Best Method for "Suppressing/Disabling" Mesh Bodies in a Large Assembly

GabeTL — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 17:10:33 GMT

I've got a bit of an odd problem, and I was hoping to get a few ideas for an optimal solution. I have a large assembly with several large mesh bodies in it. Whenever I open the assembly, my CPU usage goes to 100% and Fusion freezes for a couple minutes while loading the assembly. Once loaded, everything works okay, but Fusion uses a lot of memory (25GB+). I found out that the problem is the large mesh files because when I delete them, the CPU usage does not go to 100% and Fusion does not freeze when loading, and it uses much less memory (12GB [still a large assembly]).

The problem I have is that I want a way to suppress/disable/remove the bodies such that they do not use resources when working in the large assembly, but I have the option of unsupressing/reenabling if I need to view them in the context of the large assembly again. Currently, the meshes are in a separate component that is inserted into an internal sub-assembly in the main assembly. I have tried suppressing the components, removing the components, and moving them to the end of the timeline and rolling back the history. None of those options seem to make any difference in the assembly performance. The only thing that makes a difference is actually deleting the components out of the main assembly completely. However, when I do that, I lose the ability to quickly add the components back in without having to add them back in one at a time and reposition them.

At this point, I'm open to any ideas that anyone has that would work. I was thinking perhaps moving all the mesh body components to an external assembly that goes in the main assembly and seeing if suppressing or removing that assembly would work, but if it's not working with the individual components, I'm not sure if moving to a single assembly would help.

P.S., I won't be able to share my model for IP reasons unfortunately, but I'll try any suggestions.

Re: Best Method for "Suppressing/Disabling" Mesh Bodies in a Large Assembly

GabeTL — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 22:10:00 GMT

For anyone interested, I seemed to have found a workaround. I created a new internal component in the assembly, and then moved all the mesh bodies to it. Then, I performed a "Save Copy As" on the new internal assembly. Then, I deleted the assembly and all the mesh body components. The new external assembly has the same origin as the main assembly, and it contains all the mesh body components in the positions they were at in the main assembly.

When I need to look at the mesh bodies in the context of the main assembly, I drop in the now external assembly containing just the mesh bodies. Of course, inserting this assembly drives the CPU usage to 100% and adds a dozen or so GB to the ram usage, but since I'm only doing it when I (seldom) need to reference the mesh bodies, it's acceptable and much preferred to keeping them in the main assembly. Then, when I'm done referencing the mesh bodies, I delete the external assembly back out of the main assembly, or just close without saving changes.

Ultimately, this solution is workable. However, I feel like there should be an easier way to have these meshes in the assembly without having to actually reinsert and delete them every time. I know in SolidWorks, when you suppress a component or assembly, it completely ignores it and does not use any resources for it. Fusion obviously does not, especially seeing how if you hover over a suppressed external component in the timeline, it shows a graphical ghost of it in the assembly.

If anyone has a better solution, or if Fusion has another method of "suppressing" a component to actually ignore it, please let me know. I feel like there has to be a better way, but I haven't managed to stumble upon it by myself yet. I'll update this thread if I do though.

topic Re: Best Method for "Suppressing/Disabling" Mesh Bodies in a Large Assembly in Fusion Design, Validate & Document Forum

Best Method for "Suppressing/Disabling" Mesh Bodies in a Large Assembly

Re: Best Method for "Suppressing/Disabling" Mesh Bodies in a Large Assembly