topic Re: Circular dependency found in Fusion Design, Validate & Document Forum

Circular dependency found

IanMantula — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 19:53:14 GMT

I have somehow managed to create a 'circular dependency' in a relatievely complex component. I know that I could roll back to a previous version, but how would this happen in the first place?

It seems to be impossible to run through the timeline to see where the problem is. Also the error message 'Circular dependency found' is less than helpful!

Ian

Re: Circular dependency found

TrippyLighting — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 20:12:57 GMT

That is a hard to answer question without even so much as a screen shot 😉 It would even be better if you could simply share the project file so we can look at it ans perhaps make sggestions.

Re: Circular dependency found

IanMantula — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 23:07:10 GMT

@TrippyLighting

Here's the missing screenshot showing the problem component.

This shows the component as it was looking before this problem:

I'll share this too. Thanks for any suggestions.

Ian

Re: Circular dependency found

IanMantula — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 23:36:57 GMT

Here's the link...
http://a360.co/1HP3fjt

Re: Circular dependency found

TrippyLighting — Sat, 25 Jul 2015 01:23:56 GMT

I've downloaded you file and the first thing I see is that there are no components in the file. You nave tried to neatly organize and name your objects and thats great. If you are adding components as another way to organize your work you'll be in excellent shape.

The first thing you should to is to read this in the Fusion 360 learning resources.

This screencast is from April but it also provides a few hints of the advantages of components. I am to time constrained to create a new one at the moment.

Once you're done with that you'll likey realize that you've got some work to do but I can guarantee you it'll be much easier going forward if you re-organize your work. I started with Fusion 360 in November last year and re-designed the lighting system in the screencast three times from scratch before I had it where I wanted it.

Re: Circular dependency found

Anonymous — Sat, 25 Jul 2015 02:49:09 GMT

Hey Ian, it looks like you are using linked components, but I believe you can't share the assembly model as Fusion 360 currently stands now (you could if you want invite me to the project in the data panel, by under the People tab entering my Email jjurbanus5@yahoo.com). There was a bug mentioned a little while back where a kind of circular dependency caused freezeup, as mentioned here:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/design-and-documentation/copy-paste-linked-component-body/m-p/5697294/highlight/true#M26875

You could of course break the link for the time being until can figure out where that circular dependency is coming from.

Good luck!

Jesse

Re: Circular dependency found

Anonymous — Sat, 25 Jul 2015 02:50:33 GMT

BTW, that's a rad looking manifold system!

Re: Circular dependency found

TrippyLighting — Sat, 25 Jul 2015 02:51:05 GMT

The curcular reference also happens in the model without the linked components/assemblies.

Re: Circular dependency found

Anonymous — Sat, 25 Jul 2015 03:28:18 GMT

Ah I see it, after computing all. It looks like it's arising from Combine3, resolving if that is deleted from the timeline (I isolated that by just deleting everything further and further back into the timeline until it resolved). So Ian if you could scrub the timeline back to that (the timeline event names will appear when hovering over them with mouse cursor) and maybe redo whatever that combine needed to involve? Looks like you'll have to also redo or reassign some things like fillets that depend on that combine. Would be interested to know why that combine got broke though.

Jesse

Re: Circular dependency found

IanMantula — Sat, 25 Jul 2015 08:05:09 GMT

@Anonymous, @TrippyLighting

Thanks for all of the useful comments. I'll work through all of the possiblities and report back.

Regarding the comment that there are no components in the design, well that's because this is a single cast and machined component. When its complete there will be just one body. It's an existing object that I'm trying to draw as accurately as possible - using it as a learning exercise too.

Re: Circular dependency found

TrippyLighting — Sat, 25 Jul 2015 10:08:06 GMT

That's a heck of a casting! Would you have a few photos of it how it looks complete ?

Re: Circular dependency found

IanMantula — Sat, 25 Jul 2015 11:26:31 GMT

This is the real casting after powder coating. It's from a 4.6 litre Range Rover V8 ungine that I'm fitting into my Marcos Mantula two seat sports car. More information here: Marcos Mantula blog.

