F360 Graphic Performance could be improved further?

[O.Tan]

Hi,
Let me start of with I love F360 and what the team is doing with it, however there's just still many features that need to be added, bugs need to be fixed and performance optimization that needs to be done before I can use it as my day to day CAD software.

Here is one of them, and this is related to graphical performance. I'm comparing this to SolidEdge ST5 which was released in 2012 but surprisingly it beats F360 in the framerates. I honestly thought F360 being a new software will be better but sadly it doesn't.

The model I'm showing below is 100% drawn using F360 and some of the electronic parts is downloaded from the respective manufacturer part. I exported the file afterwards into my daily CAD software. 

https://screencast.autodesk.com/main/details/01240083-5864-4564-9f1c-9f7df65a0ca7

This is how it looks like in SolidEdge after I import it via STEP, notice how much smoother the model is.

https://screencast.autodesk.com/main/details/056bd069-c1ec-4971-ac37-6e55b0fda19f

I decided to test the file again except this time, I imported the same STEP file into F360 thinking perhaps the paramaters or design information in the model is slowing things down, doesn't seem so. F360 is just slower.

https://screencast.autodesk.com/main/details/d4166007-e182-4640-b5e3-ca877eb48663

Now if you wonder how is my usual working environment in F360, I attached another short video to show how F360 generally runs with a "small" assembly.

https://screencast.autodesk.com/main/details/8cb9aa6b-dcdb-447c-b0a9-51ff42df8cde

I've tried turning off all of the effects and it turns out, only the imported STEP file framerates is improved whereas on the original file, no framerate improvements can be seen. 

[cekuhnen]

Chengyun

I only run everything in simple and the problem is still there. The UI needs further redraw speed improvement when it calculates and highlights areas.

[cekuhnen]

Tan I am not so sure about this in today's time. I would rather say that the redraw speed of the UI is the question. After all everything the UI renders are polygons and meshed data based on the surface/solid data.

Maybe many years ago GPUs for 3D CAD were needed but Fusion is sometimes already quite slow with simple models and specifically slow with TS. This really shows in connection with the browser lag that the UI the object highlight calculation lag.

[prabakarm]

Tan et all, thanks for taking the time to highlight and engage on the topic of performance.  Performance is something we want to excel at in Fusion.  Performance is a bit of a complex topic as there many variables involved and easy to assume what might be happening.  On the other hand performance is measurable to help have an objective conversation and address problems we have.  To that effect we are working on a script for you to run which will provide frame rate/timing information, graphics card and graphics settings info to help the conversation.  Hopefully we can get it out today or tomorrow.

Meanwhile there might be some misunderstanding of the importance of GPU which I would like to correct.  Stepping back a bit and picking up on a point Trippylighting made, performance characteristics and the variables involved are different whether we are talking about interactive viewport graphics or operational performance

On interactive viewport graphics GPU plays a big role along with the software algorithms.  In Fusion all interactive viewport graphics is done thru the GPU.  We don't do any software rendering as it is slow without GPU acceleration.  The reason for this was we wanted customers to have a realistic experience while working on their projects.  We did make an assumption that computing power is available for this experience.  So GPU memory is important for a good experience.  Where we are starting to see the challenges is video cards with lower memory (512 MB).  The question I have is should we work towards supporting lower video memory cards.  We will probably have to provide a different experience by default if we detect these type of cards.  Looking for your feedback.

That said it looks like we have issues with the spacemouse which we are looking into.

So Claas for interactive viewport graphics I would like to understand your comment that GPUs were used many years ago better.

On operational performance, this is how fast you can access your data, upload/translate files, how fast can I go back and forth in the timeline or add/move geometries in the sketch etc.  There are two factors involved here.  1) software architecture/algorithms 2) network bandwidth

While we have our set of tests on performance I would really appreciate if you can share models with performance issues mentioned in this thread.  Sketch solve and timeline performance were the two areas mentioned here.  On the data access/upload front, we are aware of challenges in our architecture and are actively working on addressing them starting with the next update in Jan.

Prabakar.

[cekuhnen]

My comment regarding workstation GPUs is the following.

