Fusion 360 - Mac: Orbit using trackpad no longer working

[ferrum-d]

Hi

The Orbit function using the macbook's trackpad & Shift key is gone.

it used to be "on / off" for some while, usually when the app had been running for a longer time the orbit function using the trackpad two finger-gesture & Shift stopped working.  then restarting Fusion usually solved the issue.

But since this morning (latest update) it is gone alltogether as it seems.

This is quite annoying as that was the fastest and most convenient way to orbit around your model.

any chance to get it back working?

thanks

[Phil.E]

Have you checked your mac trackpad settings? There is a setting in Security and Privacy, under Accessibility. Fusion should be an allowed app to control the computer. I've seen this on other machines, but for some reason my 10.15.6 test MBP doesn't have any problems or show Fusion listed there. But I think it's worth a shot to look at the privacy/accessibility settings at this point.

[Anonymous]

Well, that wasn't set so I set it, but it didn't affect anything.

I have actually managed to come up with a workaround that seems to be usable. First I set "Pan, Zoom, Orbit shortcuts" to "Inventor", so their controls are F2, F3, and F4 plus the left mouse button. Then, because I don't want to have to use F4 all the time on my MacBook's touch bar, I used Karabiner-Elements to map caps lock to F13 and then BetterTouchTool to map F13 to F4 just for Fusion 360. (If anyone else is trying this, be sure to make separate mappings for F13 key down to F4 key down and F13 key up to F4 key up). So now orbit is just caps lock, and pan and zoom are handled by the NativeTrackpad add-in.

I'd still be happy to test any other potential fixes, since I still have access to the bug whenever I want it.

[Phil.E]

Did you restart Fusion after making the change in mac prefs?

[Anonymous]

Ya I did restart.

[Phil.E]

I have to be honest here, I'm out of ideas. If this was a general issue for mac users, in my experience someone else might have added a comment. Certainly if anyone reading this has experienced the same issues it would be nice to hear from you, please leave a comment.

Otherwise, I have to assume your hardware has some issue that is blocking trackpad gestures. More experiments for you might be trying to set your machine to default profile for gestures and input devices. Something you might take for granted is not used by other mac users, perhaps.

[Anonymous]

Ok, I'll continue to poke around. If I discover anything, I'll certainly post it here.

Thanks for all of your ideas, Phil!

[samykamkar]

This issue happens pretty often for me. I may have "solved" it, but I don't know as I can't readily reproduce the problem, it just happens randomly.

On my system, I can pan with two fingers on the built-in trackpad (MacBook Pro mid-2014), but orbit (shift+two fingers) randomly will stop working.

I went into System Preferences->Trackpad->More Gestures and began turning them off one by one, then testing Fusion. As soon as I disabled "Show Desktop", orbit began working. Re-enabling did not cause the trouble to come back, even after restarting Fusion.

If anyone else is experiencing this, can you try disabling "Show Desktop" in your Trackpad settings? If that doesn't work, what if you disable all the other features in that pane (More Gestures)?

Note that I experienced the issue whether or not I use the "NativeTrackpad", which I normally do use as it improves the trackpad experience.

Thanks 

[samykamkar]

This happened to me again, and again I was able to resolve it, but interestingly by doing the opposite. My "Show Desktop" feature in System Preferences->Trackpad->More Gestures was already disabled from last time, so I enabled it, and things worked in Fusion again!

So interestingly it seems like any change to "Show Desktop" resolves the issue (temporarily).

[Phil.E]

Interesting. We know that gesture drivers are turning off for some reason. (if we could figure this out it would be fixed by now)

What you are describing is making a change to macOS gesture behavior is somehow kicking the gesture drivers back into operation in Fusion.

The fact that it happens for you using native trackpad might be indicating the issue lies outside of Fusion! I need to confirm how this add-in works, but it should be using the OS gestures. If true, that means OS gestures are "turning off" outside of Fusion.

Can you check something for me? Look at System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy. Look at the Accessibility page. Is Fusion in the "allow the apps below to control your computer" list? Is the box for it ticked?

Thanks!

[samykamkar]

I've confirmed the 2nd Fusion is the one I normally run (if I right click -> Show in Finder, it's the same webdeploy/production/hash path as the version running).

Here's the code for Native Trackpad: https://github.com/pravdomil/Native-Trackpad/blob/master/xcode/NativeTrackpad.mm

[Phil.E]

Thanks for all the helpful info. One last favor: if gestures go away again, could you show me all the screens in your trackpad settings? That will help testing efforts.

