BUG: Parametric data and history gone. Objects turned in a base feature!

[markusbarnes]

Today, I started up Fusion 360 to make an edit to my model.  For some reason, my timeline looked a lot shorter than normal. To my horror, Fusion 360 flattened most of my features into a single base feature!

Event Horizon

I suspect this happened when I used the press pull and it turned into the offset faces tool.  Did Fusion 360 implicitly flattened the features without my consent?  What's going on here?  Now I have no way to make edits to my models past a certain point.  I assume it's gone for good unless I revert to an older revision.

Inside black hole. All my parametric information gone, emitted as hawking radiation

A drug test is in good order for the responsible engineer who thought it would be cute to pay homage to Stephen Hawking by turning it into an astrophysics simulator.  He or she got a bit carried away with the timeline concept and implemented an event horizon sending my critical modeling information past the point of no return into a black hole.   The parametric information has been emitted as hawking radiation and the basic atomic elements making up my model are all fused together into bigger atomic elements.  

So is this what Autodesk really means by the name Fusion 360?  Will there be a companion product called Fission 360 to reverse this nucleogenesis?  For now, I have to make a quantum leap to another parallel universe by reverting my model to a point before the black hole was created.

[Phil.E]

Hi,

Sorry to hear of this trouble. We certainly don't want to create any worm holes, black holes, or quantum jumps in your data. 

There are only a few ways to do this. One is to convert a feature to a DM feature. The other is to turn off history for the entire model.

My guess is you accidentally  clicked "convert to DM feature" whilst right clicking in the timeline. It's right next to Roll History Marker Here. This command is designed to do exactly what you experienced.

Sorry for the trouble. Please let me know if I can assist further.

Regards,

[lichtzeichenanlage]

Never had a problem like this. And as shown in the screencast the press / pull -> face offset feature does not transfer anything into a base feature. Why should it? For me it looks like, that you've called Do not capture history

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@markusbarneswrote:... A drug test is in good order for the responsible engineer...

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And as a as a software architect and developer I mostly have only one thought when I read statements like yours:  A fool with a tool is still a fool.

[markusbarnes]

Please do not let me waste my time if Autodesk's software engineering philosophy relies on blaming the user as artfully articulated by Autodesk's faithful collaborator and forum henchman, lichtzeichenanlage.   In my case, it is tantamount to blaming a consumer for touching exposed wiring on a toaster. I may have indeed turned on the Direct Modeling feature, but its consequences are unacceptable. Why would anyone want to permanently delete modeling data with no way of undoing it? This is clearly a bug with the same criticality of a data loss crash.

Whatever is happening in the DM mode, it shouldn't require flattening preceding operations. How about collecting the DM operations in a single timeline operation that leaves the history before and after it intact?  If for some technical reason it can't be done, how about simply storing the state as a plain revision before committing the operation and restoring it upon an undo or deleting a DM? In this case, Fusion 360 would simply delete the DM operation and merge in the previous operations from the stored state. The user is warned if any operation is likely to fail due to the missing DM feature. You already have the code to do this.

As an added benefit, a similar scheme could be also employed for all other operations which can hang the application. Currently, if an extrusion becomes unresponsive during a preview, killing the process results in an unrecoverable data loss because the state of the model wasn't saved beforehand. 

[Phil.E]

@markusbarnes I should have mentioned I logged an improvement request to throw a warning to the user if they invoke the command. There is also now a conversation started about the relevance of the command. Thanks for pointing out how easy it is to get into trouble with that command. Personally I don't find any use for it either and think it could be removed.

If you have any more concerns, please don't hesitate to tell me.

Regards,

[lichtzeichenanlage]

You're rough to people by calling them junkie and then you are complaining that you get an equivalent answer. Oh boy... 

As an responsable user you're hitting save between important steps, right? Smart! Do you know, that Fusion 360 not simply overwrites your file in the cloud but creates individual versions per save. So you can just role back. Yes - this means you might lose a bit of your work but because you're saving in important situations this shouldn't hit you to hard. And because you're writing comments during the save interaction, you should be able to find a got point in the history to continue. 

