Hardware Advice to Fix Performance Issues

[Anonymous]

I'm working on a fairly complex assembly (30 components, 100+ sketches, 25 construction planes) and Fusion has become extremely slow. If I do a basic command such creating a sketch or doing an extrude, Fusion spins for a minute before anything happens. It's like trying to write a document and having the word processor spin for a minute everytime you type a letter. 

I have a MacBook Pro Mid 2012 with a 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 8 GB of memory, and an Intel HD 1024 MB graphics processor.

What hardware improvements would you recommend to have Fusion perform at a normal speed for complex assemblies? Is CPU, GPU, or memory more important?

Also, what's the best hardware for running Fusion with complex assemblies Would you recommend an iMac or Mac Pro? Would Fusion be able to take advance of a Mac Pro's hardware? If so, which one would you recommend?

[promm]

Davemohla,

There are lot of factors that go into what makes a complex assembly and the best way to handle them in Fusion.  Would you be willing to share the model that you are working on or have time to have a screen shareing meeting?

Thank you,

Mike Prom
Autodesk

[TrippyLighting]

My recommendation would be to share that assembly.

I am not sure what your experience level is with Fusion 360 and dont want to make unjust assumptions, but it would not be too surprising if you used a workflow that is based on other CAD software packages and perhaps there is a way that recommendations could be given to adapt a more Fusion 360 optimal workflow aslo resulting in better performance.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your responses.

Yes, the problem could definitely be due to me using a workflow that's optimized for another CAD program. I've used SolidWorks and Rhino and have been trying to use those workflows in Fusion 360. The model worked fine when it was small but as it got more complex, Fusion became so slow it was unusable. 

My model contains fairly sensitive information for a new product so I'm not comfortable posting it to this board but I would be willing to do a screen share with someone from Autodesk. Let me know what time works for you.

[O.Tan]

Right now, even on a base nMP, F360 performance doesn't match up with the hardware specs and tbh, quite disappointing to see how unoptimized the software is to the hardware. Not trying to blame anyone but that's how I feel at times cause the software is great and has great potential but right now, its performance is much to be desired.

I'll say before we see how F360 is planning to tackle performance issues, you should wait it out before upgrading your computer. And between iMac or MacPro, if F360 eventually makes use of dual GPU and OpenCL, then the MacPro is a definite over iMac, if not, then there's other factors that you'll need to consider.

[Anonymous]

I have a very similar situation, moderately complex model, mix of components and sketches that both I created and that were downloaded (PCB connectors, off the shelf parts). Right now the best I can do to mitigate the slow responsiveness is to try to do sub assemblies in separate designs, then only add them together towards the end when I can afford to wait a minute for every operation. Though this becomes difficult because some of them requrire clearance information from other designs. It would be ideal if I could place my entire product in one design and work from there.

I can't share the design/model either, as it is a new product under development, but would certainly do some screen sharing/telecons with AutoDesk employees if that would help.

I'm very excited about continuing to use Fusion 360, it has the right blend of features/cost, but it is getting difficult to put together this entire product in a reasonable timeframe. I have a relatively new quad core ThinkPad T440p with 16GB RAM and a discrete NVIDIA graphics card. I would consider a desktop machine if it was simply a CPU performance issue, though it seems Fusion is largely single core driven, so that probably wouldn't help any.

Aaron

[TrippyLighting]

I believe currently the best hardware to run fusion on is a Windows machine with a dedicated higher end Graphics card with 1Gig or more video RAM.
Fusion 360 is certainly the first CAD software of its kind on a Mac and it'll take a while until it matures.

If I am correct O.Tan runs Fusion 360 on a Bootcamp Windows system on a Mac Pro. That's about as high end as it gets hadrware wise.

One of my recommendations is:
when creating assemblies/subassemblies use the simplest joints for a given situation.
plan ahead how you want your assembly to be structured and move components into assemblies before joining them.
Isolate components for editing. You can isolate multiple component at once if you need to see them.

[cekuhnen]

So even on my MacPro with a 8 cores 16 GM RAM and a GTX 970 I can slow down Fusion. I think that's simply because of all the things the software tries to do at once.
So once can have a bottle neck in CPU GPU RAM and VRAM.

The solution I found workable is to actually build not everything in one document but break things apart into individual files and later have an assembly file where you put things togethers.

Would that be a workable workflow for you?

The problem with Fusion and that is with every smart system all the smartness requires CPU power and the more you add the faster it can tank. I noticed that the sketch engine is the weakest area in Fusion being the sketch solver sometimes CPUing things to slow creating a lag for the rest.

But I also know in other more mature apps like Solidworks once you hit I think the 1200 features your file is more or less at its max.

Alias is fantastically fast but hardly has any of the nice workflows Fusion offers.

[Anonymous]

It would work for me for right now. I do seem to be able to cause the program to go unresponsive way more often than expected.

[Anonymous]

Hi I had these kinds of bad experience before. The machine was running really really slow and every rotation of the file was not a synchronized action. The components turned piece by piece. The way I found out, that might work for this particular moment is: If you do not need parametric mode for your modling, you might want to archive your parametric file in your local drive. It is safer to copy and paste a few more copies of that in your drive. That way you can always import them back. You then change the name of your file somewhat in the cloud. Open the document and stop recording. You will find a little bit more unwanted files  like TSplines files that had been converted into solid. You might want to delete them. Or the performance might had been improved in DM mode without deleting any TSplines or sketches. Working in Direct Model mode or Sculpt mode might solve your big assembly problem. It worked for me before. Oh to do this operation, please close the program first after saving locally, then restart the program again.

[cekuhnen]

I think the goal for Fusion is also to have linked files being able to update their content once the main file linked in was changed.

In a previous statement I mentioned that you should be careful about how much you automate because essencially you can tank every software.

So the trick is to break down your design into smaller problems.

Problem however is when you are in the conceptual phase you want to have everything in one file.

I personally found it quite useful to group objects and their features in the timeline so I could quickly freeze the features and speed up Fusion.

This way you can even have different dseign variations in the same file.

With the timeline you just have to be careful when do you do what so you do not break relationships.

But I found this process to be pretty fast predictable and enjoyable.

[Anonymous]

Linked files would be awesome and would help facilitate breaking models out into smaller pieces.

I had the same described problem in the conceptual phase. At the time I didn't know how they were all going to work together, so it end up being one large model with no way to break it apart later. It was easier to redo work in a new design, actually.

Aaron

[promm]

Here is a link to a blog post I made on modeling best practices.  I went through them with Dave and he found the information very useful.

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/design-differently/fusion-360-modeling-best-practices/ba-p/5502252

Mike Prom

[thomasjamesmathew]

Hi all

I normally wouldn't resurrect an ancient thread like this but this is the closest description of the issues I'm having and I think it's pertinent that in nearly five years they don't seem to have been addressed. 

I realise Fusion360 runs very well under ideal conditions where everything is its own component and there are no imported models, but out here in the real world it's simply not possible to avoid importing models of things like PCB designs, connectors, fasteners and so forth, and given that Fusion is capable of top-down design it seems rather beside the point for all advice to be that parts must be separated into their own components as early as possible. Never mind the suggestion to turn off timeline...!

Has anyone found any way of improving this situation? Any move up or down the timeline, or any new feature creation, now results in minutes of lag where a single CPU core goes to 100% and the program is non-responsive. 

I'd get a faster CPU but somehow I suspect the program will just grab 100% of that and seize up anyway.