Mirrors Causing Performance and Stability Issues?

[jgrieman]

I've got a design, primarily consisting of a single sketch, which I'm working on for laser cutting and sewing in leather. (should be available here - http://a360.co/1ea3zOQ) To make the holes for stitching, I've got a small circle, which is then laid out in a linear pattern, and the entire pattern then mirrored about a centerline, then both sides mirrored _again_ across another center line. Fusion becomes exceedingly slow working with it for me, and if I try and delete any of the circles (as I need to change the patter) the application locks up, and I need to eventually kill it from the process manager. The document's essentially unusable to me now, as any attempt to modify it will fail! It seems I'll have to rebuild it from scratch, and I'd have the same problem making any changes. I'd really like to use mirrors for laying this out, as it makes sure that the sides match up, but is there another way to do it that would have less performance problems? Thanks.

[innovatenate]

How large of a pattern is this? Any pattern large enough will cause some performance issues. Speaking generally in Fusion 360, it helps to divide up the geometry. For example, split the sketch up into multiple, smaller sketches. Nest Patterns by using mirror features or by doing patterns within patterns. This can help bypass those long computes by breaking them up into smaller ones.

If there is no 3D geometry at all, you may consider using an application like AutoCAD 360 to do this type of work. 

https://www.autocad360.com/

Fusion 360 has a constraint-based sketch environment where sketch entities have degrees of freedoms, dimensions, and parameters that can drive the geometry. This can cause a lot of computational overhead. A tool like AutoCAD or AutoCAD 360 may be able to handle this type of work with a bit more grace.

Another workflow you may consider in Fusion 360 is to create the pattern in 3D! The Pattern command has different Compute Option that may help it to process the pattern faster (e.g. Optimized).  By comparison, the Sketch Pattern command does not have a similar option. 

After the Pattern is created in 3D, use the "Project sketch" command to create a sketch that can be exported as a DXF.

OR

Forget the sketch altogether and create a drawing (New Drawing from Design command in File menu). Place a Base View with 1:1 scale. Last, you can Export this as an AutoCAD DWG file.

I hope this suggestions helps. Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,