Fusion360 still crashes too much OS X

[cekuhnen]

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.

[roambotics_scott]

The sad thing is that it doesn't have to be that way. I assume there are some fundamental architectural choices that make it difficult to do cloud-sync well in F360 but I've used Pages and Keynote enough to see that it can be done well.

[cekuhnen]

just noticed pluggin my internet cable starts fusion in offline mode.

why not make this default anyway and not giving me this error message and also having to pull my cable to be able to work offline ...

[roambotics_scott]

That really seems to me the right approach though I'd go a step further and have it be completely self-contained with cloud sync on the backend as a progressive enhancement that's as transparent to the end user as possible.

There's no reason for the dashboard UI or basic functionality to change. 

[Helmi74]

Regarding OS X stability: I don't know if the details of this stability problems is to the teams attention. Everything i see in regards to videos, screencasts, screenshots (well nearly everything) is done on Windows. I already wondered in the past about why we see hangouts from windows even though the guys at least partly work from MacBooks. I'm not a big fan of speculation but the fact that CAM, Documentation and nearly every other stuff is frist released on windows shows the priority. This ok of course as the mac audience obviously is smaller but i think if you promote your own software as beeing the perfect Mac-CAD/CAM-solution than you should at least do well in terms of stability and performance.

Re: Networking, Online/Offline. I still don't get why the dashboard is fully serverside. There's no need for that. You could easily have a local application (and that could still be HTML) and only sync the data (not only designs but comments, invites whatever is dashboard related). It's such a pain that clicking any button takes for the thing to happen. That hassen really gotten any better since we discussed that a while ago prior to the dashboard relaunch. The issue also seems to be serverside. SaaS is no fun and needs real experts in networking, server administration and everything. I'm sure Autodesk has the power to have the perfect solution for that. Unfortunately the perfect solution still has to be found.

Generally: What really makes me wonder sometimes is that small bugs/glitches take several versions to fix (example: focus problem for input boxes) or server side stuff doesn't get fixed quicker between versions (like screenshot and 3d web view orientation problems). Maybe i shouldn't care about all that as a user but then i'm the one that brings people in here, evolving them in my projects, motivating them to use Fusion360 even though it's not perfect quite yet. 

I kinda got the Fusion blues currently.

[cekuhnen]

I think as far as I know they have a code base that is PC and gradually implement that into Fusion PC and then also to Mac. But I agree it is annoying that like 2D drawings are PC first but with time it will come to the Mac. I was told that they test it first till a working condition on PC and when it is fine port it to the Mac.

I agree with the server problems. Cloud syncing is fine, but nearly every client I talked to rejected the idea less because of intellectual property theft fear but fear of usability in case the internet is down. Fortunately I thought about restarting Fusion after I disconnected from the internet to start it really in off-line mode.

[roambotics_scott]

I spent most of the day yesterday with them and they claim that Mac has priority.. though our experience makes that feel suspect to me.

It does seem that there are some improvements and bug fixes in the next release (coming out at the end of the month) but at the moment, I'm still crashing and hanging despite tiptoeing around the minefield and I spent ~45 minutes stuck with this 

[which would be cute if I was going to live forever and had zero time pressure but in reality makes me want to break things]

[Phil.E]

Can you copy and post the file you are crashing with into the Box folder we set up yesterday? 

Also please list the operations you were attempting when you experienced crashing today.

[Helmi74]

Not wanting to open an additional thread or issue as it kinda fits in here but there's one pattern where i constantly get crashes:

Try setting fillets or chamfers in areas where this is kind of difficult (not much room, maybe overlapping edges or something) and then do not set them by entering numbers but just move the arrow and move it a bit faster. This where i get crashes very often. This is mostly when there would be room for a 0.5mm or 1mm chamfer but 2mm are to much already and would produce an error message.Fusion seems to try to draw them even if they're not possible and then crashes.

