Terrible performance in Fusion360

[fulcrumusa]

I've been working on my design for a while and it starting to make some pretty good progress. I am loving the interface and how easy it was to learn and get going (despite complaints to the contrary from a recent post :)).

However, as my design is getting more and more complex, Fusion's performance is just getting to the point of making Fusion intolerable. For the most part, it takes multiple seconds for the screen and/or UI to respond to commands. Even moving the Fusion360 window takes multiple seconds to repaint.

Take a look at the screen capture below to see what I am talking about:

What's worse is that Fusion isn't actually using the CPU that much, nor the memory. At most, the CPU usage by Fusion jumped to ~30%, ~40%. Such lag in the UI without CPU utilization spikes seems to be like the core UI design is just bad. What is Fusion360 doing when the UI is frozen for seconds at a time but the CPU is not being used? It's certainly not computing.

I understand that my design may be "special" as it contains dozens of components and dozens of joints. However, if you are really trying to position Fusion as the next best thing in CAD design, issues like this one should be non-existent. I am pretty sure that the Fusion design team didn't sit down and design Fusion as the next best thing... as long as you don't go overboard with components.

I would be more than happy to work with the Fusion devs to troubleshoot/debug this so they can improve the UI. I'll provide my design as a "load test", if needed. For me Fusion is just starting to get frustrating because something as simple as panning or rotating takes seconds.

[TrippyLighting]

That certainly seems unusual. I am noticing that you have a lot of joints in your assembly. A good way to reduce the number of individual joints and preventing those from cluttering up your assembles and the timeline is when inserting new components to use the align tool to align a  number of componnents and then use the rigid group joint as that alolows tou to rigid-join several components at the same time.

That is partuicularly useful if you have assemblies that are comprised of purchased parts and that are unlikely to change. For example the image that your screencast starts wiht has 8+ individual joints and you may be able to use 2-3 or even just one to tie them all together. This might also help some with performance.

[fulcrumusa]

I've stayed away from joints other than the normal ones because they don't seem to do the right thing if one of the components of the joint is moved, resized, or changed in any way. To the best of my knowledge the only joint type that updates itself when a component is updated is the normal joint. For example, if I use an as-built joint and then resize or move one of the components, the other component stays in it's original place.

Do rigid groups update themselves?

[fulcrumusa]

@TrippyLighting, I was thinking more about your suggestion of using rigid groups in the past few days. I have to be honest, at best, it feels like a workaround rather than a fix. If with rigid groups, it seems like the performance drop off will just be delayed. As the design gets more and more complex, even rigid groups won't help.

[Anonymous]

Would you mind posting the file here so we can check to see if the same issue happens on our computers?

[fulcrumusa]

I don't mind posting it for Autodesk developers to debug but I would like to avoid having to post it to the general public.

[Phil.E]

Hi,

Thanks for posting. There are several things we can do here: Check your data with our development environment to find the bottleneck, look at your data to see how many components/bodies you have, and also look into your graphics hardware to see if it is the problem.

Model:

I'll be happy to get a copy of this for our developers. Look for an email from me today. You can either invite me to the project, or export it as Fusion Archive and send back via email.

Graphics:

Can you go to ?Help menu and use the Graphics Diagnostic tool? Please paste the results back here if you don't mind.

Regarding component count:

Some users have a similar complaint when they have thousands of bodies in their design. As with any CAD program, there is an upper limit to capacity. We are always working to increase Fusion capacity, but like the other user you may have hit the limit. 

There is a text command to show total bodies and components.

1. Go to: View > Text Commands
2. Ensure TXT is the style of text command (radio button lower right)
3. Type component.count and press enter.
4. What are the results?

Thanks,

[fulcrumusa]

@Phil.E, thanks for the reply. I'll get most of the data you requested tonight.

I am not familiar with the "Development environment". Can you point me to some docs about using it? Thanks.

[fulcrumusa]

@Phil.E,

Thinking a bit more about this, I have a question: if my problems stem from too many components or too many joints, wouldn't that result in Fusion using up the CPU to do computations causing the lag? If the problems were caused by too many <insert item here>, I would expect the CPU usage to be spiking when Fusion is doing computations.

Why would the CPU usage stay fairly low? Furthermore, why would Fusion lag (up to seconds) when I am just panning or rotating? This just seems like a sleep/timeout loop was left somewhere in the code.

[Phil.E]

You would need to be a software developer working at Autodesk to have access to our development environment. 🙂

[Phil.E]

Actually it sounds like graphics to me, but I can give a more realistic answer after seeing your data in person.

Thanks, I'm out for the day so if you can get me access (one way or the other) I'll check on it first thing tomorrow.

Regards,

[fulcrumusa]

@Phil.E, sorry. I didn't read your reply carefully enough and I thought that I had access to the development tools.