Also do you notice any pattern such as it happening after some other use of trackpad, like switching desktops or other uses of trackpad outside of Fusion, or switching apps, etc.

[samykamkar]

Sure, it hasn't happened yet but I'll include the screens for now since I don't expect them to be any different when it recurs (I normally don't change these settings). When it happens again, I'll respond to confirm whether the screens are the same or not.

I haven't been able to nail down a pattern to when it occurs. Usually I'm using Fusion and it's working, and then it stops out of the blue, but I haven't identified what could be triggering it. I don't think restarting Fusion solves it either. I don't do anything special with the trackpad normally but who knows. The only other app I use that I can think of that might "mess" with trackpad / mouse stuff is BetterTouchTool, but I use it primarily for adding keyboard shortcuts to apps.

I don't use any external mouse/trackpad, just the built in MBP trackpad. 

[Phil.E]

Thanks. This is all in the report now. I've made my trackpad settings to match yours, except for one. Natural scrolling. If that's "on" I'll never get any work done. LOL.

[samykamkar]

Come to the dark side. 

 

[samykamkar]

Additional update, I ran into the issue again and this time wanted to test something:

• I quit Fusion 360
• I disabled and reenabled "Show Desktop" in System Preferences->Trackpad->More Gestures (this has been resolving it for me while Fusion is open)
• I started Fusion 360
• Orbit still didn't work
• I yelled at my computer
• Orbit still didn't work
• Again I disabled and reenabled "Show Desktop" in System Preferences->Trackpad->More Gestures
• Orbit started working
• I yelled at my computer

So appears the change needs to occur while Fusion 360 is running. Not sure if that's useful at all.

Could the software possibly do some other keystroke detection in a separate thread and if it detects an orbit, but finds the thread that handles orbiting isn't performing the action (perhaps shared memory of last time orbit was performed), then it can disable and reenable the setting automatically to automatically heal until the root cause is discovered?

Thanks!

[samykamkar]

Another note that may or may not be relevant is that zoom (pinch and..unpinch?) doesn't work when an input is selected, for example:

• Create sketch
• Begin creating a circle but don't complete it
• Drag the circle so the dimension value is changing
• Now attempt to pinch to zoom - this never works for me, however other things like two-finger to pan does work (if there were an issue, I'd expect the opposite to occur where pinch works but two-finger panning would increase or decrease the value in the selected dimension input)  

Thanks!

 

[Focus54]

Just a note for a great solution to this problem...

https://github.com/pravdomil/Native-Trackpad#readme (use latest version: .13)
Just download the folder that contains the NativeTrackpad.dylib from github then add reference from Fusion 360 add-in dialog as it describes in the readme. You may have to fuss with getting past OSX security. I have found that even if OSX seems to error on installing the dylib it still actually does it. You will know immediately when it's working because everything will navigate quick and you will be in heaven - night and day from what happens without this add-in.

The add-in works super good and is a huge relief if you are on Mac Trackpad. There are no other reasonable solutions at this time. No amount of fussing with Fusion 360 preferences are going to make the problems go away. This add-in gives control over navigation gestures to the native OS and gets out of the way - or at least this is how I understand it. Bottom line is it works. Three things to know... 1) get .13 version installed; 2) check "on" f360 preference for "use gesture-based view navigation"; 3) Whenever you need to scroll within the Data Panel, hold CMD down while using the normal two fingers scroll.

[Focus54]

As for the warning in the readme about not working on Catalina or other versions of OSX, this is only an install issue and it works just fine once you figure out how to get OSX to stand down. I have never had to use the sudo commands that others have suggested. I have it working on Catalina 10.15.7 no problem just using the folder from github (version .13) that contains dylib and pointing f360 add-in to this folder. Even if you get error/warning from OSX about not loading still continue and reboot/reload everything and this has worked several times for me on different virgin MBP.

[Phil.E]

Many customers are crashing due to v13 of native trackpad. It is recommended to avoid v13 on github and instead use v12 if possible.

v12 found here:

https://apps.autodesk.com/FUSION/en/Detail/Index?id=2223881439415941299&appLang=en&os=Mac

If you install v13 from github, and begin to experience crash on start, uninstall it. You'll probably get an email from me advising you to do this because I follow the crashes caused by v13 and email the customers who crash because of it.

@samykamkar Thanks for the additional notes and help for your fellow customers. I've added these all to a new ticket. At this time there are no trackpad experts available in Fusion development so it might be a while before anyone can work on this.

(ref: FUS-77345)

[samykamkar]

Thanks for the update, Phil.