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@markusbarneswrote:

Please do not let me waste my time if Autodesk's software engineering philosophy relies on blaming the user as artfully articulated by Autodesk's faithful collaborator and forum henchman, lichtzeichenanlage.   In my case, it is tantamount to blaming a consumer for touching exposed wiring on a toaster. I may have indeed turned on the Direct Modeling feature, but its consequences are unacceptable. Why would anyone want to permanently delete modeling data with no way of undoing it? This is clearly a bug with the same criticality of a data loss crash.

Whatever is happening in the DM mode, it shouldn't require flattening preceding operations. How about collecting the DM operations in a single timeline operation that leaves the history before and after it intact?  If for some technical reason it can't be done, how about simply storing the state as a plain revision before committing the operation and restoring it upon an undo or deleting a DM? In this case, Fusion 360 would simply delete the DM operation and merge in the previous operations from the stored state. The user is warned if any operation is likely to fail due to the missing DM feature. You already have the code to do this.

As an added benefit, a similar scheme could be also employed for all other operations which can hang the application. Currently, if an extrusion becomes unresponsive during a preview, killing the process results in an unrecoverable data loss because the state of the model wasn't saved beforehand. 

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[laughingcreek]

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@Phil.E wrote:

...There is also now a conversation started about the relevance of the command. ... Personally I don't find any use for it either and think it could be removed.

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PLEASE DON'T REMOVE IT!!  I don't need it for the vast majority of what I do.   But when I do use, it it's invaluable to be able to mix the parametric and DM fusion worlds.

[davebYYPCU]

How about collecting the DM operations in a single timeline operation that leaves the history before and after it intact?

Thats exactly how it works.  Keep history Create a Base Feature, turns history off, until you finish the base feature, becomes a timeline feature, can be reopened, edited, closed, exactly the same procedure for sketches, no history in sketches either.

When selecting Do not capture history as a permanent intention, you get the warning.

@Phil.E I am with @laughingcreek on this one, please don't touch it, it ain't broke.

[Phil.E]

@davebYYPCU@laughingcreek How funny, I apparently am alone in my opinion. I never use it, and due to that my imagination is lacking. I'm glad it helps your workflows! It's going nowhere.

That is the mark of good design and good tools, you never have to explain them. Because this is seldom a topic of contention on these boards (please correct me if I'm wrong, I don't read everything here) I incorrectly assumed it was seldom used. Thanks for commenting.

Regards,

[johnmarianhoffman]

I  want to bump  this. I could've easily triggered this (problem exists between keyboard and chair), but there's a user-interface design issue at play.

This is the second time I've had the same issue in 24 hours. All components get converted to a "base feature" at some point, which ruins the state of my design and requires rolling back.  I have no idea where or why, where or how this happens.  Such a large operation should at least prompt the user before execution (which like I said, easily could've been triggered by me, but now I have to roll back multiple versions and redo all the work I did after the conversion occurred). 

Because there was no prompt, I have absolutely no idea how long ago this might've occurred.

Is this an issue with the "personal" version if the history gets too long?  I could definitely be doing something, but I definitely didn't click the "convert to dm" for each component so it's not clear where the provided solution would've occurred. I think there could be a bug or something be done quietly/too easily with a keystroke that's messing us up.

Please consider a modal prompt like "this will merge history items and remove the parametric history for these components."  And then if someone is using the feature heavily offer a "do not show this message again." or something.   Whatever is happening now is very very frustrating.

[johnmarianhoffman · Accepted solution]

An update from my end:

I was able to track my issue down to a 3rd party add-in that was converting my history quietly behind the scenes (wtf? seriously who thought that was acceptable).

I feel like this still supports the point though that maybe a prompt would prevent confusion about when this sort of history-deletion is occurring.  For me, b/c I wasn't aware this was occurring, I just kept happily designing and now need to revert/redo a bunch of stuff.

[laughingcreek]

what is the third party add-in?

[johnmarianhoffman]

https://apps.autodesk.com/FUSION/en/Detail/Index?id=9083755511600138982&os=Mac&appLang=en

I left a review highlighting the problem, but it hasn't been posted yet.