Here is the component count:

Component.Counts
With Overrides: LeafOccurrences 511: Bodies 624: VisibleLeafOccurrences 511: VisibleBodies 624: LeafOccurrencesWithVisualMaterialOverrides 10: OccurrencesWithTransformOverides 280

I've invited you to the project and here I the graphics diagnostic info from one of my systems (I use two and both have the same performance issues):

[GPU Information]
GPU Device: NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M
GPU RAM: 2048 MB
GPU Driver API: DirectX 11.0
GPU Driver Version: 1.6.519
GPU Driver Date: 05/10/2016

[Graphics Effects Settings]
Anti Aliasing: On
Ambient Occlusion: On
Object Shadow: Off
Ground Shadow: On
Ground Reflection: Off
Selection Display Style: Normal
Transparency Effect: Better Performance

[Notes]
1. If you see any graphics display abnormalities, updating to the latest graphics card drivers could help resolve them; please check with your GPU vendors to download and install the latest graphics card drivers.

2. The effects could slow down the graphics rendering; try to limit them for optimum performance.

[Limit all effects to provide optimum performance]
Off

I'll paste the graphics settings from the other system shortly. I did also turn on the "Limit all effect to provide optimum performance" option and that did not change anything.

[fulcrumusa]

Here is the information from my other machine:

[GPU Information]
GPU Device: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570
GPU RAM: 1280 MB
GPU Driver API: DirectX 11.0
GPU Driver Version: 1.6.839
GPU Driver Date: 06/03/2016

[Graphics Effects Settings]
Anti Aliasing: On
Ambient Occlusion: On
Object Shadow: Off
Ground Shadow: On
Ground Reflection: Off
Selection Display Style: Normal
Transparency Effect: Better Performance

[Notes]
1. If you see any graphics display abnormalities, updating to the latest graphics card drivers could help resolve them; please check with your GPU vendors to download and install the latest graphics card drivers.

2. The effects could slow down the graphics rendering; try to limit them for optimum performance.

[Limit all effects to provide optimum performance]
Off

[Phil.E]

Hi,

Thanks for access to your project. However, I cannot find any design with the component count information you posted. Which design should I be looking at? I grabbed the closest thing I could find. When we find something I'll reply here again with results.

Also, for now you could try switching graphics driver to DX 9. (Preferences > Graphics Driver) and turning off Ambient Occlusion.

Check these settings:

• Do you have other running apps or dozens of open web pages? Anything that would slow down your machine graphics.
• Any old Wacom or 3D connexion drivers?
• Have you rebooted your machine lately? Does the problem happen after a fresh reboot?
• What about AV running, is there anything like that going on during these events?

Thanks,

[fulcrumusa]

@Phil.E,

The design in question is CNC v3. I might have added one or two more components after I grabbed the stats.

I can try DX9. Is DX11 expected to be performing worse?

No other applications are running. One machine does have a Wacom driver installed but the other one does not so it can't be that. Yes, both machines have gone through reboots and they still show the problem. The only AV that I have installed in MS Defender and it wasn't running at the time.

As you can see from the screencast posted in the first post, Fusion is the top consumer of CPU and it's only ~30%, so no other applications were stealing CPU cycles.

[Phil.E]

Actually, CNC v3 has hundreds fewer components than you reported, so I was afraid I was looking at a much more lightweight model. That being said, I'm only seeing graphics performance issues testing your file. I'm adding t-nuts and assembling them to the frame with joints. So far, only minor slowdowns and those were somewhat alleviated by turning off all graphics effects.

So I'm wondering what I'm missing here. Do you only see performance as the video shows after long sessions, or immediately after opening the model?

[hutchij]

Can you give me access to the model? I'd like to try it also. 

John

[fulcrumusa]

@Phil.E,

Hmm, I am not sure what is going on here then. When I got the component count, I opened the CNC v3 model, opened View -> Show Text Commands, and typed Components.count (in TXT mode). I'll create a screencast for what I am doing tonight so you can see the output that Fusion is showing.

For me, the performance degradation starts immediately.

[fulcrumusa]

I've re-organized the projects to hopefully make them a bit easier to understand and find. I'll still get the screencast of the component output.

[Phil.E]

If you like. I was just trying to be clear about the model in question.

I've logged a performance bug against your model CNC v3. There should be some feedback in a few days.

Also, I got to thinking and checked your CER reports. All but one of the 13 crashes you've reported since March are related to graphics. Yet, you don't have particularly bad cards. Looking at your model, it's not huge, but does have some parametric performance issues. So it could be either CPU or GPU or both, but we'll know more soon.

I'm going to ask product support to look at this case. My number one goal is to get you productive. They may have some suggestions.

Thanks,