I hardly think that most people have or today need a 2k GPU for the design work they do. In todays time, unlike years ago when CPU and GPUs were weak and expensive, todays gaming GPUs are pretty strong.

Of course for high end trans design one still need a workstation GPU rig, but thats more the case because of the complexity of the computer model.

512MB cards are pretty old but many might still have it. I think 1 GB and up is more common.

In my years of experience I can truly say sometimes the interface was well developed with clean fast code resulting into fast performance, and sometimes the interface was just terrible because I highly assume they did not invest so much into perfecting the 3d render engine.

So this might be a hard call. In some years the 512MB cards will not be used anymore.
However there are also the laptop people who I think for a longer time will use those mobile cards.

And I think if the ui runs well on those cards it will be better for those with stronger GPUs.

[scott_morrison]

There is a way today that you acn measure graphics performance in Fusion360.  In the Fusion360 View menu, select "Show Text Commands".  In the text command panel click on the "Txt" button to enable text commands. Enter the command "Diagnostics.InteractivityMeter /Show".

This shows a panel that includes the current Frames Per Second rate for the scene.  

It would be good to hear some FPS numbers which people contributing to this thread are seeing. Also include infomation about the OS, computer and graphics hardware if you know it.

-- Scott Morrison

[cekuhnen]

iMac 2008 Nvidia GT 8800 512MB

moving/zooming the view via 3D cube: +- 50fps
zomming via mouse with mouse over object: down to 4 to 7 fps.

so highlighting just one surface slows down the software with a simple scene.
I think that type of drastic slowdown simply is not acceptable or usable nor do I ever experience this with any other CAD application. Specifically the more I zoom in the more
the interface slows down.

[prabakarm]

I am assuming when you say 3D cube it is the view cube on the top right corner of the Fusion canvass.  Is my assumption right?

When you say "zomming via mouse with mouse over object" are you using the mouse wheel to zoom or using the zoom command from the view navigation toolbar or the space mouse?

If it is the space mouse we are looking into it.

Prabakar.

[cekuhnen]

oh dear, I have to improve my English.

Yes using mouse wheel and having the courser on an object highlight one part impacts Fusions screen refresh quite painfully.

Using the toolbar rotate or the view cube etc is fine.

[scott_morrison]

What framerate do you get when you use the mouse wheel to zoom when the cursor is not over an object?

[cekuhnen]

around 43

[TrippyLighting]

I can confirm that zooming is:

a. Generally slower than rotating . Using the cube about 50%.

b. With the mouse cursor over geometry 3-4 times slower that rotating. 

Observation: this thread seems to mostly apply to  users with Mac. On a PC  GPU  performance can be had cheaply. On Mac notebooks or iMacs ther is no option to replace the graphics with anything higher performing, so for mac users this is a prticularlt important issue.

Here is a littel screencast. Keep in mind that the Screencast software eats some performance. Farmerates in simple mode with all Effects turned off and no grid mostly maxed ourt at 60fps for rotating the geometry.

https://screencast.autodesk.com/Embed/Timeline/97f1bb0d-d549-4c07-aa45-a08e5b48fee9

[cekuhnen]

On my mac pro gtx 570 on is x or win the interface slow down is the same but not as drastic just down to 30 frames

Still that is 50% of the normal 60 frames.

That's why I think fusion s interface had terrible lag problems.

[TrippyLighting]

I posted an idea on the board to be able to turn off the constsnt highlighting as it can be a real annoyance in some cases. Aside, of course from being a bit slow at the moment 😉

[cekuhnen]

good idea, the highlight also really slows down the browser.

I do not really use the gesture mouse system because that is the worst laggy tool in Fusion. sometimes I can draw nice doodle pictures before the menu appears.

[O.Tan]

Whoa, many new posts, I’ll consolidate all my replies in this single thread.

