Can't push to 3D PCB in the latest update

[marcocipriani01]

Fusion 360 just updated to the latest version, and I'm now unable to push my PCB design to 3D. It used to work just fine until the latest Fusion version. It's a fairly big design with ~180 components, so performance has never been great, but it used to work "good enough". When I click on "Push to 3D PCB", I get a blank 3D environment, black sidebar and spinning cursor which goes on forever. If I leave my computer running for a while nothing happens, as Fusion seems to be stuck in a loop. I have to kill the process using Task Manager.

Here's a list of different things I tried to solve the problem, without success:

• Edit something in the PCB, save again
• Change the 3D PCB quality from maximum to minimum
• Enable/disable "Stop layer geometry"
• Enable/disable "Copper texts"
• "Clear cache and restart"
• Unlink 3D PCB, delete the old 3D PCB, push again

For every test I've done, I had to kill Fusion 360 with Task Manager. I do have enough RAM (32GB) for the 3D PCB to load entirely, and my PC is reasonably fast. I am available to do more tests and provide more details.

Marco Cipriani

[yqliu]

@marcocipriani01 , if it's a very big board, we suggest using "Fastest" mode when pushing to 3D PCB. 

[marcocipriani01]

The problem is not the size of the board or the number of components, as it was working two days ago. Something seems to have broken in the latest update. That said, thank you, the fasted preset works, but I suspect it works because it doesn't push the 3D PCB in the same way as the normal preset: the PCB is generated as an image instead of a 3D model. Maybe investigate the problem. For now, I'll use the fastest preset.

Kind regards

[yqliu · Accepted solution]

The number of components should not impact the performance a lot unless there is a network problem.  There is no change about 3D PCB in the latest update. If it worked days ago, probably it's a network issue. Maybe you can try again later or tomorrow and see if it's better. We will also keep an eye on this performance issue.

[marcocipriani01]

It is not a network issue, I have high speed, reliable internet. Fusion straight up locks itself in a loop. Update: now, the fastest preset straight up crashes Fusion 360 with no error message.

[TrippyLighting]

I've un-marked @yqliu's post as the solution as there clearly still is a problem... 

[marcocipriani01]

I've pushed my board design to the 3D PCB several times this afternoon using the "Fastest" preset and I have experienced only one program crash. Unfortunately, no error message showed up so I don't know what happened. The standard preset still doesn't work.

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @marcocipriani01,

I hope this message finds you well. Would you be willing to share the files for review? This definitely warrants further investigation and performance is definitely something we want to improve.

Let me know if this is possible.

Best Regards,

[marcocipriani01]

Sorry, for a number of reasons I prefer not to share my design. However, I have one suggestion to improve the 3D PCB experience. Right now, every 3D component in PCB is treated a normal Fusion 360 3D object: generating the 3D PCB involves re-drawing each component parametrically, as if the 3D PCB was a mechanical assembly with multiple linked components. This means that a ~180 components, large 3D PCB takes up a total of 5GB of system RAM to load. Using the standard preset, on my computer, pushing to the 3D PCB takes a whopping 4min to load, while the fastest preset takes somewhere between 30s and 60s.

I know nobody wants to talk about competitors, but as a student I also get access to Altium Designer. In Altium, each 3D component is a STEP file: this means that, when generating the 3D view, Altium doesn't draw each component from scratch. It just loads the "pre-baked" component, no parametric stuff involved. The PCB itself appears to be a mesh generated in real time when switching from 2D to 3D, which only takes a fraction of a second in Altium, no matter how many components I have in my PCB design (it's actually impressive).

That said, I generally prefer using Fusion 360, as I'm used to EAGLE and I like being able to put my PCB into mechanical assemblies. The solution I would like to propose is to cache each 3D electronic component as a mesh with texture, just like a video-game, and also treat the PCB as a mesh. This will eliminate any unnecessary data, which wastes time, RAM space and performance. In addition, it could allow the 3D view to load in a fraction of a second, as every component is cached and the only new mesh to generate is the PCB itself. I'm pretty sure this is doable since Fusion 360 can already deal with meshes.

You can consider this thread as solved since today I haven't experienced any more crashes or freezes with the fastest preset. I probably won't use the standard preset anymore, it's too slow.

Kind regards,

Marco Cipriani

[TrippyLighting]

---

@marcocipriani01 wrote:

Sorry, for a number of reasons I prefer not to share my design.

---

You are probably aware of this, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

Autodesk employees are under strict NDA and your IP is safe with them.

[xga231]

I have the same issue. Fusion asked me to give access to the network. I tried multiple times this week and last week, but it still does not work. Can you help with this? Thanks!

[xga231]

I have the same issue. Fusion asked me to give access to the network. I tried multiple times this week and last week, but it still does not work. Can you help with this? Thanks!

[jorge_garcia]

Hello @xga231,

I hope you're doing well. Are you behind some sort of restricted access or IT setup at your company? This might be the cause. If you can provide more details we may be able to get to the bottom of this.

Best Regards,

[xga231]

Hi Garcia,

I tried to ask IT give me access, but still does not work. I am not sure what else I can do. 

[jorge_garcia]

Hello @xga231,

I hope this message finds you well. If IT won't allowlist Fusion then there's not much we can do. I recommend you open a support ticket so that we can get more people involved. 

We will need more information in order to figure out what may be going on.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

[xga231]

I can't push to 3D after recent update. Fusion asked me to give the permission to public and private network, and I clicked "allow". But after that I can't use this function anymore. It has been over 3 weeks, but I still can't find a good way to fix it. Do you have any suggestion? Thanks.

[Aideelectronique]

I have exactly the same problem, is there a solution?

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @Aideelectronique,

Could you elaborate more on the issue you are seeing? This thread is old so the details could be very different in your case.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

[Aideelectronique]

Hi

it was no longer possible to push to fusion with eagle (after the
fusion update) after 1 hour it was back to normal...