Additional Blank Screen Opens When Opening A Design File

[Anonymous]

This has been happening for a while now and I suspect it is exclusively related to Big Sur, but almost every time I go to open another design an additional blank fusion 360 screen opens (see photos below). I have been scouring the internet and these forums for months looking for a solution but have not found one.

Has this happened to anyone else using a MacBook Pro running Big Sur? Mine is completely up to date.

I also run Fusion 360 on Windows 10 and have not encountered this... annoyance.

Any help or fix that someone may have would be greatly appreciated!!!

Thanks!!

[Phil.E]

Hi,

Thanks for posting. I have a few questions to help narrow down the possibilities.

When you say "almost every time", does that mean 9 out of 10, or something like that?

Can you describe how you open a design?

Do you have any special mac UI enabled, such as alternate desktops, etc?

Are you using two monitors?

Thanks for taking time to answer, and apologies for any inconvenience. My intent is to reproduce the issue which helps developers know what to fix.

[Anonymous]

Hi Phil!

Thanks for the reply, sorry it has taken me this long to respond. To answer your questions:

8 or 9 out of 10 might be an accurate description of frequency.

To open a design, I generally access them through the "Show Data Panel" tab at the far, left, upper corner of the screen.

As far as I know, I do not have a special mac UI like alternate desktops enabled.

I am not using two monitors, just the MacBook Pro screen of the laptop.

There are other instances where this occurs, but they are so random and hard to keep track of due to the intermittent nature of the problem.

And to add another issue, the panning via the trackpad stops working from time to time (by this I mean it treats the dual finger movement required to pan the object around as zooming) and the only fix I know of that works is to restart fusion. This seriously disrupts work flow and takes time away from modeling.

Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

I will check back in more frequently in hopes that there is an answer and these issues may be resolved.

Thank You!

[Phil.E]

When opening files, do you double click on them, or right click on them and pick Open from the menu?

[Anonymous]

Double click.

[Phil.E]

Do you get a different result if you right click on the design, and then pick Open?

Likewise, if you use File > Open, do you see the problem?

[Anonymous]

No, same result if I 'right click and open' or use 'File > Open'.

[Anonymous]

Update: Blank page opened when I scaled an object.

[Phil.E]

Since there are trackpad gestures that open new screens, can you try using a mouse? If the mouse doesn't produce the effect, and trackpad reliably produces the effect, we should look at your trackpad settings.

[Anonymous]

I actually use a mouse. Recently it has been a "magic mouse" which means I had to change my pan, zoom, orbit in the preferences to "Tinkercad" in order to enable the right click as my orbit function since there is no center wheel/button to accomplish this on the mouse. I am content with trading the "shift+center wheel" function of orbit with the pan feature on the track pad. Also, just minutes ago, I reopened fusion and right at the start the pan function would not work. I closed fusion and reopened and the pan function had returned.

If you want I could post a pic of my current trackpad settings? This is not the first time the trackpad zoom has failed me - even before I was using the magic mouse, this would happen from time to time.

[Phil.E]

The trackpad stopping working is a separate and long standing issue we are working to solve right now.

I'm only asking questions about how you are created blank new desktop screens each time you do actions in Fusion. 

The magic mouse uses trackpad gestures. And yet also you mention using a trackpad. I'm confused now about your actual workflow.

Can you please try eliminating the trackpad and the magic mouse by using another regular mouse?

[Anonymous]

Sure. Not a problem. But this blank screen problem has been happening since my mac was updated to Big Sur. Before, with Catalina, it never happened. However, I will switch back to the regular mouse.

[Phil.E]

Thanks. I'm trying to eliminate variables, that's all. If we can narrow down the possibilities to include Big Sur and Trackpad/Magic Mouse it will help greatly trying to reproduce the effect and debug it. Ultimately I want you to use whatever pointing device you feel comfortable with, and have a robust and stable Fusion 360 experience every time.

Thanks for the time and attention, and for reporting this to begin with. 

[Anonymous]

Switched back to regular mouse and all the settings that I have been using before the "magic mouse". Tried opening different projects using the right click > open method as well as the File > Open. Still getting a blank screen - however, I must add that using the File > Open opens a blank screen every other time I try.

[Phil.E]

Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for tracking down the variables. From what I see, macOS is creating a new "Space" when you open designs. It's not clear why. The method to create a new space is a manual interaction that requires a gesture to expose the spaces list, and a click to "+" add a space. None of this can be achieved by simply opening a Fusion design.

Since you are the only person reporting this, I'm wondering if you have any special application or workflow that uses Spaces? Something most other Mac users might not have.

(issue is now logged as FUS-93870)

[Anonymous]

I really appreciate you taking the time to help me through this. When you say "Special Application or Workflow", how would I go about looking for it?

[Phil.E]

I'm referring to something you may have installed, an add-in or application that has a connection to spaces. This is a long shot, but it's always worth asking about.

[Anonymous]

To the best of my knowledge I do not recall installing an add-in or application.

One thing I have not tried and have been holding as a last resort, is a complete uninstall/reinstallation of Fusion. Any chance this could be a valid solution?

[Phil.E]

At this point, it couldn't hurt. 

Before you do, please gather your log files for the bug report. 

1. Go to Help > Support and Diagnostics

2. Diagnostic Log Files tool

It will run for a few seconds and pause Fusion while it's running. The result is a zip file you can attach here or email to me.

After that, be sure to use the clean-uninstall method:

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/fusion-360/learn-explore/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/How-t...

Let me know how it goes.

[Anonymous]

Here are my Diagnostic Logs.

Cheers!