Changyun > I’ve changed it, but I’m not sure what difference should I see, everything seem to work the same?

prabakarm > thanks for the long and detailed reply, many good information is in it. Perhaps with a less <512MB GPU, certain effects like Ambient Occlusion and Object Shadow is disabled by default? and perhaps F360 will give a warning when the GPU memory or RAM is running low, and recommend users to turn off some softwares or reduce the graphic effect in F360?

cekuhnen > if I’m not mistaken, the big difference between workstation and gaming GPU is because of their drivers and how it’s optimised, workstation GPU is always slower in gaming compared to gaming GPU but when it comes to CAD systems, it has been shown that workstation GPU work much better. Though to my understanding, Mac OS doesn’t use graphic drivers, so I’m not sure how is there any difference between a gaming or workstation GPU.

Scott > 

Based on the model I shown in the video, there’s 2, one is the more complex one and simple. Below is the video regarding frame rates:

OSX Yosemite:

Complex: https://screencast.autodesk.com/main/details/05a683b3-3570-40f9-9441-2f90755f7f4b

Simple: 60fps regardless what I do to it

Windows 8.1:

Complex: https://screencast.autodesk.com/Main/Details/aaf6c0f3-f1d6-4369-ad2a-3d1956626dba

Simple: 60fps regardless what I do to it

Odd thing is, I’m surprised the complex is only at 11fps cause I certainly didn’t feel it unless I zoom into the model and that I opened another assembly that is much larger physically in size but probably doesn’t have that many lines as shown, and that model gets around 25fps 

So further testing made me realise that the fps depends highly on the number of lines currently shown in the display, more lines = less fps, just the act of zooming into the model and rotate in that zoomed view will improve the fps.

And I'm surprised at the difference in FPS between OSX and Windows as it certainly doesn't feel slower, I wonder what's going on. 

Here’s something that I notice when space mouse is used to rotate the view. it’ll take awhile for the effect to be refreshed, but clicking on the middle mouse button to pan (or use the mouse to control the view instead of the space mouse) will overwrite this slowness.

[chengyun.yang]

Hi All,

Thanks for all the posts. I think we have got a much better understanding of the performance problems discussed here. Based on that, I want to share some of my thoughts on these problems, as a graphics developer on Fusion team. 

1. I think it is clear that the original problem(compared to SolidEdge) in this thread raised by O.Tan is related to the SpaceMouse. The team has been investigating why it causes this kind of difference from the standard mouse. We will try to fix it asap. 

2. It sounds like one of the most painful performance issues is "zomming via mouse with mouse over object". My observation is this happens mostly likely on the low video memory graphics cards. I am not using this as an execute for the Fusion performance issue but let me explain that as best as I can. 

As I mentioned in the previous post, the "Normal" prehighlight/selection style effect is actually a pretty heavy graphics effect and it could consume a lot of video memory, especially when your monitor resolution is relatively high. That is why I suggest you switch to "Simple" selection style effect if your video memory is not high, which is much more economical in terms of video memory consumption. If your video memory is high(e.g., 2048MB or above), you probably won't notice the difference (probably this is why O.Tan didn't see the difference). But for low video memory cards, typically using the "Simple" selection style effect will improve the highlighting performance pretty obviously. O.Tan mentioned that probably Fusion should do this kind of switching automatically if the GPU memory is low. I think that is a good point and we will manage to do that in Fusion future release.

In Claas's case, he mentioned that even he switched to use the "Simple" effect, the performance was still pretty bad. To explain that, I would like Claas to help try one thing. Claas, if you reduces the size of Fusion window to a smaller resolution(e.g., 900 * 500), I believe you can feel that the viewport performance will be much better. There are two reasons: (1) the smaller window size means less GPU memory is needed for Fusion. (2) The smaller window size means less GPU pixel shading computation(all the material shading in Fusion is done at the pixel level). Claas mentioned that "specifically the more I zoom in the more performance slowdown". It is also due to the same reason. When you zoom in the objects more, the objects will cover more pixels on the screen and there will be more pixel shading computation. 

You may wonder why Fusion takes more video memory compared to other software. One thing I want to point out is in Fusion all the materials are physical based materials and all the environment lightings are high dynamic range(HDR) lighting, which is fundamental for us to make the material rendering to be realistic in Fusion. However, this also means when we represent one pixel color, each color component of RGBA should be stored as a 32 bit "float" instead of a 8 bit "byte" so we can handle the HDR images correctly. You can imagine if you have a 2000 * 1000 window size, a single color buffer will take 2000 * 1000 * 4 * 4 = 32 M video memory, not to mention the color buffers used by various visual effects like ambient occlusion, anti-aliasing, etc.

