Please help! Large(ish) sketch updates incredibly slowly

[AdamEllison]

Hi all!

I'm relatively new at this, and really want Fusion 360 to become my main CAD tool, but can't handle the incredibly slow update speed of mildly complex sketch changes.

I'm creating a top-down design of an integrated servo motor and transmission, and once the driving cross section sketch reaches 50 or so lines & dimensions, it takes 10-20 seconds to do every single alteration, including simple cosmetic changes like dragging a dimension for visibility.

Quite often the sketch will report an error after freezing for a few seconds, saying that it was unable to update because it was "overconstrained" (it's definitely not overconstrained). Trying the same change again a second later would sometimes resolve the error.

My suspicion is that the whole sketch is being rebuilt after every change, including cosmetic changes like dimension positions. Once it reaches a certain size it will start timing out after a change, and reporting that the sketch is overconstrained. I have experienced this in more than one sketch.

I have reinstalled Fusion 360 twice and upgraded my graphics card drivers without any changes in performance. My machine is an i7 quad core powered laptop with 8 GB ram and a fresh Windows 7 Pro install on an intel SSD. It's also got an AMD graphics card with 1GB dedicated G5 memory.

Large sketches work well in other CAD packages on this machine, which makes me wonder why Fusion 360 suffers so much...

Any tips on how to trouble shoot sketch performance?

Thanks!

[FrankCao]

Hi AdamEllison,

Thanks for reporting the large sketch performance issue. Could you help provide more information to us by answering a few questions as follows:

1. Are you using the Parametric design or Direct design?

I guess you are using the parametric design because you can alter your models by altering the sketch lines. However, I want to confirm this.

2. You are experiencing the performance problems inside sketch, not outside sketch, right?

I mean it's slow when you dragging the sketch geometries, not when you Stop Sketch, right?

3. If you are using the parametric design, can you help check whether you encounter similar performance problems if you create a similar direct modeling design?

Thanks,

Frank

[AdamEllison]

Thanks Frank,
Yes this is all within the "Model" environment, which I guess is parametric
as I can edit parameters.
The performance is great until I enter the 'edit sketch' mode and the
dimensions are all displayed. My sketch also includes several mirrored
sections which seemed to slow things down when they were created.

I'll try and replicate the issue in the Sculpt environment, which I guess
is the non parametric environment, though I really need this model to be
parametric.

Thanks for your help!

[Oceanconcepts]

Parametric and non-parametric have to do with the "capture design History" option you see when you right click on the base component of your drawing. You can be in Model, for instance, while either capturing or not capturing design history. But in Direct (no history) mode, your sketch will not be dynamically linked to parts generated from it. Parametrics in Fusion is pretty new, and there are still some issues. 

[AdamEllison]

Thanks Ron,
This makes sense. It's not worth me using history free modelling, as I need to make major changes to the driving sketch quite often.
I do hope they improve the robustness of the sketching tool soon, as it's unfortunately unusable for my designs in it's current state.

Perhaps I could try using separate sketches for each body, but that definitely reduces the usefulness of the top-down methodology.

Thanks for your input!

[AdamEllison]

Hi Frank,
To reply more explicitly to your questions

1. Parametric Design
2. Problems are always inside sketch mode
3. I'll try to replicate the issue in direct modelling mode, but it kind of defeats the purpose of top-down design!

Thanks again for your help!

[FrankCao]

Hi AdamEllison,

Sorry for the late response. From your answers, I know you are experiencing problems inside a parametric sketch and sometimes the performance problems are related with dimension modifications like dragging.

From some discussions with qa and developer, we think it would be better to get your specific model to do further analysis to see where we can improve the performance..

So could you attach your model here in the post or send it to weining.cao@autodesk.com for us to do further analysis?

Thanks,

Frank

[FrankCao]

Hi Adam,

After some rounds of sketch solver improvement, I believe we have improved the sketch performance a little on our internal build. However, I still have some questions to ask you about:

1. Can you tell us your detailed AMD graphics card info?  Maybe your performance issue is also related with specific graphics card incompatibility problem with Fusion 360. If you have another computer with Nvidia graphics card, can you try the same workflow on it to see whether the performance is better?

2. Can you tell us by editing which dimension will you easy to see the “overconstrained” problem?  I have tried on latest internal build and seems cannot easily find the “overconstrained” problem by editing several dimensions in your sketch.  You can help by telling me the info like follows:

“Each time I change the value of dimension d50, it always pops up the “overconstrained” alert. "

 You can find the dimension name by hovering mouse over dimension edit box.

Thanks,

Frank

[IbrahimAltiay]

Hey Frank,

Just to add to Adam's post, I'm experiencing similar issues with sketches. My machine specs are:

OS: Windows 10 Technical Preview

CPU: AMD FX-4100 Quad Core @ 3.60GHz 

GPU: NVidia GTX580 2GB

RAM: 12.0 GB

HDD: SX900 SSD

My hunch is that the issues arise from the constraints solver. Looking at the CPU/RAM usage when moving the sketches, both show relatively low usage, so it doesn't immediately seem like a resource issue.

