Yellow Warning on Component with No Features. Slow Recalc.

[Anonymous]

I'm reposting this in the main stream because "Laggy" is offline for study, and I want some hand-holding sooner.

About CTRL + B (= full re-calc).  I agree with James.Youmatz that the re-calc and CTRL+B slowness have nothing to do with graphics. Thank you, James.  He also posted: ".... Therefore if there are any errors or warnings (red or yellow symbols) in your timeline - the time it takes to compute the timeline again may take a while. Even things such as a long, messy timeline can attribute to this. Do you notice any of that in your timeline? .... "

Yes, I have a long, messy timeline. Yes, I have one nagging yellow warning. In trying to clean up the timeline, I found the following problem. One of the earliest components ("Axle", created, saved as a file, inserted into the assembly, then broke the link)  has given Implicit Origin Warning ("IOW"). When the Group representing Axle in the Timeline is collapsed, the icon turns yellow, and hovering over it raises a pop-up showing two IOWs. When the Group is expanded, the warnings disappear. (weirdness #1)

I tried to isolate the IOWs on "Axle". Eventually everything had been deleted except the base component and Axle, and the problem remained.  Axle (sketch fully defined) has been saved to the Data frame as a file. When opened independently, the file Axle does not show any warnings or errors. I started over by creating a dummy component file, inserting Axle, breaking the link, then observed while deleting the threads, then the bodies, then the sketches of Axle. The IOWs persist, even after everything but the origin, axes, and planes of Axle have been deleted. (weirdness #2)  Is this, perhaps, a Design Version issue?

I've shared the file here so perhaps James or someone can diagnose what is happening.  I'll share any other files that are necessary.

Questions:

a) Are these intractable warnings the sort of thing that leads to slow re-calc? I'm probably spoiled, griping about having to wait 5 whole seconds for a re-calc, but it happens very frequently.

b) What sorts of things lead to automatic re-calc of everything in the timeline.  This seems to happen even if what was just edited only appears late in the Timeline and should not affect things that were put to bed early in the Timeline.

c) Is there a list of contributors to slow re-calcs, for instance, links to filed components, and which are the worst offenders?

d) Are there ways to improve Timeline ordering so re-calc speed is optimized? I'm already over-booked and am probably not competent to do it,  but has anyone every done any benchmarking, a propos time vs ordering in the Timeline?

.....R.

[innovatenate]

Thanks for asking about this topic. I can help out with part d.

Errors and warnings are certainly not going to improve performance. However, the timeline compute does have the ability to be multi-threaded. This only works if "chunks" of the timeline are independent.

For example, let's say you follow these steps in the timeline:

1. Create a construction plane offset from the default root component's origin

2. Create a sketch using the construction plane as the base plane

3. Perform and Extrude feature and create a new body

4. Create a sketch using the planar face of the extrude as the base plane

5. Extrude a new body from this sketch

In this scenario, the timeline has to be computed in a linear fashion, because of the dependencies on steps 4 & 5 on steps 1, 2, & 3. 

Now let's consider another workflow:

1. Create a construction plane offset from the default root component's origin

2. Create a sketch using the construction plane as the base plane

3. Perform and Extrude feature and create a new body

4. Create a construction plane offset from the default root component's origin

5.Create a sketch using the construction plane as the base plane

6. Extrude a new body from this sketch

In this scenario, Fusion 360 can "break down" the timeline and compute them on separate threads, which could improve performance. 

This is part of the reason why R.U.L.E. # 1 is so helpful when designing in Fusion 360.

I hope that helps.

[macmanpb]

Hi @Anonymous,

the problem of the ghost joint warning ist still in investigation.

You can find it here.

[macmanpb]

Hi @innovatenate,

after reading your description about the timeline internals i am a little unsure about my workflow.

I am modeling most with the top down paradigm.

FIRST 😉 create a component and activate it; 

Create a sketch;

Extrude the sketch to a body;

Create a new component and activate it;

Create a sketch and project some parts from the sketch 1;

Extrude the sketch to a body;

So with your explanation, with this workflow the timeline would be calculated in a linear way. What is not the best way and makes fusion slower, right?

But the base concept of fusion is the top down design paradigm, or have i misunderstand something?

So if i would use construction planes to this is have no references between the to parts, so if i change the first component sketch

the second component sketch has no back references to the second sketch and would not be updated.

Please correct me if i have thinkers 🙂

[innovatenate]

@macmanpb It's not alway possible to work without creating internal references in a design timeline, particularly with a top down design. That doesn't make it inherently "bad" or "wrong." You may need to sacrifice the timeline compute performance for the ability to parametrically update a design in a desired fashion. I'm not giving any particular recommendation here, I'm just pointing out something I recently have come to understand about the timeline compute, in case it does help.

Fusion 360 is a flexible tool that can accommodate different needs. If anything, I think this the one of the defining characteristic of Fusion 360. I like the description of "egalitarian" best. 🙂

I hope that answers your question. 

Thanks,

[TrippyLighting]

Very cool post!

@Anonymous what OS are you on ?

@Anonymous & @macmanpb do your designs involve imported geometry, for example imported fasteners to other STEP files ?

