Fusion 360 on 5K display

[lollol13]

Hi,

I'm experiencing some lag when I'm using Fusion 360 on my MacBook Pro 15" late 2016 with a Radeon Pro 460.

On the main laptop screen, it's OK, but on the Ultrafine 5K display, it's much less responsive, and sometimes laggy (eg. right click menu appear and then disappear instantly). This even with Fusion 360 not in full screen.

I'm in OpenGL Core profile, transparency effect set to better performance, selection display "simple".

I don't know which graphic card it used to display on the 5K display. If by default it's the Iris 530, I can understand the lag. But the 460 Pro should be ok... or not?

[innovatenate]

Welcome to the Fusion Community!

Have you tried the Open in Low Resolution option?

Also, does the Limit Effects to to optimize performance option help?

Perhaps this setting could resolve

Thanks,

[sambirchenough]

Same..

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/design-validate-document/mac-right-click-menu-ui-lag/td-p/6834274

It sucks. For my needs, the performance of the new maxed out MBP with external display isn't enough to be my main machine like I was hoping. I get thermal throttling after an hour of Fusion 360 use in clamshell mode. I have a hunch that a good part of that is software related though, I think there's some resource usage inefficiencies in Fusion 360 for Mac (especially lately).

Btw it's definitely using your dGPU when using the external display or even Fusion 360 on the MBP display. You can always see what GPU is being used by going to the "Energy" tab in Activity Monitor.

[TrippyLighting]

I've read several times about of the last couple of weeks that performance is lacking on apparently newer MacBook Pro's.

While I always thought that my mid 2010 iMac i7 27" is getting a little  long in the teeth, maybe I need to hold on to it for another two years or so 😉

[sambirchenough]

Hardware specs of the new 15" MBPs should, in my opinion, be more than enough for normal model / sculpt / patch workflows in Fusion 360 with reasonably complex models (medium assemblies). Excluding some Fusion 360 UI lag (which worsens greatly with my 4k external display), performance is satisfactory. Like I said, I think this lag is mostly software problem. It seems like Fusion 360s resource usage could be optimized.

I have a 12 core machine for rendering (spec's below) and Fusions UI lag is much worse on that computer. I'm going to begrudgingly buy a better GPU for it to see if that fixes things. If not, I think I'll have to bite the bullet and get a 2013 MP. I need the cores and I am going to try and stick it out with Mac OS for a bit longer. It kills me that the only option is to spend that kind of money on 2012 technology..

[lollol13]

Hi

Thanks!

i will try this.

but obviously me and sambirchenough seem to have the same issue, and an Autodesk employee manage to reproduce the problem so it is in good way to be solved.

i would be happy to test a performance patch if so. I'm not a professional so I'm not as concerned as sambirch with deadlines etc. I can deal with the issue for the moment.

ps : I'm using my MBP always open.

[lollol13]

Hello,

I've updated my software to 2.0.2727, and desactivated all graphical option with the Graphic diagnosis tool.

Although this update claims to improve performances, I still have the right click laaaaaaag on my 5K display (but not on the MBPr main display, resolution 1680x1050 x2 retina).

If I change the resolution of the 5K display, it is OK up to 2048x1152 (x2). At 2560x1440 (x2), it's laggy. This whatever the windows size (strange because smaller windows = less pixel to calculate no?).

[Anonymous]

Hi,

i do have the same issue with the lag on my 15'' Macbook Pro 2.7 / 460 and LG 5K Display. But on top I do have the issue that the right click menu very often disapears immediedately  after the right click not being able to select anything. The only way to select something is keeping the click down while moving the mouse.

I'm running version 2.0.2862 

Kind regards,

Michael

[O.Tan]

I've read several times about of the last couple of weeks that performance is lacking on apparently newer MacBook Pro's.

Not really, if compared to previous Apple notebook releases, the newer MBPs follows Apple usual pattern in speccing their products. In fact the Radeon Pro 460 is already considered the most powerful GPU Apple puts in their notebook machines (and it really is quite powerful and impressive at its TDP). The issue lies that Nvidia 10 series Mobile GPU performs almost as fast as their Desktop GPU which what many people wished Apple would've specced the new pros with, however saying that, most people didn't realise that none of Nvidia 10 series has a TDP that's suitable for the new MBPs. 

When it comes to CAD at 4K or 5K, I'm on the side that will choose a normal non-4k/5k monitor in favour of better performance with my hardware cause to do CAD with that many pixels on screen is taxing on any computer except a high end GPU and you'll probably need to use a Desktop to prevent your Notebook from throttling. It's the same principle as why you don't see people game at 4K unless they don't mind the FPS drop in favour of prettier graphics.

[TrippyLighting]

---

@O.Tan wrote:

I've read several times about of the last couple of weeks that performance is lacking on apparently newer MacBook Pro's.

Not really, if compared to previous Apple notebook releases, the newer MBPs follows Apple usual pattern in speccing their products. In fact the Radeon Pro 460 is already considered the most powerful GPU Apple puts in their notebook machines (and it really is quite powerful and impressive at its TDP). The issue lies that Nvidia 10 series Mobile GPU performs almost as fast as their Desktop GPU which what many people wished Apple would've specced the new pros with, however saying that, most people didn't realise that none of Nvidia 10 series has a TDP that's suitable for the new MBPs. 

