Fusion360 is still really slow

[jamie.q.white]

I just started designing again after a month fabricating things I designed.

Fusion360 is way, way, way too slow.  How about focusing on speed and performance for a few releases before adding more features?  I literally spend 20-25% of my time watching the beachball spin.  Over the day, it adds up to hours of wasted time, a few seconds and minutes at a time.  Probably 2 hours out of an 8 hour day.  Really cuts into productivity when I have to get up for a coffee everytime I open a file.

FWIW, A360 and the forums websites are really, really slow.   It's ridiculous. How about improving speed?

I've been complaining about speed and performance for years now, and it never seems to improve.

Also FWIW, it is not my system: iMac Retina 5k 4 GHz Intel Core i7 w/ 32Gb RAM & AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4096 MB / 40Mbps DSL.  

thanks for listening.

-jamie

[O.Tan]

Hmm..that's interesting. Your hardware certainly isn't the problem but I'm thinking that something else could be causing the issue here as I'm running Fusion on a nMP with lesser RAM then yours and Fusion is faster then SolidEdge.

When you referring to beachball spin, is it when you do an operation? opening a file? rotating the viewport?

Also if it's related to performance issues, pass me your email and I'll invite you to this project I call Fusion360 Performance Test which contains relatively large assemblies which will serve as a good benchmark to allow comparison between different hardwares.

[jamie.q.white]

Hi Omar,

Thanks! 

"When you referring to beachball spin, is it when you do an operation? opening a file? rotating the viewport?"

Yes, yes, and yes.  Pretty much anything.  Switching visibility on and off. Moving, rotating, saving, opening. 

I've been using F360 for about 3 years and I keep hoping it will get better.  It crashes way less often than a couple of years ago, but it hasn't gotten any faster.

I don't have screencast running, and I have a minumum number of other applications open.  It is pretty hard to avoid running a web browser, but I shut everything else down that I can.  I usually keep one or 2 other programs running so I can do work while I wait for the ball.

I'd be really interested in comparing my performance to others: jamie.q.white@gmail.com

thanks again.

-jamie

[TrippyLighting]

You may want to start sharing some of your designs!

I've ben working with Fuion for about 1.5 Years now on a 5 year old iMay i7 27" and I find it's speed has improved dramatically since then, specificaly in terms of viewport navigation.

[jamie.q.white]

Well, the particular design doesn't matter. It can be a new, empty design. 

If you have time to have a look, send me an email and I'll invite you to some of myt projects. Part of the problem is that there are no diagnostics (I've requested several times in idea station, but no response) so that I can compare my performance with what is typical. AD just shrugs.

Thanks,

-jamie

[TrippyLighting]

dangolboom at mac dot com.

[jamie.q.white]

thanks. Current design is Jamie_Race.

[Phil.E]

@jamie.q.white

I'm trying to understand the nature of your problem. Obviously if every single user had a beach ball on rotating camera in an empty document, we would see more reports of this. Our development teams would notice it as well.

You say you get a beach ball with:

"Pretty much anything.  Switching visibility on and off. Moving, rotating, saving, opening"

And you say it happens with a blank screen. Does it happen more with one of your designs open, compared to blank screen? Just trying to find a baseline here. If you get, as you indicate, this kind of performance with zero designs open, we can pretty much eliminate your data.

As you know, the size of a design in any CAD system will impact performance. The number of edges, faces, components, etc. makes a big difference. So I want to be clear as step one if it is different between a full design and blank screen.

If you want to check your design for number of objects, turn on the text commands, set them to TXT, and use this command:

component.count

What does the result say?

Other than that, I'm not sure what steps you are taking to improve performance, or if any other factors are hurting it.

1. Have you tried running Fusion in non-retina mode? (RMB tray icon > show in finder > RMB app > Get Info)

2. Are you running more than one monitor?

3. Have you shut the graphics effects?

4. Tried turning off visibility of components that don't matter at the moment?

5. Make things unselectable?

Thanks,

[TrippyLighting]

I looked at the designs you shared with me and can edit and manipulate these fluently without any problems. No spinning ball, or wait time at all.

I obviously did not save anything 😉

Given your machine specs I find it very hard to believe that should the problem. My mac is getting to be 6 years old:

Do you have OpenGL Core Profile enabled ?

[O.Tan]

Sorry that it took awhile but here's a screencast showing how this particular model runs on my machine and I also show you step-by-step on how to turn on the FPS dialog box. Also in the video I used the inspect command to show how fast the "measure" tool is suppose to work in such assembly. Cause they have been rare case scenarios where a part with high number of pattern caused performance issue in Fusion.

In text form:

View > Show Text Commands

Make sure select TXT radio button in the text command

Key in "Diagnostics.InteractivityMeter /Show"

Once you're done just change the /Show to /Hide

Also in the video, I show my current settings, the only effect I turned off is Ambient Occlusion.

As for hardware specs:

OSX El Capitan

Mac Pro (Late 2013)

3.7 GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon E5

12 GB 1866 MHz DDR3 ECC

Dual AMD FirePro D300 2048 MB (Though it seems Fusion only uses 1 card)

Dell U2711 Display at 2560x1440 resolution

[Phil.E]

@O.Tan

Thanks for your excellent response.