[Anonymous]

Win10 . Yes, I have some bearings imported as SAT from McMaster-Carr.

Re: projected sketches possibly making the calc-path linear: I try to make every sketch fully defined and break the connections to other components by specifying dimensions as parameters. Not very top-down, but I have complete control of things. Using variables (parameters) in a look-up table should make the components re-calc in parallel from the point where each has found the numeric values in the table. Am I on the right track?

[TrippyLighting]

The reason I asked the question if you have imported geometry in your design is that I suspect Fusion 360 has some problems with imported geometry.

I have the same problem in my design. There are no errors and warnings in the timeline with 400+ components.

However the warding with the implicit joint origin is the same and occasionally I've noticed other odd behavior when joining components but now seems it always had to do wth imported geometry.

[macmanpb]

I am working with a Mac and i also have imported a lot of step files.
I dont know if it has to do with imported geometry. The first time this
error occurs previously i had deleted a chamfer feature in the past.
On this feature a joint was referenced and after deletion Fusion deletes
the joint feature too. But the reference of the deleted chamfer is still present
so the warning occurs on some operations.

So i will test something in hope we have a reproducable example.

[innovatenate]

@Anonymous Sounds like you are on the right track. Have you noticed any difference in the compute all command?

Thanks,

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the response - I thought I must be doing something right (among
all the things I do that are wrong).I learned this business of making a
component as nearly independent as possible by working with SolidWorks.



What I have noticed is: I defined a component with sketches on planes that
were tangent to a circle that was defined in the lowest order sketch of the
component, but which was identical to a circle that was described in a
component defined earlier in the timeline. One of the points that located
an axis that defined a "plane at an angle" was accidentally constrained to
the circle sketched in the earlier component. ANY editing of this component
resulted in a calculation step that took as much as two Minutes to complete.
After finding and removing this constraint and making the component
dependent only on its own construction, its own sketches, and on parameters
in the table, the calculation step only takes 7 seconds. Seven seconds
still bugs me, considering how fast this machine is, but it is far better
than two minutes.



About the Yellow Warning; The component that triggers it is still present
and unsuppressed, but the Yellow Warning (we need an abbreviation for this)
comes and goes, i.e., without editing that part or anything that I can
detect is dependent on it, the YW disappears, only to reappear spontaneously
some time later.



On separate topics; a) Is it possible to search the Database for a
variable name? I chased my tail for a long time to discover that I had two
variable names that differed only by on capital letter.

b) I still have two variables that I can't delete because F360 claims they
are in use by Variable "." . It should not be possible to even accidentally
name a variable "." .



R.

[macmanpb]

Hi @innovatenate,

i have a question about timeline optimation.

Let's assume we have a timeline with two threads. First thread contains a c-plane->sketch->extrude, second the same.

These are two threads and fast to compute.

But what is the behavior if i project a sketch pice from thread-A into the sketch of thread-B?

After that there is a reference from thread-B->sketch to thread-A->sketch parent.

What does this constellation mean for the computation?

[innovatenate]

@Anonymous - I am not aware of a search function in the parameters area, but you can mark parameters as favorites to make them more discover-able. Using the Star, you can pin user or model parameters to the top in the Favorites area section of the Parameters dialog.

If you're interested in the a search function in the parameters dialog, be sure to show your support in the Fusion 360 Ideastation.

@macmanpb If you project from Sketch A into Sketch B, then Sketch A must be calculated before Sketch B can be calculated. The dependency gets even deeper if your project form geometry created by Sketch A (let's call this Extrude A). If you project form Extrude A, then you have compute the base plane for sketch A, Sketch A, and Extrude A, before Sketch B can be calculated. This type of dependency is what creates barriers for the compute command from being able to multi-thread compute. 

Does that help?

The project tool is very helpful in many cases. It is okay to have a dependency in a design, please don't misunderstand my point. However, please be aware that these dependencies are not free of charge, they come with some computational costs/requirements. Before leaving linked geometry in your design, it is worth considering the value of the parametric dependency, since some performance could be sacrificed as a result.

I hope this helps to clarify the point.

Thanks,

[macmanpb]

Thank you @innovatenate!

I know that project and object dependancies are indispensable in some cases. But we should keep in mind that this should be used with care.

For me i have learned a lot through this short discussion and that helps me to create a optimized timeline for my next designs. 

On small designs it will be no problem, but on larger ones each step should be considered for a second 🙂

[Anonymous]

Yes, that does help. Thanks for the explanation.



My slow Recalc problem seems to have abated by deleting a pair of components
that were connected by a Projection. Something went wrong during the
Projection from my component A to my B, or somewhere else in the flow,
because component B could not be managed. The sketch in A could not be fully
defined. I lost track of how many approaches were taken to avoid re-entering
all those dimensions, but I finally deleted both A and B and started over by
creating a fresh A. I did Save a Copy As of A, inserted a second copy,
broke the link, renamed, and modified that component to be B. CTRL-B recalc
of the entire design has been accelerated by more than a factor of 5. (I
was so happy that I forgot to actually time it.)





R.