---

I was referring to other threads reporting issues similar to the here on newer Macbook Pro's not to their performance in general.

Are you sure you read through this thread ?

[Anonymous]

Just to mention the overall performance with the CAD graphics is totally smooth without any lag. It's just the right click menu issue. And BTW this is only with Fusion 360. There is no issue with other SW on the right click menu.

[MichaelT_123]

Hi Fellows,

This is the issue, which become more and more visible with the growing complexity of designs,... as our F360's proficiency grows even faster then our egos.

I do experience the similar mouse traumas on windows in the context of more than basic projects (>1500 dimensions + animated joints)

I have posted some trembles   about  (in good faith ) few times.

My current sensing of the issue is as follows (although I bet, developers know better):

- mouse process runs inside F360 thread(s), which from time to time is/are overwhelmed by our drive to do more

- pragmatically judging, ... we ... are the direct source of the problem ..

- but we are not the only ones

- increased resolution of the monitor will require more frequent mouse firing and as such, "collision threshold" on the associated thread will be lower (less complex design will cause it)

  and will result in some bizarre effects    ( ...the size of the app window mostly does't matter here )

- of course, on the other side F360 rendering machinery will also contribute ...

- UI of F360 is the place, where such unwelcome interference of these clashes are very visible to us

- the resolution of the issue might be very simple,...  or extremely complex,.. if there are architectural mishaps involved

- the best point to start, would be to establish a couple of "mouse traps" in the F360, running within the profiler/debugger

- of course to "attract" the mouse some "incentives" would be necessary

- some of you mentioned some nice car model,... could you rent it to developers for a short drive?

- if the mouse was given a chance running freely on "Unifying Mouse Driver", chasing an external to F360 thread, the problem would likely vanish and

  as an additional benefit, we would be able to fully customise ( train ) our mouses to match our vigour and thumb agility

With Regards

MichaelT 

[Anonymous]

Hi MichaelT,

in general I would like to agree to most of your statements, because I know it very well well from the iOS development with limited resources.

But how would you explain that the same strange right click menu behaviour (disappearing and lag) also happened to the same extent if the project is new and total empty without a single entity except what FUSION 360 creates by default. And the Macbook is total idle, but I see the FUSION task suddenly spiking in CPU utilisation to 120%. Just for mouse tracking? Rotating and spinning  a medium complex drawing with the 3DConnecxion at full speed comes to 50% CPU load. Energy impact is in both cases similar to the CPU values.   

BTW, I also see some other stange effects with the GUI, e.g. in CAM Simulation. There I see the Pause / Run Icon at the same time on each other.

Hope this information may useful for the developers.

Kind Regards,

MichaelR

[MichaelT_123]

Hi MichaelR

... I can't explain ... I only almost sure that this is not a political issue 

I can only try to ... deduce.

As I have mentioned in my previous post, my main suspect is the implementation of F360 interface. An interaction of the mouse within the software process is certainly challenging, and the quality of capturing mouse events is paramount from the point of view of an user interaction ... and as many pointed out, F360 is not alone in this "game'.

So, I am guessing, ... something is wrong.

As I observed, some stalling of mouse cursor occurred when dealing with UI, so I draw conclusion that the culprit is quite near.   It seems that .... F360  influences the mouse thread as it has been runnig within F360 process.

The mouse generates asynchronous events ( some during the night ) and the software  (cat) must have to capture them as responsively as possible.   So in a proper implementation, mouse is running freely and the cat is on the watch, ... but what happens if mouse is in the possession of the cat ... it certainly runs slower ... and slower ... and ...

This is extreme analogy. Apologies to animals lovers ... please notice that I did not use the word dead.

...  but seriously, developers should look as UI has been implemented. I am not appelized unix specialist, but there might be some serious debugging tools and programming practice schemes in place.

On the Win side, look at MS 'Wait Chain Traversal (WCT)' , which enables debuggers to diagnose application hangs and deadlocks.

The solution might be amazingly simple ... so cat and mouse could play their games ... for ever and ever ...

Best Regards

MichaelT

[Anonymous]

I have this problem with a new 2017 5k 27 inch iMac. 8 Gigs of ram. Very annoying and slows down workflow.

[Stuart-H]

non enough ram IMHO you need at least 16 gb I use 24 gb on a 27inch iMac 5k but I do have the 4 gb graphics card

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the suggestion. I rebooted my machine, opened Fusion and even without a model open the lag is a serious problem. My machine has 4gig of video memory and had over four gigs of RAM free in this configuration. I spoke with a Fusion rep and was told this is a known problem. 

[lollol13]

Hello, it is still very laggy on 5K display with the last 2.0.3410 version, even with 16GB of RAM and the 460 Pro GPU.

On the MBP integrated display, it is working fine.

Please correct this bug...

[Anonymous]

Hey,

i´m thinking about getting the 2017 27" Imac.

Are the issues you had fixed?

Do you recommend any other options than more RAM?

Any advise would be appreciated

Thanks

[Anonymous]

I just checked, Its improved greatly but there is still about a one second delay. Still annoying, but not nearly as bad.