Performance?

[gcormierY4QZZ]

Does anyone else find the performance of F360 a bit lacking?

I have an i7 4790, 16GB of RAM, SSD, and a GTX770. I find sometimes F360 is slow, or lags, with "larger" models - by larger, they don't seem that big compared to what I've seen out there. Does anyone else have that issue? It's definitely not a graphics issue, as I can crank the settings to as low as possible... and once components are loaded, I can rotate the object easily.

It's more an annoyance, but I can't imagine running this thing on an i5 or i3!

[TrippyLighting]

I run Fusion 360 fine on a mid 2010 iMac i7.

Maybe you could share one of your designs that exhibit the described behavior so we can take a look at what might be causing he issue.

[Anonymous]

Did you ever figure anything out with this? I'm experiencing the same problem and its absolutely painful. When I've used F360 in the past on the same machine it was always very responsive. I've been away from it for a few months and now I'm working on a somewhat large model (compared to most of the things I've done prior) and I've reached a point where I just can't get anything done. Simply selecting the joint or move command causes F360 to just sit & spin for up to 30 secs just to get to the point where I can select an object to move. Then it can be another 30-60 secs to actually execute the command another 30-60 secs to close the command. I'm trying to assemble a couple hundred components and I just don't see how its ever going to happen. I've tried turning off all graphics effects and it made no difference. My computer specs are nearly identical to the OP's. If I look at the Task Manager, I see very little happening with the CPU during this time but memory usage is fairly high at around 1GB. Please help!

You can see the model I'm currently working on here:

http://a360.co/2gXmyz1

Thanks!

Ian

[jeff_strater]

@Anonymous,

There must be something interesting going on here.  I downloaded your design and opened it.  I'm not seeing the same sort of results that you are seeing.  Even if I turn on all the components in this model, performance seems about what I expect for a model of this size.  I agree, this is not a huge model.  But, I can invoke Move, select Joints, etc without any of the level of delay that you seem to be seeing.  Can you post a screencast of what you are seeing with this same model?

Here is what I see doing some of those operations:

Jeff

[Anonymous]

@jeff_strater you're just trying to make me envious now 😉 I can create a screencast tonight and post it. It will be a very long and painful video :'(

[Anonymous]

Jeff,

Here's a screencast of the dreadful performance I'm experiencing in trying to assemble joints. However, its not specific to joints. Just about every command reacts in the same way. I hope you can pick up some clues in this that can help fix this soon.

EDIT: I didn't realize the URL only works for screencasts using your tool. I recorded it with Camtasia and uploaded to YouTube. I'll try your tool next time.

https://youtu.be/jzO3FAa3pEk

Thanks!

Ian

[fulcrumusa]

I was seeing similar issues with one of my designs. The one nugget of advice that I got that helped a lot is to turn components from "Selectable" to "Unselectable" when they are not needed.

The way I understand it, Fusion has an invisible area of inclusion around the mouse pointer and it looks for any feature that could be selectable in that area. Selectable features are any face, edges, points, etc. It continuously keeps recomputing. This is especially noticeable in your design because you are using extrusions, which have a lot of edges.

Once I started turning components to "Unselectable", everything started working a lot better. 

[Anonymous]

@fulcrumusa - Thanks for the tip. I've never used that feature. Unfortunately, it didn't help with my performance problem but it will definitely make assemblies easier by limiting the items that the mouse wants to stick to.

[Anonymous]

Also, I gave this a try on my laptop at work which is similar powered but with a slightly newer i7 processor. I experienced the same performance issues. Also, I just tried creating a new model with just a few primitives and created some joints between them. That was all very quick as I'd expect. There's something about this model. Is anyone else able to reproduce the behavior I'm seeing on their machine using my model?

[Anonymous]

@jeff_strater - any ideas? It's taken me four nights to do what should have only take an hour or so. I'm dying here and I only have a short time to complete this project.

Thanks!

