Extremely poor performance when displaying imported SVG text (Outlines)

[bensbenz]

I created an SVG file that has the outlines of text that I want to engrave, and when I bring it into fusion the whole program becomes so slow its unusable. If I toggle the sketch off that contains the outlines, its back to normal. Once I have finally managed to get the text in place, if I make an extrude of it and toggle off the sketch everything runs fine. The problem is that its so slow to start with that its almost impossile to get it scaled and positioned. I have checked my system resources and it doesnt appear to be taxing my machine at all. I have tried other suggestions on the forum such as disabling effects and updating my graphics driver but nothing helps. I am able to accomplish pretty much the same exact thing in SW running in a VM on the same machine with better performance, so its got to be fusion. I really need to resolve this as its something I will be doing a lot of in the near future.

Thanks

Just FYI my machine specs are:

GPU: Geforce GTX 750Ti

CPU: i7-3770 @ 3.4GHz 

Memory: 16GB

Driver Version: 347.52

OS: Windows 8.1 Pro

[MichaelAubry]

Hi Benjamin,

Yes, heavy svg files can bog Fusion down pretty quickly.  What I do typically is I import my svg file and just extrude the profiles wherever they import just to get solid bodies and get out of sketching mode.  Then I turn off the sketch (as you noted which will speed things up again).  Then, I do my edits, scales, moves and manipulations in the solid modeling environment and I use Combine to boolean cut away geometry with solid bodies instead of futzing to get a sketch overtop where I need it to use Extrude.  It's a lot easier and quicker for me.

Does that help? Here's one I did this weekend:

[Anonymous]

If I recall, Fusion uses the 3d solver to handle 2d sketch entities so it gets slow with complex geometry while other CAD programs would handle the data gracefully. I know they have their reasons for doing this, but I hope they reconsider, or at least have an option for making a sketch "true 2d" or something.

[bensbenz]

Thanks for the info. I tried it like you said and unfortunatly it didnt really help. Your drawing is a lot less complex, mine is 23 characters arranged around a circle, so that ends up with a ton of solid bodies. I also have a heck of a time selecting\unselecting parts of the sketch, like I want to unselect the middle of certain letters like D and O but half the time it works and have the time it doesnt. Just seems so stinking buggy its not worth the time. I am also unsure as to how I scale all those solid bodys as one, once they are converted, how do you do that?

[MichaelAubry]

That's a lot of shapes! One idea, if you aren't doing so already, make sure you're using selection filtering to make your sketch profile selection easier.  Just select sketch profiles:

That will make it so you're only selecting different sketch profiles and you won't have to sort between other things like edges or body faces that you don't want.  That will likely speed up your graphics refresh rates a bit too.

Hope that helps.

Mike

[bensbenz]

Hi Michael, sorry for the delay I have had a busy week. While that does make it easier to select things, unfortunately it doesn't really help with the issue. I have had to go back to my old way of doing things with the old software, as I have to get work done not fuss with the tools. Why cant we bring in a DWG? That's how I do it now with the other software and its great, import the DWG as a sketch, and move it into position and done, it even keeps the proper scale. I have tried uploading the drawing in DWG but it just fails every time. This is sort of a big issue for me because I end up doing at least a bit of engraving on almost every part I make.

[cekuhnen]

Michael I think there is no other way around than fixing the performance problem with SVG. It is a guarantee for painful experiences.

Maybe when importing SVG you guys can offer a turn solver off option to accelerate the screen refresh rate.

[Anonymous]

bensbenz, welcome to the FUTURE OF CAD/CAM!

[prabakarm]

Hi Bensbenz,

Would you be able send us your SVG and DWG file?  It will be helpful for us to investigate the problem.

Thanks,

Prabakar.

[bensbenz]

How do you want me to send it, attach it here or send to the support email?

[prabakarm]

Please attach it to this thread.  Thanks.

Prabakar.

[bensbenz]

Prabakar, attached are both the SVG and DWG that I have been trying to use. It seems even your forums dont like SVG so I have zipped them both, lol.

Thanks,

Benjamin

[TrippyLighting]

I am not sure it would make such a difference whether you are using a DWG or a SVG. It's the number of elements/objects in a file that seems to slow down the sketch performance in Fusion 360.

[prabakarm]

Thanks.  The team is looking into it, will keep you posted on the investigation and solution.

[bensbenz]

I also don't think it will make a difference in speed of the program, I was just hoping that the DWG would keep the correct scale, thus eliminating the extra and buggy step of having to scale the SVG in the drawing.

[jeff_strater]

Hi bensbenz,

It seems that there are at least two problems here:

1. performance when the svg is inserted
2. the DWG does not work with Extrude - I was able to successfully import the DWG, and it creates the sketches appropriately, but the profiles are not recognized.

we are investigating both of these problems.  For the performance issue, what operations in particular are you experiencing "usuable" performance?  We just want to make sure that we are investigating the right areas.  I have found that sketch operations such as Move is slow.  But, I don't seem to see much slowdown in other modeling operations or viewing operations.  Is that your experience as well?

One trick that can help is to temporarily hide the profiles from the sketch:

using your design, with profiles hidden, I've found the performance to be pretty good.  Then, turn profiles back on before you want to Extrude.  Give it a try and see if that helps get you past these issues while we do some tuning.

Jeff Strater (Fusion development)

[bensbenz]

Hi Jeff, With the SVG on the screen I cant even really move around, let alone work with it. If I am super patient, I can move it and scale it, but its so slow I end up moving too far, or making something too big, its very frustrating. I tried with the profiles hidden it and while its slightly faster it really doesn't help all that much. I have done a screen capture and posted to youtube so you can see what I am talking about. http://youtu.be/Uy5VkkhEL0c

[Anonymous]

It might be too much of a pain, but for super large/complicated svg files, you could of course break it up into two or more in the program you created it in, possibly using layers, or just selecting what you want to export as svg if you can.  You could have one or two common registration points, so that in Fusion each sketch could be properly registered/aligned with the others via some common point, but only working with one sketch visible at a time. 

[cekuhnen]

Breaking it up is truely a duable workaround but this adds more work than one should have to do.

In the end the sketch engine should improve with dealing with SVG imported data - thats the main problem.

I would also love the ability to have imported SVG or DWG being editable - Rhino easily does that with DWG.

Fusion does not and thats is a major limitation at the moment. For lines this is all fine, but curves etc. it is.

But this rolls back to the problem that Fusion at the moment does not offer CV curves.

[bensbenz]

I agree, if I need to start doing all sorts of work arounds, I will just keep using the other software. I really wanted to have a one for all solution but since theres no turning support yet either I still have to keep using it anyways. Using SW, this process is as eazy as bringing in a DWG as a 2d sketch, copying it into my part, and snap positioning it into place, about 2 minutes. The file comes in exactly as it was created, no fussing about. I just want to get work done, not have to play with work arounds for something that should be very easy to do.