Fusion using Intel HD graphics instead of Nvidia

[scottmoyse]

Since the latest update, Fusion has decided to start using my HD graphics instead of my discrete card. I've forced the Nvidia driver to use discrete for the fusion.exe but it's still using the HD graphics.... and of course throwing the error that my HP ZBook with a K2100M GPU doesn't have the graphics power to run Fusion. LOL. 

I'm honestly suprised that Autodesk / Nvidia still haven't sorted out this Discrete <> Integrated graphics issue yet.

And of course, using this method in the nvidia control panel means that with each update I would need to change it again. 

Autodesk support, or the community, please tell me how to get this to work correctly, without disabling Intel HD Graphics in the BIOS.

[San_Escobar]

Hey Scott

I thought It was only happening with AMD users 
http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/design-and-documentation/issues-with-fusion-which-can-be-irksome/m-p/5...

I do have a old Dell Precision with Nvidia Quadro FX, and Fusion shows Nvidia, Now I wonder what is making the system do not 
recognise the GPU directly.

I will watch this thread and see what happen for your resolution. 

[chengyun.yang]

Hi,

This is caused by that Fusion installes its latest update in a new different folder so your previous path setting for Fusion in nVidia control panel is not valid. You will need to reset that path in the nVidia program setting.

Sorry for the inconvenience. Will check with our installation team to see if we can improve it.

[scottmoyse]

---

@chengyun.yang wrote:
Hi,

This is caused by that Fusion installes its latest update in a new different folder so your previous path setting for Fusion in nVidia control panel is not valid. You will need to reset that path in the nVidia program setting.

Sorry for the inconvenience. Will check with our installation team to see if we can improve it.

---

Sorry, no it isn't. I should have been clearer, since you have misunderstood the issue. Prior to this update, I didn't HAVE to set that option in the Nvidia control panel. It just worked. Because of this, I tried to force Fusion to use the Nvidia GPU via the control panel.

However, what I tried to communicate is that even by setting the option in the Nvidia Control Panel it still doesn't work. Hence why I asked how to get it to work without turning off Intel HD in the BIOS. In addition to that, as you have pointed out, and as I stated, if this worked, I would need to change it with each update anyway.

In any case, to reiterate. Setting this value to the current Fusion installation folder still doesn't force Fusion to use the K2100M.

[chengyun.yang]

Hi, Thanks for the further details. It is strange that previously you didn't set any option in nVidia control panel but Fusion was automatically running on nVidia driver. To make it clar, it is the GPU driver and not the application that determines which GPU to use. Typically if your preferred graphics card option is set to "Auto-select", Fusion will just run on Intel graphics cards. 

What happens if you set the "preferred graphics processor" to "high-performance nVidia processor"? I am wondering if you need to restart Windows OS to get it to take effect. 

Thanks

Chengyun

Fusion Development Team

[scottmoyse]

As you can see in the image in my OP, that's the setting I have applied. No change after restart. 

It's possible it was always using the Intel HD GPU, but previously Fusion never flagged it as being a sub-optimal GPU until after this latest update.

[chengyun.yang · Accepted solution]

Hi,

The GPU message banner "your graphics card might not be optimal" was introduced a couple of releases ago and it is not something we add in this July release. I suspect that on your machine Fusion was always using Intel graphics cards but you just noticed that recently. 

What is the setting in your nVidia global setting tab? In your screenshot, I only saw the setting in program setting page. 

Thanks

[scottmoyse]

---

@chengyun.yang wrote:

Hi,

The GPU message banner "your graphics card might not be optimal" was introduced a couple of releases ago and it is not something we add in this July release. I suspect that on your machine Fusion was always using Intel graphics cards but you just noticed that recently. 

What is the setting in your nVidia global setting tab? In your screenshot, I only saw the setting in program setting page. 

Thanks

---

Please believe me when I tell you that message wasn't there. I'm not blind... you have designed it to be noticeable and it is. I have a Macbook as well, and it's been showing up on that for a long time. 

I have the global setting set the same way... as of this morning.

[scottmoyse]

---

@chengyun.yang wrote:

Hi,

The GPU message banner "your graphics card might not be optimal" was introduced a couple of releases ago and it is not something we add in this July release. I suspect that on your machine Fusion was always using Intel graphics cards but you just noticed that recently. 

What is the setting in your nVidia global setting tab? In your screenshot, I only saw the setting in program setting page. 

Thanks

---

Something definitely changed with that update, otherwise that message would have been up before. But I believe the fix, having just rebuilt my laptop over the weekend, is the Global Setting. That also gets around the sandbox directory changing for the Fusion executable.

[Anonymous]

Hi! I have GeForce GTX 550 Ti. When I go to the nvidia control panel → Manage 3D Settings, I don't see any "Auto select" and "High perfomance nvidia processor" button. What is the erliest serie of nvidia GeForce which have this option to froce/use the nvidia processor as a main processor for rendering?

And my second question: Did you try to use any GPU as a main processor for rendering under Fusion360, for example nvidia Quadro? Have you tried to compare it with a ussual CPU-rendering, let say with intel i7?
Can you recomend me to go to "GPU-rendering direction" under Fusion 360, or it will be better performance with the ussual CPU-rendering (let say with i7, or Xeon).

Thank you! 🙂

[Anonymous]

Sorry, this post have to be deletet.

[chengyun.yang]

If you didn't see the "Auto select" option, probably your machine only has one discrete GPU. In that case, you should have already run in nVidia GPU. To verify that, you can go to Fusion help menu->Graphics diagnostic to see what GPU is used. 

Fusion is always using GPU to accelerate the viewport graphics rendering. Not sure what you mean by saying "use any GPU as a main processor for rendering under Fusion360".

Thanks

Chengyun

[Anonymous]

Hi! Thanks for your answer. Yes, I have cheked, and it stay in Graphics Diagnostics that my GeForce 550 Ti used.

1) About rendering by GPU. I can't say that I really understand is it only GPU who performs all calculations, or the GPU used to speeding up calculations, but I think that we talking about some GPU render engines. For example nVidia declare that their Quadro can perfom a "rendering equations" many times faster then CPU. It is necessary to mention the that they talking about their own rendering system - iray. I have also heard that some other software developers (Adobe Premiere, ANSYS) try to accelerate calculus with a GPU.

2) By the way, I would like to ask you, what kind of rendering system did you apply in Fusion 360? Mental Ray? Renderman? It looks like V-ray RT (real time).

3) I really appreciate your product. I have been working with V-ray for а long time. Some years ago I went to technical engineering direction (stuctural design, stress calculations, and so on) where the aesthetic side is not so important. But I was always somewhat confused by а thing that is called "rendering" in Inventor or SolidWorks 🙂 Fusion 360 give a kind of "v-ray" picture with a minimum amount of buttons and settings. I would like to say that Fusion 360 have only one button "make it beatufull", or something 🙂 Thank a lot in a word!

[chengyun.yang]

Hi,

It is glad to know you like the rendering in Fusion. We do try to keep the rendering in Fusion to be simple, easy to use but still very powerful and able to produce high quality images.

It seems that your questions are more about the ray tracing renderers. In Fusion, currently we mainly use GPU to accelerate the real time rendering and for ray tracing renderers, we haven't used GPU a lot. So most of the calculations are still done in CPU. The rendering system is developed by Autodesk. We are not using other 3rd party renderers in Fusion at the moment. 

Please be free to let us know if you have more questions about this.

Thanks

Chengyun

Fusion Development Team