[kshea9RNL8]

I noticed a slow overall PC performance including Fusion 360 and did a complete Virus/Malware/Spyware scan using a good scanner (MalWareBytes is a good one and found some others did not, free to try), once PC was clean performance was much better including Fusion 360, worth a try and should be done periodically any way.

Microsoft Essentials and another popular scanner did not find any issues.

[jeff_strater]

Hi @Anonymous,

Sorry, I'm not ignoring you, I'm just stumped.  Your video is interesting.  The actual joint operations that you show are about on par with what I see.  Meaning, selecting faces, the joint preview, and the delay when you hit OK is not that far off from what I see.  But, some of the delays (the amount of time necessary to just invoke the Joint command) puzzles me.  I don't have a theory as to why you are seeing this.

So, unfortunately, other than the suggestions already made here, I don't have any solution for you yet.

Jeff

[Anonymous]

@jeff_strater thanks for your continued support. Is there anything I can do on my end as far as data gathering?

[jeff_strater]

Hi @Anonymous, I have a new theory.  I think the problem is the Joint command itself.  I went back and tried it again on your model, and while it is not as slow on my computer as yours, it is definitely slower than other commands.  For instance, Move comes up quite quickly.  So, let me investigate what Joint is doing when it starts up.

In the meantime, I am working on another way for you to work that will work for most of your joints.  I think if you use Align and Rigid Group instead of individual Rigid joints, I suspect your experience will be much better.  Trying it on your design, to see how practical it is.

That doesn't solve your problem when you actually need a Joint (like for Revolute Joint), of course, and we need to sort out the behavior of Joint.

Are there other commands that are extremely slow for you?  How does Move work for you?  Does it come up quickly?

Jeff

[Anonymous]

@jeff_strater I think you're right about the Joint command being the biggest culprit. However, the move command and other functions do seem slower than they should be. I'll try to get a little more data on other commands tonight.

I actually remembered the Rigid Group option last night and started using it and it indeed did speed up my process and would have helped a lot if I'd started using it a few days ago. Some of the rigid groups I will have to break back apart later as I add more simulations/animations but for my current needs this will work fine for most of the joints.

Thanks!

Ian

[jeff_strater]

To be absolutely honest, this assembly is probably pushing the limits of Fusion just now.  With all the components visible, especially those wheel assemblies, there is a fair number of components, just over 1100, if you count everything.  And some complex geometry.

Yes, Fusion should be able to handle this assembly, but right now, this is a bit of a challenge, because we have not optimized for large assemblies yet.  We will definitely do this, of course, it is a high priority.

In the meantime, using Rigid Group instead of individual joints will help.  Also, this is a case where it might make sense to segregate things into different designs.  For instance, the Frame.  It might make sense to put that all into a separate design.  Then, all the joints (or Rigid Group) can be localized to that one design.  Your experience creating joints will then be limited to only those components.  Then, you just have to create a handful of joints in the top-level assembly, that might take a bit longer.

And, we will look into that Joint command - there is something not right going on, and I suspect that the fix should be relatively simple (fingers crossed).

Here is a screencast showing how I would go about joining the Frame assembly:

Jeff

[Anonymous]

@jeff_strater - this makes sense. I'll try to minimize the number of joints necessary by using Rigid Group. Is it your understanding that only visible components should effect the joint performance? It's been my experience that in this case it makes very little difference whether the components are visible/selectable or not. Perhaps that's an area where you might investigate.

Breaking the design down into multiple files sounds like a good idea. 

Thanks,

Ian

[jeff_strater]

you're right, @Anonymous, the performance should not be noticeably affected by making some components invisible, or unselectable.

We are still looking into the Joint performance issues.  We'll figure it out...

Jeff

[fulcrumusa]

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@jeff_strater wrote:

you're right, @Anonymous, the performance should not be noticeably affected by making some components invisible, or unselectable.

We are still looking into the Joint performance issues.  We'll figure it out...

Jeff

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On principle, I agree with you. A user should not have to hide or make components/bodies unselectible to get good performance. However, as you can see from this thread that does not seem to be the case (at least with that version of Fusion360).