawbacks in this app. Just push syncs when you want. The internet connection should really not do anything.

Claas Kuhnen

Faculty Industrial Design – Wayne State Universit

Chair Interior Design – Wayne State University

Owner studioKuhnen – product : interface : design

Message 30 of 90
Helmi74
in reply to: cekuhnen

I thought we're mainly talking about Mac OSX here?

When it comes to the speed that is also my imagination of beeing a possible reason for some crashes. Maybe this is related to that short "thinking moments" we already talked about. You sometimes see the beach ball on Mac OSX when fusion needs a second. And sometimes if you don't wait there or do some quick steps one after the other before the beachball appears than the beach ball will appear but not go away.

I can't really reprodruce that (i tried) but these are well known situations for me with Fusion360 on the Mac.
---
Frank / @helmi

Established 1974. Internet addicted since 1994. Collector of Kudos.
Message 31 of 90
cekuhnen
in reply to: roambotics_scott

I very much share the idea of Fusion and CAD for the Mac. While there are many good CAD apps, Rhino, Alias, SolidThinking, Cobalt, etc I think Fusion is the only that somewhat brings a solid modeler approach ala Inventor/SolidWorks to the Mac.

I just meet with a fellow designer and showed him how I with the design timeline and T-Splines rebuild he work in around 16 minutes while he did the work in a much greater timeframe in Form-Z. He was quite madly impressed about the idea of mixing sub-D modeling with NURBS in a parametric workflow.

But like with Word the problem might also be what do vendors and others use and it seems SolidWorks is very much a very present tool. I never used it so I cannot really judge it.

But in discussions with one of my clients they are open to my workflow using Blender for concept modeling and Fusion for mesh to Brep and they quite like it.

But when it comes to sending data to the manufacturing it all has to go through SolidWorks again.

The stability is pretty much a pain - and I am very concerned about my next semester. I guess I will start with Alias first and see how Fusion develops. We have a new IT person so we can easily update the software in the labs just in a matter of some hours.

Claas Kuhnen

Faculty Industrial Design – Wayne State Universit

Chair Interior Design – Wayne State University

Owner studioKuhnen – product : interface : design

Message 32 of 90
roambotics_scott
in reply to: Helmi74

I think there are at least a few separate issues.

 

Based on what I've heard, cloud-sync seems to be problematic across all platforms. Distributed databases and maintaining consistency are very hard problems.. but they're also (mostly) solved problems. I do it all day every day with Git and iCloud stores with very few hiccups (and the ones I do see are transparent failures with Git; iCloud seems rock solid). I'm not expecting iCloud levels of stability, reliability, and invisibility (Apple has all the resources in the world and it took them a long time to get it right) but it's definitely solvable, and cloud-sync failing shouldn't hang the application (also / on that subject - I'm not sure what happened, but as of the last couple of days, I'm now getting a ton of these

Capture d’écran 2014-07-24 à 09.07.21.png

and I'm not confident cloud-sync has been successful even once since that started).

 

The UI / performance and related instability issues seem to be OS X specific.

 

I'm not sure which of the above is responsible for hangs on wakeup, but wherever it's coming from, it's become lumped into the frustrating facts of life that I can't close my MacBook with F360 running and expect not to have to force-quit and restart when I open it up again (to the point where half of the time I just exit the application to avoid that step).

 

There also seem to be some underlying issues under the hood that people are running into on all platforms. 

 

I've not tried Cobalt but http://www.ashlar.com/products/organic-workflow.html looks interesting (despite the video and voice over making me cringe) so I'll definitely have to.. Inspire and Evolve from SolidThinking also look extremely cool. The others (Alias, Rhino, etc) I've seen before and played with but they seem to be more focused on surface modeling than end-to-end product design.

Message 33 of 90
Abelzyl1
in reply to: cekuhnen

Depending on what I'm doing... yes! I can generate a lot of crashes by doing a bunch of deletes of bodies, or worse, a batch delete... OSX mavericks crashes constantly for me during modeling, so I use a PC for that.
Message 34 of 90
cekuhnen
in reply to: roambotics_scott

I have used Cobalt years ago and SolidThinking at my past teaching position. ST has a great idea that you can swap out input curves for surfacing tools like loft etc which I highly miss in Alias.

I think both are pretty strong applications while I am not sure if Alias is the king for surfacing due to its control options or if that is of the past now as other packages also evolved.

What I always liked about Cobalt is that it combines surface and solid modeling without forcing me to use those dreadful sketch planes. I honestly hate them - but that might be just me.

Claas Kuhnen

Faculty Industrial Design – Wayne State Universit

Chair Interior Design – Wayne State University

Owner studioKuhnen – product : interface : design

Message 35 of 90
roambotics_scott
in reply to: cekuhnen

I don't mind them.. but I haven't seen a good alternative.

 

One thing I do hate about them though is this..

Capture d’écran 2014-07-25 à 10.49.03.png

 

That's for a simple model that I didn't spend much time on and there are already seventy something in the subcomponents.

Message 36 of 90
cekuhnen
in reply to: roambotics_scott

And that is why I so bloodily hate them. The time it takes to do a sketch outline for profiles with this method is exorbitantly requesting more time for set-up than I would just sketch them in Alias ST including a design history for them.

Plus the constraint system I feel is also cumbersome to use because while adding dimensions is great and such things (really is) then modifying the sketch I feel is sometimes like a puzzle figuring out what you can do and what not.

I always asked myself why surface and engineering software packages evolved so differently. I hardly know a product designer who loves working with them. I only know few how like SolidWorks but rant about the amount of work it takes to do the set-up.

Like in Cobalt you can work parametric / with a design tree there as well unlike Rhino which is really a dumb NURBS modeler.

Claas Kuhnen

Faculty Industrial Design – Wayne State Universit

Chair Interior Design – Wayne State University

Owner studioKuhnen – product : interface : design

Message 37 of 90
roambotics_scott
in reply to: cekuhnen

Aside from just generating an insane number of them for no good reason, I very often start a sketch, extrude or rotate, and then want to go back and keep doing something else with that sketch, but the parametric / timeline thing drives me nuts because it rolls me back in the timeline to when that sketch was made which means I lose reference and now if I do the wrong things in that sketch, I break the future geometry, so I'm stuck with the Sophie's choice of either generating more and more sketches in exactly the same plane for no reason, or turning off the timeline.

Message 38 of 90
cekuhnen
in reply to: roambotics_scott

I made somewhat the same observation. There is for sure a different way of
approaching this compared to Alias.
But it seems that those engines are really for doing blue print designs and
are not ideal for exploring ideas.

Claas Kuhnen

Faculty Industrial Design – Wayne State Universit

Chair Interior Design – Wayne State University

Owner studioKuhnen – product : interface : design

Message 39 of 90
roambotics_scott
in reply to: cekuhnen

I think the concept could actually work - they just need to have an easy way to condense all of those overlapping sketches to a tablet of stacked translucent (but hidable) layers of pages rather than separate sketches. 

Message 40 of 90
cekuhnen
in reply to: roambotics_scott

The constraints are what I find pretty fantastic but if this forces me to have so many sketches for 2d profiles it seems terrible to me. The 3D sketch engine I really dont like. It seems poor in its ability.

I wish the 3D sketch would work as well as all regular surface modeler where you can tell a curve to snap onto a different curve with its start and end point so you can simply create 3d cage profiles without getting a nightmare of sketch planes in your way.

Claas Kuhnen

Faculty Industrial Design – Wayne State Universit

Chair Interior Design – Wayne State University

Owner studioKuhnen – product : interface : design

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