F360 Stability

[george]

Just a general question to everyone. Over the last few weeks I've noticed that F360 crashes more than usual. There are also many times that I leave F360 open and let my machine go to sleep overnight. Now every morning I find that F360 has crashed.

I'm not sure if this is something with my computer or if others have noticed more problems than usual.

[Beyondforce]

I haven't experienced anything like that. I'll check the display driver, event logs and I wouldn't not leave the computer on for so many hours. Computers are not servers, they are not designed to be on 24/7!

Check your computer event log and make sure your display driver is up to date.

Ben.

[george]

Hi Ben,

Well I've run my workstations/computers/servers 24/7 since the dawn of ages and I don't have issues but I guess we can agree to disagree on this one, no bad feeling here.

I did a little more digging and it seems that ntdll.dll is the module that is causing the faults and I see that Microsoft updated it on 9/2/16 which I bet coincides with when I started noticing problems.

I run Win7 x64 Ultimate in case the Autodesk folks want to look into this or if I'm just the unlucky one.

George

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@Customgeo wrote:

.....let my machine go to sleep overnight. ...

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Given the experience I have had in the past - I always close down Fusion when I am not using it for more than a few minutes, and especially when setting the box to sleep at night.

(running Win 10 here, but used to run Fusion on Win7 years ago)

[Beyondforce]

it's good you found out the problem ☺

[george]

Well I found what appears to be the cause of the problem but since ntdll.dll was updated as part of a security patch (or at least I believe it was) I'm hesitant to roll back to an earlier version of ntdll.dll.

I'm curious to see if I'm alone on this issue or if anyone else has noticed anything odd.

[TrippyLighting]

I rarely keep turn my iMac off. The machine is a iMac i7 from mid 2010. I either put it to sleep with the usual key combo, or I let it goto sep on it's own.

It is not unusual that I have not rebooted the thing for a month, or two. The only rare reboot is for some of the OS upgrades and the 3D Connexion 3D mouse driver.

There was a bug a while back (6-8 months ?) on the mac platform that prevented Fusion to come back up but since that has been fixed I can work on Fusion 360 without a hitch even the left open overnight.

I am writing this, however, while waiting for Fusion 360 to recover from...well..I don't know. It's been stalling many times over the last 2 weeks, meaning I try to complete a joint and the animation stops and the SPOD comes up and never finishes the operation, so I have to force quit it. (CER_136333278). I've sent 6-7 or more reports.

[jeff_strater]

Thanks for the input, everyone.  Interesting theory about the update to ntdll.dll as being part of the problem.  I'm not aware of any pattern of an update to this DLL causing crashes, but it is certainly possible.  Have you been sending in crash reports?  If so, I can take a look and see if there is any pattern to the crashes that you've been experiencing, but I have to be on the Autodesk network to do that - it may be till tomorrow till I get a chance to do that.

Also, a question:  Have your recent crashes been with a variety of models, or mostly with one model.  If there is a Fusion bug that a particular model reveals, and you spend a lot of time working with that model, then it can seem like Fusion is crashing more frequently than it used to.  I've experienced that myself.

Finally, regarding letting Fusion run for long periods of time:  I tend to let Fusion run for a while (like all weekend), but I have trained myself to shut it down before I put the computer to sleep, mostly because of the problems that @TrippyLighting refers to where Fusion used to crash a lot on wakeup if it was running when you put the computer to sleep.  It should not be necessary - that bug has been fixed (we hope!), but now that I've gotten used to doing that I just do it out of habit.  I also shut down Outlook before I put the machine to sleep, also because of some bad experiences in the past, FWIW...

Jeff

[george]

Hi Jeff,

If Fusion crashes while I'm using it I always send the reports. For those crashes I'm not sure if the underlying reason was related to ntdll.dll or not. When Fusion crashes during sleep (or going into sleep) it's more of a Windows crash and Fusion doesn't ask to send a report.

I have been working one one project recently but it's made of many components that were created as separate files and then brought in. I'm on the fence about whether that was the best approach or not but that's another discussion. I don't think the troubles I'm seeing are related to a particular model or project but I don't have any concrete evidence to prove that. Perhaps the crash reports I did submit would say something about that.

I still do a lot of experimenting inside Fusion and sometimes I get to a point where I'm not sure if I really want to save what I've done. It's a bad habit I know but that's what leads me to just leaving Fusion open for several days. I had similar troubles several months ago (or maybe last year) but one of the updates fixed that and for a long time I was able to leave Fusion open and never had an issue. With so many Fusion updates combined with all the Microsoft updates I wouldn't be surprised if something  changed that caused my issues. 

FWIW I NEVER close Outlook email and it doesn't pose a problem for me. I could go weeks without a reboot so in general I feel my system is fairly stable.

[jeff_strater]

Hi @george,

When you send in crash reports, are you filling in the email field?  Or, do you have more than one Autodesk account you are using?  I did a crash report search, and only see one crash from you in the past 30 days, back on Sept 7.  That crash bucket has a few entries in it, about one every other day.  So, I don't suspect that this is the crash that you are seeing often.

It should be fine to leave Fusion open for long periods of time, as far as I know.  If there are any problems, they will occur when you activate Fusion after sleep, etc.  Doing this should not, as far as I know, affect Fusion running once it is up and going.

Jeff

[george]

Hi @jeff_strater

I usually just hit the send report button and come to think of it I don't think it defaults to including your email address. If you can search by IP address you might find 76.xxx.xx.168

Thanks,

George