@jamie.q.white

Looking at all those parts on the screen, I'm thinking you are describing video problems. There are no other calculations happening, based on your desciption, aside from your graphics trying to show the model. But other users aren't having the problem, so we should be looking at your hardware.

How many monitors do you run at once?

Have you tried switching the graphics driver?

Have you tried turning off Retina for Fusion?

Thanks,

[jamie.q.white]

Thanks! I am up against a deadline so not much time, but this information is exactly what I need. -jamie

[jamie.q.white]

deadline. very busy. Need F360 to work. not much time to reply.

1)built-in iMac monitor.
2)Don't know how to switch, could you provide a link to instruction?
3)No. Retina exists. F360 should work.
-jamie

[jamie.q.white]

I leave it set to "auto" -jamie

[jamie.q.white]

Which designs did you open?  I've noticed an improvement with some of my files.  No time to check systematically. -jamie

[Phil.E]

@jamie.q.white

Perhaps you misunderstand my reasoning.

I'm trying to do two things.

Most importantly, get you productive. Secondly, fix any problem with Fusion that you report.

In order to do these two things, I need information from you in particular because you are having somewhat unique problems. So I've asked you to try some things that will help us understand why you are having problems, but not other Mac users.

• Please try using the different video drivers. "Automatic" may be wong in this case, and we'd like to find out for sure.
• Please try turning off retina for Fusion. This can be done only for Fusion. It would give us a huge clue about your problem. (i.e. your particular video card doesn't like drawing Fusion in Retina). We could then target your particular video card drivers for optimization.

And regarding your last comment, please let us know if the situation improves.

Thanks,

[O.Tan]

Okay, lemme us know how it turns out.

[jamie.q.white]

Hi Phil,

I appreciate the help, but the things you're asking me to do take time I really do not have right now. I have no idea how to turn on/off retina and really no time or interest googling around to figure it out. If there are graphics issues, AD needs to fix them. I've already spent more time posting about this that I can really afford right now.

My problems are not unique, I recently spoke to at least a half dozen designers at the handbuilt bike show who tried F360 and gave up on it for many of the reasons I post about on the forum. Unlike those guys, I can't afford 30K for solidworks and another 15k for a workstation, and I haven't identified a better design software solution.

I have gotten to the point where I can usually make F360 work, but it is slow, annoying and painful. I often have to find workarounds for basic functions like snapping to a reference.

I wish I could like F360. I want to like it.  In theory it is a great product. In practice, it is a lot of wasted time and frustration with basic things that AD should have fixed by now, given all the new features that AD has had time and resources to add.

I've attached my diagnostic files. Here is graphics info.

[GPU Information]
GPU Device: AMD Radeon R9 M295X
GPU RAM: 4,096 MB
GPU Driver API: OpenGL

[Graphics Effects Settings]
Use high-resolution graphics: Off
Anti Aliasing: On
Ambient Occlusion: On
Object Shadow: On
Ground Shadow: Off
Ground Reflection: Off
Selection Display Style: Simple
Transparency Effect: Better Performance

[Notes]
The effects could slow down the graphics rendering; try to limit them for optimum performance.

[Limit all effects to provide optimum performance]
Off

Here is system info:

Hardware Overview:

  Model Name: iMac

  Model Identifier: iMac15,1

  Processor Name: Intel Core i7

  Processor Speed: 4 GHz

  Number of Processors: 1

  Total Number of Cores: 4

  L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

  L3 Cache: 8 MB

  Memory: 32 GB

  Boot ROM Version: IM151.0207.B05

  SMC Version (system): 2.23f11

  Serial Number (system): C02NM02VFY14

  Hardware UUID: ED9D1F0A-44D9-595C-92C2-4B9A0C93950E

[TrippyLighting]

My computer is an almost 6-year old stone age moster compared to the screaming high-end rocket you are piloting. Your very own designs, that I am assuming had performace problems on your machine, worked absolutely flawlessly on my computer. There were no spinning balls. I edited some of the parameters in the bicycle frame design and changes were almost instantaneous. 

There was not screen lag of any kind and I usually keep Antialiasing on( the reast of the gimmics are turned off).

I personally know several users that use Fusion 360 on very comparable machines who have none o the problems you report.  There are also a number of users here on the Forum that use very similar machines and that don't report such problems.

Please provie the information you were asked for. If Fusion 360 is that much of a waste of time then surely you can spend a few minutes helping the folks that try to help you!

[Phil.E]

Thanks Jamie. Some good info here.

What I'm asking only takes a few seconds.

• Go to Preferences and try switching from Open GL to OpenGL Core Profile
• 

Next, to shut off Retina for Fusion, try this.

• RMB on Fusion icon in dock.
• Pick Options >  Show in Finder
• RMB on Fusion app in Finder
• Get Info
• Use this setting:

From your graphics diagnostic I can see two huge problems:

Turn off Ambient Occlusion and Anti Aliasing.

Also, I still don't know how many monitors you are running on that video card.

Thanks,