Autosave issues... 5-10 minutes to save, there HAS to be a fix.

[Hardened]

I searched the forum, and only found one thread that covers this issue.  There were no answers in the thread that solves the problem.

Running the latest release on a newer quad core windows 8.1 machine.  Plenty of ram, plenty of disk space, drive is not fragmented.

I am not working on overly complex models, although the time for Autosave to finish is clearly affected by file size and complexity.

This issue occurs both online and offline, so it is apparently related to simply writing the Autosave file to my local drive.

If I set Autosave to 5 minutes, I actually spend more time waiting for Autosave than I do working.  It takes as much as ten minutes, and while it is saving, my disk activity hovers between 0% and 5%.  Something is definitely wrong, and it makes Fusion nearly impossible to use.  

If I set Autosave to 10 minutes, it simply never saves.

[innovatenate]

Any chance anti-virus software could be actively scanning files while they are being saved? In other words, if you temporarily disable the anti-virus software does the behavior change? You could just add the installation and/or recovery directories to the exception list in your anti-virus software. 

Installation directory:

%localappdata%\Autodesk\webdeploy

Recovery Directory:

%APPDATA%\Autodesk\Autodesk Fusion 360\<GUID>\CrashRecovery

Do the designs in question have large mesh bodies? Could you share a sample design that is having the issue here? I'm happy to test on one of my machines. 

Thanks,

[Hardened]

I am running Webroot SecureAnywhere for anit-virus / firewall.  I have tried disabling it, and the Autosave behavior is unchanged.  

No, there are no mesh bodies in the model. 

I could share a file, but Fusion does this with all files, all the time.

[innovatenate]

Thank you for the update. If you export an archive file of the designs that are experiencing this issue, how large are the files?

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/fusion-360/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/How...

The only reason I mention that is that if there is some form of file corruption, it can manifest as file size bloat. 

Does your computer have two drives? Fusion saves to %localappdata% on the C drive. Does the C drive have at least 10% of the disk space available on it?

Have you tried running a CHKDSK on your drives to see if there are any issues with the drives?

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb491051.aspx

Could you share a copy of your diagnostic log files from Fusion 360?

diagnostic log file.png

The auto-save times should be recorded in there. Perhaps there will be an error or something that will give us a clue as to the nature of the issue. If you could upload a copy of them here, it would be very helpful.

Another diagnostic procedure that might be worthwhile to go through is to boot up in Windows Safe Mode with networking. 

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/fusion-360/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Dia...

This should eliminate all background processes. If there is a conflict with a background process, this diagnostic procedure may at least point us in that direction. 

I hope this helps. I look forward to your update.

Thanks,

[Hardened]

Hard drive is 1 TB with 75% free

Log file(s) attached.

[Hardened]

Exported file size is 102MB

[innovatenate]

There are two things that I noted from the log files, thank you for sharing them. 

The first thing is that there is something in the upload queue. I'm not sure if it is stuck for some reason or not. 

If you browse to:

C:\Users\***\AppData\Local\Autodesk\Autodesk Fusion 360\***\W.Login\Q

You'll see there are a couple of files in there. As far as I can tell, they seem like they may be stuck. The file name is POE_RND_170416-A.

Could you try the following?

1. Enter into Offline mode

2. Open POE_RND_170416-A

3. Save a new version of this design

4. Go back online and see if the design will complete syncing.

Is POE_RND_170416-A by any chance an X-referenced component of the Jolt_Rnd_E01 file mentioned in the log files, below?

The second thing is that I'm seeing this document save was cancelled repeatedly in the log files. 

20170504T082717 E Failed to backup file ***/Roaming/Autodesk/Autodesk Fusion 360/***/CrashRecovery/86f14f010f1f449c85ec7d073c73e0ef.backup to crash-recovery folder
20170504T082717 I Problem autosaving document: Jolt_RnD_E01 (v4~recovered), status: Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...+Document save was cancelled ...

I think this has something to do with the auto-save taking longer than expected. I'm not sure if the pending upload could cause this, but I'm hoping if we solve the sync issue it will also save the auto-save issue. 

I look forward to your update. Please let me know if you have any questions. I am happy to help.

Thanks,

[ahsan.autodesk]

Hi there,

I'm sorry to see that you're having trouble with auto-saves on your designs. I can certainly see that some files such as "Recon_G1-v4 v1 v9" and "Jolt_RnD_E01" are having trouble getting auto-saved. Is it possible that these are also big files - similar to the 102MB file that you mentioned above? From the log files, I can tell that we do try to auto-save them, but then decide to cancel out because we detect that there are some edits being made to these files. We cancel any auto-saves if we detect that any data in those files is changing - that's because we don't want inconsistent data to get saved out.

