Delay switching between electronic design pages

[infinitemach]

I am noticing a significant delay, anywhere from 3 to 6 seconds, when switching between design pages, i.e., schematic and board, for an electronic design. This does not seem normal. Is there a setting that may be causing this?

My system CPU is a Ryzen 7 2700X, 16 GB RAM, and a GTX 2070 GPU. Windows 11 Pro

I am running the latest version of F360.

[HelenChen-AutodeskQA]

Hi @infinitemach,

Sorry to hear that you're having trouble.

Could you please check this post to see whether the tips from other user is helpful a little bit for you?

Solved: Re: Huge lag in Fusion 360 - Autodesk Community - Fusion 360

Hope it helps for your case.

So I managed to figure out the problem. It turns out it was nothing to do with AutoDesk, but to do with how Windows 11 has divided some power settings into different places.

If your computer is lagging and running super slow (despite being more than powerful enough for the task at hand), even though nothing is being heavily utilised, check your power options in BOTH control panel, and settings and ensure there isn't a low-power, energy saving, or eco mode turned on, as this will be throttling your components power!
Make sure you check the power mode in control panel first as if you have an eco mode selected here it can limit the power options shown in the completely separate 'Settings' menu.

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Best regards,

Helen

[infinitemach]

The tried the suggestions from the link you posted and I'm not seeing much of an improvement.

[yiqiu.han]

Hi, @infinitemach 

Is this a new problem for you on the same device? Does that happen when switching between design/manufacture/render/drawing tabs? 
Recording a video showing CPU usage in the task manager that contains process information would help us investigate the issue.

Thanks,

Yiqiu

[pascal0312]

I have it too. (Dell XPS 15, i7 9th gen, GTX1650, SSD)

It closes different windows in order. So Design Manager -> bottom status bar -> top ribbon -> etc. Showing more and more of the PCB layout behind it. When switching tabs it also uses some network. It seems to check for version info or whatever and it takes about 2-3 seconds between switching.

CPU Usage spikes from 2-3% to about 20% when switching tabs.

It's been a thing since I started using it when Eagle integrated in F360 and it was never not an issue to be honest. I also cannot believe the Autodesk team can switch between schematic and lay-out without an irritating delay or without literally breaking down the UI and building it back up again in such visual steps.

[infinitemach]

Here's a video of the Task Manager window when switching from a schematic tab to board tab. This is not a new problem. I have always noticed a delay when switching between tabs in F360 electronic design, it just seems to be much worse now and is really annoying. I do not see this performance problem when using F360 for designing parts for manufacturing, 3D printing, etc.

[yiqiu.han]

Hi, @infinitemach 

Thanks for recording the video. Looks like CPU usage is normal. Electronics tab switching is a bit slower than modeling workspaces and we have the plan to improve it. But it should not be a 3~6s delay.

We tried several win11 machines and didn't see the such delay. When opening sample electronics design projects, We can see a bit of delay during the first round of switches, but it no longer exists for the 2nd time.

One more question: Are you opening large sch&brd files? 

Maybe you can try to clear the Fusion cache and restart to see if the issue remains exists. Steps are:

1. Win+Run ‘%localAppData%\Autodesk\’, delete “Autodesk Fusion 360”, “Neutron Platform” and “Web Services”
2. Win+Run ‘%AppData%’ , remove the ‘Autodesk’ whole folder
3. Win+Run ‘%localAppData%\Temp\’, delete all files under it, and skip if files that can’t be deleted.
4. Open ‘C:\ProgramData\Autodesk’, and delete all files under it. 

And I have another workaround, you could drag out sch/brd tab, just like using a browser. So that slowness in tab switching can be bypassed.

@pascal0312  If the network is always used during tab switching and delay is also obvious, This might be another issue. Are you using win 11 also? May I know your region setting in OS and language setting in Fusion?

Thanks,

Yiqiu

[pascal0312]

I'm using W10 22H2.
Region settings on OS is Dutch. Language setting in Fusion is English.

