Driving Joints Crash

[eltron247]

Quick intro: I've been using 360 for just over a year now and as my skills increase my utilization of the features have followed. As such, I'm now using the more Inventor related features, specifically, joints. Up until a couple days ago, I could use these with no problems whatsoever. However, now, I'm unable to drive any joints without crashing. 

Whats changed:

The only thing that has changed from being able to drive joints and now is that the model has become more complicated. As the modeling has continued, I've noticed that fusion has become increasingly unstable in general. I'm saving as often as I can to not loose progress. Not sure if those issues are related. 

What I've tried:

I've tried driving different joints in multiple types: revolute, slider, etc. 

I've updated my graphics driver. Disabled the more advanced graphics options, re-enabled etc.

Hiding some irrelevant components / Showing all components.

The model is about 75% complete but I cant continue without testing with these joints and I'm out of ideas. Any thoughts?

My system should be able to handle a few instances of 360 running without issue so I don't think this one is bringing my system to its knees; regardless, I'm including my NFO for reference in hopes that it helps. (I was disallowed from uploading an NFO file so I converted to txt.)

Thanks!

[eltron247]

This is one of the CER's. Forgot to add one.
CER_133814988

[jeff_strater]

Thank you, @eltron247, for sharing the CER info.  I found this CER and yes, the crash does seem to be related to Drive Joints.

Would it be possible for you to share your model with our dev team, so that we can see in more detail what is causing the crash?  You represent most of the crashes in this bucket, so we suspect that it may be data-specific, but it would be good to verify this.

If you don't feel comfortable posting this here, you can just invite me ([email protected]) to your project, and indicate which design is showing this problem.

Thanks, and we apologize for the crash, and hope to have an answer for your soon.

Jeff

[eltron247]

Its a client project so I'll invite you in.

Its the "Trial 2" project.

[jeff_strater · Accepted solution]

Thanks, @eltron247.  I am able to reproduce the crash.  We will investigate this crash.

What I found after looking at the design, is, if I do a "Compute All":

afterward I can use Drive Joints on all the examples that I tried.  Can you try this to see if it helps you?

Also, just as an aside, I see that you have used Revolute joints for a bunch of set screw components.  That should certainly be OK, but if you don't really need to show those set screws turning, I would be tempted to just use a rigid joint or a rigid group to position those components.  It might help your assembly solve performance.

Jeff

[eltron247]

"Compute All" seems to have solved the problem. Thanks Jeff.

What exception would this be solving as I'm not sure what compute all does behind the scenes that wouldn't normally be happening.

[eltron247]

For anyone else who may have, then stumble on this issue here, this link helps explain further:

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/fusion-360/learn-explore/caas/video/youtube/watch-v-mB4y1-SbO...

[jeff_strater]

Glad to hear this this helped.

Your question about why this helps is a good one.  Compute All just goes back to the very beginning of the design and computes each feature, sketch, construction geometry, joints, etc., one at a time.  The reason why this sometimes helps is that Fusion computes a lot of secondary data along the way:  cached geometry, references, etc, and re-computing all the features will re-populate that secondary data.  If it happens that the crash occurs because of this secondary data, Compute All can prevent the crash.  

One minor, very subtle distinction that is duiscussed in the video you reference:  Using the "VCR controls" on the timeline:

to do a "Rewind" followed by a "Play" to replay all the features is not exactly the same operation as Compute All.  The reasons are obscure and internal, but just know that it is a different mechanism, and may not fix problems such as this.

Jeff

[jeff_strater · Accepted solution]

A followup.  Our dev team took a look at your design (thank you for sharing it with us, we will keep it confidential), and we will put in some guards so that Fusion does not crash in this situation in the future.  We still don't know how the design got into this state, and we will keep looking for ideas there, but it's good to know that this should not cause a crash in the future, once this fix is in.  Every little fix like this helps improve Fusion.

Jeff