Any help would be appreciated.

PS: I still love Fusion 360. Kudos to the great team working on it 🙂

Cheers,

Ibrahim

[NicolasXu]

Hi Ibrahim,

Sorry to hear that you experience performance problem within sketch. Yes, constraint solver could be one of the potential causes for sketch performance, and we keep on improving the behavior in each release.

To help us reproduce the problem, would you add more details (file, video, etc.) here so we can look into the certain case and see how to improve it? You can also send me the file (lixiong[DOT]xu[AT]autodesk.com) if you want the file only being used within Autodesk for product improvement.

Thanks for your interests to Fusion 360. Enjoy it!

[Phil.E]

Adam,

Regarding Top Down design, especially around parametric re-use, here is a tip that will help you greatly.

Be sure to activate the component you are working on. This places all sketches and bodies into your components - as you create them.

[IbrahimAltiay]

Hey Nicolas,

Sorry for my late reply, the internet was down for the past two days and it was just fixed 5 minutes ago! Woohoo!

Video file size is too large so here's a YouTube link (first 60s is costraints in a sketch, second part shows performance when updating parameters through the parameters window).

I've also added screenshots of resource usage in a blank file and during sketching.

I'll try reinstalling Windows 7 when I get a chance and seeing if there's a difference, then I'll update you.

Thanks,

Ibrahim

[cekuhnen]

I think the sketch engine and graphic interface in general in Fusion are the slowest I ever have touched. All other CAD application are with much more complex data faster.

I also noticed drastic slowdowns not only in sketch so I feel the engine running the interface still needs some love.

[IbrahimAltiay]

Hi guys,

After testing out different operating systems, reinstalling F360, I finally found a solution that works for me and I hope will work for Adam and anyone else who runs into this problem.

I tracked down the performance issue (at least for me) to the antialiasing setting for the viewport (image attached). Turning it off made a huge difference. I now no longer experience any lag even on the more complex models and sketches.

The thing that still puzzles me is why there was such a performance degradation on sketches/constraints. The two don't seem related. Unless turning on antialiasing affects how accurately the sketch is calculated. Do you think this would be a bug of some sort?

Adam please give it a try on your system and see if it makes a difference.

Now to get on with some actual work 😛

Thanks,

Ibrahim

[cekuhnen · Accepted solution]

I would simply say either the code update the length of a line for example slows down Fusion and thus the interface redraw speed or simply the UI engine is bad.

I feel it seems rather to be the second because I have everything set to low and sometimes Fusion is a pain to work with specifically when you zoom in a lot.
Sketches seems to update faster when I am more zoomed out.

[Phil.E]

Yes, anti-aliasing is ON by default and will cause video performance issues. Ambient occlusion as well.

Anyone with performance issues should turn off unnecessary visual effects first.

[innovatenate]

In addition to disabling the effects in Fusion....

If this is on a Windows laptop with a discrete and an integrated video card, it may help to modify the Power Option in the Control Panel. Use the high performance settings for the performance plan.

You may also consider tuning the visual effects in the Windows OS for performance.

Configure Windows Visual Effects for Performance:

1. Open a Windows Explorer > Right Click on the Computer and select Properties or browse to Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\System
2. Select Advance System Settings
3. Select Settings in the Performance panel of the Advanced

4. In the Visual Effect tab, Select the Adjust for best performance radio box to clear all options
5. Next, Select the Custom tab and check 

• Show thumbnails instead of icons
• Use visual styles on windows and buttons

6. Apply and OK to change

How much dedicated video memory does your machine have? More is better... Could you attach a dxdiag report to this thread? 

1. Run C:\Windows\System32\dxdiag.exe

2. Select Save all information

3. Save the Dxdiag.txt file

4.  Upload to this thread

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,

[Phil.E]

Thanks for that reminder Nate!

If you are running Fusion on a MacBook Pro with a video card, you should check your power saver settings. When on Battery, the default is to turn off your video card and use the weak on board graphics chip instead. This can cause performance issues.

[IbrahimAltiay]

Hey Nate,

Cool thanks for the tips. I've got 2GB dedicated memory so I'm surprised I ran into an issue. Especially since it looks like anti aliasing in F360 is only 2x.

I emailed Nicholas about what I ran into on Windows 7 after I updated to v2.0.1300. The lag disappeared, until I restarted F360 then the lag returned haha. So it seems less of a resource issue.

Anyway this is expected this early in the products life and I'm very excited to see how Fusion 360 will develop over the next year.

Cheers,
Ibrahim

[NicolasXu]

Thanks for the video and the information, Ibrahim! It's very helpful for us to investigate the problem.

I'm working with Ibrahim to narrow down the problem, and will report back if any findings. 

Thanks,