Would it be possible for you to increase your "automatic recovery save time interval" to 15 minutes or more? This will reduce the number of times auto-save will kick in for (all) your files. However, this still doesn't help the actual auto-save time. Auto-save is just a full blown save, done silently in a separate thread. So, if the file is big, auto-save will take longer. In the future, we could perhaps think of splitting up the monolithic file into multiple "connected" pieces, and that will help improve the save time. However, unfortunately, I can't think of any quick solution right now.

I do see that other files, such as "POE_RND_170416-A v1" are getting auto-saved properly. So, auto-save is probably working okay in general on your system.

Let me know if you think otherwise.

Lastly, note that you can force an auto-save on a document any time by hitting Ctrl-Shift-S on Windows or Cmd-Shift-S on Mac.

Regards,

[Hardened]

Thanks for the reply...

You said that Autosave happens silently in another thread...  not for me.  It suspends operation of Fusion entirely.  The interface is frozen until Autosave completes.

Also, you mention increasing the time interval for Autosave... if I set the interval for anything other than 5 minutes, it simply never Autosaves.  At all.

File 'Bloat' has been mentioned... is there any fix?  Maybe something like the old AutoCAD 'purge' command?

ETA:   Also, the 'Recovery' saving is as long or longer than Autosave, and also suspends Fusion while it is saving.

[mroek]

@ahsan.autodesk:

Just for the record, I'm also experiencing big auto-save issues. Usually it doesn't actually work (probably due to me working on the file, causing auto-save to silently cancel), but if it does kick in, it freezes the GUI until done. And also, it seems to pile up a queue of pending autosaves, so if it kicks in, it may do several auto-saves in succession, ignoring the set interval (which I have at 15 minutes). Earlier, I had the interval at 5 minutes, which actually seemed to work better, except I got tired of the GUI freeze when it kicked in. The project I'm working on is around 60 MB or so.

I've just tried to get into the habit of doing a manual recovery save (CTRL-SHIFT-S) before doing things I think may be risky, and that seems to consistently work. But the GUI is still unresponsive during the save, of course.

[ahsan.autodesk]

Thanks for the responses. They are very helpful.

It seems we have some cases where the files take abnormally long to save. I'm not sure if this is due to some "bloat" issue, or there is just a lot of data to save. But this is causing auto-saves to also slow down drastically (auto-save and save basically use the same multi-threaded persistence logic). Would it be possible for you to share your data set with us? It will help us analyze the slowness and hopefully improve save times. If possible, please share your data with me at ahsan dot ali at autodesk dot com.

When auto-save keeps failing for about three or more times, we force an auto-save the next time UI frees up. However, you're both reporting that when a lot of such auto-saves get queued up, it freezes the UI for a longish period of time. We'll try to help improve this situation.

Thanks. Appreciate you sharing your thoughts with us.
Ahsan

[Hardened]

Ahsan,

   I am still having the autosave and recovery problems.  I have disabled anti-virus to no avail.  I have searched for a conflicting background process, no luck.  I have plenty of disk space (750 GB), the drive is not fragmented.  16 GB of RAM.  Quad core machine.

I have work to get done, and my clients do not want to hear excuses.

I am struggling with a love/hate relationship with Fusion.  It does so many of the hard things well, but it makes so many of the easy things hard.  For example, file management, file saving, and version tracking are unreliable, confusing, and unnecessarily complex. 

In the couple years I have been using fusion, it has saved me a lot of time on the design time, and cost me untold hours in lost data and duplicated work.

Is it crazy to suggest that Fusion simply saves a design file to my local hard drive, to a location of my choosing, when I tell it to?

I have been a full time CAD designer since the early 1990's.  Back then, AutoDesk had file saving figured out.  

[ahsan.autodesk]

Hello there,

I believe there are some specific models you're having problems with because I could see in your log files that many other files were auto-saving properly.

Would it be possible for you to share with us one of your models that is giving you problems?

How long does the Save command take on this model?

Although you can't choose where you save your files locally, you can always "Export" them to a local disk. However, I understand it is not the same.

Anyways, if we can take a look at your data set, we might be able to get to the bottom of the problem faster.

Thanks for your help

[Hardened]

How would you like me to share a file?

[ahsan.autodesk]

Thanks for willing to share the file. Best way would be to invite me to your project, and tell me which file I need to open. My email id is ahsan dot ali at autodesk dot com.

Regards