The plan is to model the entire engine installation as I have a lot items to reposition and systems to design. I only want to do the job once, so it should be far easier and cheaper to make all the mistakes and rework in the Fusion 360 environment than on the actula car.

Re: Circular dependency found

Anonymous — Sat, 25 Jul 2015 14:24:44 GMT

Hey Ian, you sure have plenty of ambition, that's awesome!

Re: Circular dependency found

jeff_strater — Sat, 25 Jul 2015 14:53:15 GMT

Thanks for sharing that model. The circular dependency should not happen, definitely. We will investigate this and see if we can figure out why this happened and block this in the future.

We apologize for the somewhat cryptic error message, and lack of feedback about where the cycle is. We thought we had all the paths blocked to create these cycles. Apparently not...

Jeff Strater (Fusion development)

Re: Circular dependency found

jeff_strater — Sat, 25 Jul 2015 15:14:52 GMT

thanks, @Anonymous for the debugging head start! Knowing that the problem feature is Combine3 will help a lot.

Jeff

Re: Circular dependency found

IanMantula — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 11:28:20 GMT

I worked through the complete design and deleting the broken Combine3 got me back on track. However there were a some strange side-effects such as a few missing fillets. Is it possible for an error like this to actually delete steps from the timeline?

Ian

Re: Circular dependency found

Anonymous — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 13:33:46 GMT

Glad to hear that Ian! I definitely noticed that there were several fillets and what not that depended on that combined body, so when the combine was deleted, the stuff that depended on it is going to break. It looks like in the previous version of Fusion 360, upon deleting the Combine3, the dependent stuff also got deleted automatically, but that in the current Fusion version, the dependent stuff is not automatically deleted, and shows up as broken (which can then be deleted manually).

One way I identified at least some of the dependent timeline features before deleting Combine3, was to right click on Combine3 and choose Suppress.

Will be interesting to see how your project progresses!

Jesse

Re: Circular dependency found

zhuravliki — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 18:07:05 GMT

The problem is not resolved, generally speaking.

It happened to me multiple times. It is very annoying Fusion 360 bug:

When Fusion becomes busy for different reason (auto-saving, calculating, redrawing...) any click on any timeline element causes this element, and everything related to it on the timeline, disappearance. Then, 'Circular Dependence' error pops up. I have no idea why left mouse click on the timeline causes the deletion of the elements or features, but it happens to me three - four times a week. It does not affecting simple models just because the Fusion background actions delay is very short on them, and it is very hard to hit timeline element exactly at the same time. For the real models with multiple bodies and not 'just two spheres and one cubic' geometry, Fusion freezes for 5 - 15 seconds every five minutes or more often for performing auto operations. It is very easy to click on the timeline element exactly at that time and create the mess in your model. Undo helps sometimes in such cases, but most of the time you need to close the design without saving and reopen it again. You will be very lucky if you saved the normal copy recently.

It is very frustrating Fusion 360 modeling, with enabled timeline, flaw.

Re: Circular dependency found

jeff_strater — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 18:30:22 GMT

thank you, @zhuravliki for this observation (here and in this thread: double-click-of-timeline-entry-which-does-cut-paste-to-create). I think that this gives us valuable information about how to re-create the circular dependency problem. We will try to use this information to see if we can re-create the circular dependency problem - selecting a timeline entry when Fusion is busy. This may also explain another phenomenon that we have been seeing from customers - sometimes just selecting a timeline entry does a feature reorder, even if no drag is done. I think these are related.

Regarding the "Fusion freezes for 5 - 15 seconds every five minutes or more often for performing auto operations" observation: Most likely, what this is is Fusion generating a "recovery file" for the current design. You can control how often this happens, by adjusting this preference. You can see that I have mine set to 20 minutes. Of course, there is some danger to this, as you may lose up to 20 minutes of work if Fusion crashes. I get around this by doing an explicit save fairly often, at a point in time where the design is in a good state, and I know I can afford the save time interruption (I will check email, get coffee, etc). Just something to think about.

Re: Circular dependency found

zhuravliki — Fri, 26 Jul 2019 17:34:20 GMT

Thank you, Jeff.

I hope, my information will help your team find and eliminate this very annoying bug in Fusion.

Thank you again for your fast response and support.

Sergey Juravlev