That said, we do realize that Fusion viewport performance is becoming a challege for us on the low end graphics cards. Right now we are having some discussions in the team to see how we can improve this and then provide a better performance experience on those cards in the future Fusion releases. We also hope you can continue to provide us the good suggestions and feedbacks in this regard. 

Thanks

Chengyun

Autodesk Fusion Team

[cekuhnen]

Thank you very much for the explanation.

However I cannot confirm your suggestion.

If I minimize the window to the smallest size, switch to wireframe mode, and zoom via mouse,

I can on the MacPro with a GTX 570 bring Fusion down to 9fps when I zoom in closely.

the image below is a time delayed screenshot moving mouse to screenshot software so the FPS went from 9 to 18fps.

Also in this test I noticed that when using the zoom button in Fusion and with enough zoom in I slow down the UI to 10fps without anything highlighted.

Also another observation is that what ever quality setting I use (preferences and display settings) the FPS effect remains the same.

With low settings and with high settings the result stays the same.

So it seems to me again that simply the UI code and how it redraws the screen is problematic and that the used hardware honestly does not matter much.

I have the same experience on an old 512MB card and a newer 1.5GB card. I am getting in the next days my GTX 970 and I am very sure that with the 4GB card

the experience will be the same.

I noticed in some other applications similar problems in the past, when zooming in the UI simply slowed down a bit, Fusion however really tanks.

[chengyun.yang]

Hi Claas,

The zooming workflow in wireframe mode you mentioned in your latest post might be another example that Fusion is a little more baised on display quality over the performance. Fusion internally has an Level of Detail(LOD) mechanism, which is when the object is far from the eye point, the geometry will be rendered using a coarse level of mesh data while when the object becomes closer to the eye point, it will be rendered with a finer level of mesh data. The purpose/target is the more closer you look at the objects, the more finer details will be presented to you. The various levels of mesh data is generated on the fly when doing the zooming workflows, which could cause the drop of frame rate. Furthermore, the generation of mesh data is done directly through CPU and GPU is not involved in this process. I think that is the reason you didn't see the difference across the machines. We do have some ideas to use the GPU to accelerate the tesselation of the mesh data but that is a long term plan and we haven't done much work on that direction. 

I think the performance discussions in this thread bring up a very important question for Fusion, in terms of how we should balance between the display quality and performance. One idea we are discussing in the team is we think it might be a good idea that we introduce two rendering modes in Fusion: Performance and Quality. In Performance mode, we can suppress all these expensive effects and totally focus on providing the user a good performance experience. For the low powered machines, this new "Performance" mode could be much more reasonable for the Fusion users. We would love to hear what you think of this proposal.

Thanks

Chengyun

Autodesk Fusion Team

[cekuhnen]

I see what you mean. If I set Alias to the same precission however it is pretty still pretty fast.

It is quite common if the frane drops below a certain point to simplify the display and the update only after scrolling / rotation is done.

Personally I was just quite stunned to see that even with such a basic model I had the fps tanked.

I would expect this only with a complex design only.

One computer is an old core to duo 3 GHZ the other is an 8 core Xeon.

So after all this discussion I think the ideas Fusion tries to do are nobel, color accuracy etc for shaded mode and precise geometry

rendering for wireframe, but the endresult from my point of view of a user is rather not optimal when I want to work in details.

This is not a deal breaker, but for me when such a basic model tanks, than I really do not want to know how Fusion will perform when

I work on a complex design.

[Oceanconcepts]

Just to confuse the issue further, I have seen performance improvements with the Space Navigator (basic version) in the last updates. This is on a geriatric 27” iMac using full screen and with only 512 mb of video ram, so a graphically underpowered system for the screen size. I’m not using very complex models, and they are mostly analytics, so maybe I’m not really taxing the system, but my FPS rarely drops below 56 or so, even spinning and zooming the model wildly. 

Previously I had seen drastic slowdowns using the Space Navigator when the Measure tool was selected, but no longer. It's very zippy.