I'm using the Fidget Spinner example project as reference. Comparing that to my own project is a bit faster. PCB layout in the example is also simpler. I'd say there's about a 2 second delay between clicking to switch tabs and having the window 'ready'. Even after the first click.

Following above steps deleted about 700MB worth of files in step 1. 300MB in step 2. And deleting all possible files in the Temp folder. Lastly deleting the ProgramData Autodesk folder.

Restarting Fusion and retrying the example..
Opening the example project and first time switching tabs will take around 6-7 seconds. After that switching tabs feels like it's a little bit smoother, but it's not gone. Time between switching went from 2 seconds to about 1.6 as far as I can measure.
Checking my own design with a lot of shapes in the PCB layout is taking 5 seconds the first time and after that about 2 seconds. Also a slight improvement.

After deleting the files I do see F360 using a constant network usage to download things. It seems like all the libraries need to be downloaded again. After that's done, I still have network spikes when switching between SHC and BRD tabs.

Checking some things in my own project like copying a polygon and changing layer will still take 3-5 seconds and makes F360 unresponsive for that time. I still expect these things to work flawless/beter, especially because F360 is under the big Autodesk umbrella. A simple 10-line polygon shouldn't be an issue I think.

[yiqiu.han]

Hi, @pascal0312 

If slowness appears in all areas, it shouldn't be UI related only. Did you see slowness when editing a moderate-size mold design sample file?

I see you are using a notebook that has an integrated graphics card. Another thing we can try is to disable GPU rendering.  Go to the Preference dialog by selecting the profile icon in the top right corner of Fusion. Go to General > Electronics > Misc > deselect “Enable GPU rendering” > Apply. Then start Fusion to try again.

Thanks,

Yiqiu

[pascal0312]

Yeah, it doesn't seem to be UI related only.
Before the last update I didn't use GPU rendering, since that was a new feature. I started using it and also made sure it uses the dedicated GPU instead of the integrated one. In task manager it's using 'GPU 1' as well, which is the dedicated GTX1650.

I mostly use Fusion for Electronics Designs, so I don't have experience with other design types to show you.

[yiqiu.han]

Hi, @pascal0312 

Yes, there might be something else related, We will try to find another way to narrow down the problem. 

For modeling commands, Some tips are easy to be fetched from the learning panel if you have interests😀

If you could also help to record a video demonstrating how slow it is in the electronics workspace and compare it with the modeling workspace, along with the status in the task manager. That might be helpful. 

Thanks,

Yiqiu

[infinitemach]

Actually, dragging the schematic out as a separate window works great. No delay now at all and I can Alt+Tab between the windows (which is great).

It does make me wonder why the default layout can't behave so well as having separate windows.

[furaTT4KY]

Tabo switching is also very slow for me, around 3-4s. This behavior has been going on since the beginning of the merger of EAGLU and Fusion.

Win 10 Pro, 21H2, build 19044.2846
AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 4750 - 8 core CPU + with GPU
RAM 16.0GB, SSD 980 PRO 1TB
Fusion in English, system language Czech.

Fusion version: Fusion 360 2.0.16007 x86_64

Tried cleaning the cache, deleted a lot of data and it didn't help. I did not do step number 4 because there are many files from Revit 2023 in the folder.

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Btw Fusion uses 4GB of RAM when opening the schematic + board of a simple 60 component board (see video). The old EAGLE needed 200MB.. think about it.

[pascal0312]

Does your software also feels slow when executing bigger actions? Requiring some time to think, maybe even freeze F360 for a second?
I can't make a screencap of this project because it's private. But when copying polygons it takes 2-3 seconds while F360 is freezing, changing target layers freezes it a bit.

[furaTT4KY]

Yes, it often happens that Fusion seems to get stuck for a moment or has to think for a moment. It happens even with smaller projects. However, only in electronic design, the rest is fast.

A great example is the transition from the Show command to Move or to Route, there are almost always micro-freezes (500ms).

__

Btw Ignore Violators is always selected. Otherwise, it's even slower.