[roambotics_scott]

Sorry Phil but still nothing specific - just apparently random / unusful for debugging stuff 😕

[roambotics_scott]

One super-annoying thing I think you may be able to reproduce and fix is that every time I put my computer to sleep with Fusion running, it's a crapshoot to see if it'll actually work or if I'll have to force-quit and restart [and then / independent of that - when I do that and it's starting up in the background, it randomly brings itself to the foreground during the restart process without user intervention].

[Phil.E]

Scott-

Any information you can give me will help. If I have your data and know you are trying to sketch new features on a particular component (for instance) just that information alone is very helpful. So even very general steps you are taking, plus any problem data file, will help us help you greatly.

Have you tried saving and/or shutting Fusion down before putting your computer to sleep? 🙂 Seriously, I am curious how long you let it beach-ball before force quitting. On wake there is a period where Fusion is re-connecting. Unfortunately it will beach ball the entire time and may take up to 30 seconds, which seems like forever. For my testing (almost exclusively on MacBook pro machines), these reconnect events no longer crash and tend to hang for only a second or two. There must be more going on, such as your network conditions or the amount of data (your files are pretty large).

If you give it a minute or two does it ever recover for you? 

[roambotics_scott]

I gave it a couple of minutes.. shutting down and restarting is passably OK as a work-around for now but it's absolutely unacceptable for a product people are paying for. I keep going back to the thought - «imagine if Word did this».

My files may be large.. but everything we build in the future will be bigger and more complex.

Are you sending the whole thing around every time ? If so - why not just do diffs ?

[Helmi74]

I just wanted to secon what Scott says. i can reproduce this behäbiger most of the Time when getting the mac (iMac 10.9 and 10.10) back from sleep. I know it Takes some seconds for the Network to recover but on chance Fusion gets back when it beachballs then. Force quit is the only solution and no CER Is generated in this case.

[Anonymous]

Agreed.

For me, it happens every single time I try to open a design. This only started a few days ago, after Fusion uploaded itself.

Now my only option is to use the Windows version through Parallels.

I'm using OSX 10.9.2.

[cekuhnen]

Ah what ??? "behäbiger"

Some Germans here? Yes?

[Oceanconcepts]

i see the same thing after sleep- I’ve let Fusion try for a long time, like half an hour right now, and it doesn’t seem able to reconnect. In my experience, either it comes up right away, or it doesn’t come up at all. This also comes up midstream in working on occasion. I have a decent (± 30 mbs) FIOS connection, supposedly “business” class but delivered to a residence. It’s a dynamic IP and suffers from momentary drop outs in the connection. Most applications handle these interruptions OK, but Fusion seems to be thrown off by them. The problem is that Fusion doesn’t go to “offline” mode, it just gives the spinning beach ball and requires a force quit. That’s what is happening now- I left Fusion open overnight, it’s a crapshoot if that will work or not, last night it didn’t. I expect most large businesses, and certainly Autodesk, have more stable internet connections.

[roambotics_scott]

One of the reasons that is so annoying is that sometimes (like just now) it opens up and is immediately responsive so I'm getting enough random-reinforcement to convince me to gamble on it working.

To the extent that that is due to networking issues - in my opinion, the app is and will remain broken so long as anything that doesn't absolutely have to depend on cloud connectivity depends on cloud connectivity - and that means that the vast majority of the app should just work even if my IP address is randomly changed every few seconds and my connection drops and reappears often.

[roambotics_scott]

.. of course - it did just hang and not recover when I stupidly tabbed to Mail and Safari to post that..

[RajkumarIlanchelian]

Hi Chris,

Can you please email me at rajkumarDOTilanchelianATautodeskDOTcom or better yet invite me to the project that you are having these open crashes? I would like to take a look at this issue.

Thanks,

-Raj.

[Helmi74]

Here's just a crash log from MacOSX i could capture after yet another Fusion360 crash. Fusion was opened over night and i tried to close it now after working for a few hours on this computer. Fusion didn't show any problems at first but as soons as i tried to close the design it beachballed forever. I had to force quit.

Here's the log: https://paste.ee/p/pLeYQ

It's 10.10 in this case but this also happens on 10.9