Slow, unstable performance with small assemblies

[RyanCazin]

I am working on a small steam engine (<100 unique parts). As I model the parts and assemble the model, my performance has drastically decreased. Every mouse click is followed by a delay of 20 seconds or more. Also, I have noticed that as the assembly evolves the program has started to crash more, around 3 times per hour.

I am working on a quad i7, 8 gigs of RAM, and 3 gigs of video memory so my computer should not be the issue. I have worked on offline mode and turned all effects and graphics off or to simple, still to no avail.

Does anybody have tips on settings to make 360 more user friendly/stable?

[prabakarm]

Sorry for the experience you are having with Fusion.  Can you let us know whether you are on a MAC or PC?  Assuming that you were able to submit crash reports can you let us know your e-mail address so that we can pin point the crashes to address them.  You can send your e-mail address to prabakar.murugappan@autodesk.com.

On the performance front what operations are slow for you?

Thanks,

Prabakar.

[RyanCazin]

Hello,

I am using 64-bit Windows 8. And I have not been able to send a report. So
far the program has crashed about five times in 10 hours of work. It has
crashed several times when making joints between components, and 1-2 times
while building bodies.

Thanks for your help,

Ryan Cazin

[prabakarm]

Any chance you can share your data and show a screen cast of the crashes so that we can try and reproduce it on our end?  Also did the problem started recently as your assembly size grew.

Thanks,

Prabakar.

[RyanCazin]

I do not know if I can record screens, I will look into that. When I am
able, I will send an image of the assembly. I am cylindrically constraining
a piston to move within a cylinder and constraining the bolts to hold the
top cover down.

It has degraded as the assembly grew, but it was somewhat slow initially as
well. I would wait around 5-10 seconds initially.

The crashes are specifically when trying to use any of the various feature
creators within the sketches, taking sketches into 3D, and constraining
components.

Ryan Cazin

[prabakarm]

It will be great if you can share the actual model.  You can do so by right clicking on the model in the data panel and using the "share public link" command.  You can send the link to my e-mail address.

For showing the crashes you can use the screen cast tool in the link below...

https://screencast.autodesk.com/

BTW, what is the graphics card in your system and the driver version.

Thanks,

Prabakar.

[RyanCazin]

I will do that as soon as I can. Unfortunately I am away from my computer
for the majority of today. I will send as fast as I can. I will be working
this weekend and will try recording a crash or slow performance. Sorry I
cannot right now.

Ryan Cazin

[prabakarm]

No worries at all.  Thanks for taking the time to help us address the issues.  Again sorry for the experience you are having with Fusion.  We will work as fast as we can to get you up and running once we have the info.

Thanks,

Prabakar.

[jbarchuk]

Software like F360 is heavier computational and graphically intensive than almost any other kind of software. Bogging -and- crashing can easily be caused by other reasons. If you haven't tried these next three suggestions, then you PC may not necessarily be strong -and- clean enough to survive F360.

Try freeware memory tester from memtest86.com. Any PC that passes can survive anything. Any PC that fails -can- suffer crashes under heavy load.

Try free malware checker at malwarebytes.com. It's not about poison viruses but relatively innocuous skankware that rides into you PC along with other totally reputable software. Malware -can- seriously bog a PC which can lead to crashes even if it's not a terminal threat.

Another good test is Start -> Run -> type msconfig in the box and press enter -> Startup -> Disable All, and reboot. If anything else is running in the background that eventually bogs the system or leaking memory or whatever then this will prevent it from running. If that helps the PC run stable then it's a matter of turning startup software back on to find out which one csuses the bog/crash. You may even find things in there that you didn't know existed.

[TrippyLighting]

On a machine with that spec powerful software such as Solid Works or Solid Edge  runs smooth as butter with assemlies ranging in the thousands of components. The last time I ran Solid Works on a very large assembly - a fully automated assembly line for automotive components - it ran fine on a stock Dell Latitude notebook. That was 6 years ago!

@OP, 

There may be workflow reasons that an assembly may behave slugish and cause crashes. A screencast of how you assembly is structured and what joints you use, e.g. as-is or joint origin based etc. wold possibly help pinpointing solutions.

As a general rule, use the simplest joint for a given situation.

1. For a pattern of bolts as s common in that sort of machine use "Rigid Group" joint. That locks all of the selected parts in reference to each other. You can get them into the desired location by using"modfy->align".
2. The next thing is to use the "Joint" that locks two parts together and allows you to specify an offset between the parts. However, using the bolt pattern s an example you'd have to use that for every bolt, so you go up in the number of joints in your assembly.
3. #1 and #2 are used for parts that don't need to move in reference to each other. However, if you have a cyinder and want the piston to move within the cylider use an "as-is joint" and select the appropriate joint type in the diaog.
4. The most computationally heavy is the joint that requires you to first specify joint locations. Use this sparingly as a last resort e.g. for complex motion studies.

If you design is very parametric using a lot of interdepedent parameters, will also slow down the model.

Another thing that slows town a model is if you have any re-built errors such as the yellow highighted items in the timeline. Fix those if you have any! Use "modify->compute all" to force a complete rebuild of your model to see if you have any.

[jbarchuk]

> On a machine with that spec powerful software such as Solid Works or Solid Edge  runs smooth as butter with assemlies ranging in the thousands of components.

Of course but spec alone doesn't demonstrate (prove) anything as far as reliability and stability. Further, OP never mentioned what other high velocity software might have been run on the machine with no issues. A TB of RAM with one bad bit will eventually crash under load. Your other workflow ideas were good ideas as far as performance goes but not necessarily 'crash' -if- the hardware is faulty. Only a dynamometer proves performance under load. I've been building PCs since about 1980 from scratch, never bought a prebuilt, and haven't built a PC without first testing it with memtest86 since umm... 1986. 🙂 Brand new RAM can be deficient because it is -not- seriously tested at the factory. I've had about a 10% failure rate of the years, but not a big deal because reputable vendors are lifetime warranty. OTOH in the CAD and Autodesk worlds this F360 really is still brand new and bugs will keep showing up, Even 'cloud' is still new. So who knows. A dynamometer-tested vwhicle is one of the first steps in proving it's not a hardware issue, and a road test demonstrates (not proves) that it's not a software level system issue.