Fusion stops with large number of holes in rectangular pattern

[Smokeys]

Working on a new top for a vacuum table.   I have a large (500+) holes in a rectangular pattern.   After laying them out, even before doing any extrudes or anything, fusion gets so slow as to be unresponsive.    Just trying to add a dimension will cause it it pause for literally an hour.   Sometimes windows kills it before it's done doing whatever.   The interesting thing is that it's not doing much in terms of CPU/Memory.   Just sitting there with the hourglass.

Attached is a sample file.   To replicate the behavior, just try and add a dimension at the bottom left circle.

My workaround is to do all the dimensions before I do any patterns, as once you do a pattern it's all over...  Is there a better way to do this?

[TrippyLighting]

Don't pattern in Sketches. Extrude one hole and pattern the timeline feature, preferably with the "Identical" option.

[Smokeys]

Is there a video out there that shows how to do that?

[Phil.E]

There might be on youtube. Have you looked? Let me know if you can't find any.

Here is the help page, perhaps this will help.

http://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=GUID-9622573F-06FA-462F-AFA7-97CD0C7AA0C9

Help, and self paced learning tutorials are found on the Help menu, upper right corner of the Fusion window, under the ? button.

[jeff_strater]

I agree with everything that @TrippyLighting and @Phil.E say here, but I'll take it one step farther:  Do you really need to have all those holes modeled in the Design environment at all?  See the screencast below.  I just created a sketch on the top face, and placed a single sketch point.  In Manufacture, then, I created a Drill operation, using that sketch point as the geometry, and then patterned the Drill operation in the CAM workspace.  Unless you are hoping to do a high-quality rendering of this in the Design environment, if your goal is just to manufacture the top for the vacuum table, I'd skip the modeling side completely.  Yet another option to consider.

screencast:  https://knowledge.autodesk.com/community/screencast/35ef4c22-09ac-4f9f-93ef-f8e5b0e00abc 

(screencast embedding seems to be broken for me)

[jeff_strater]

looks like it came back...

[Smokeys]

I ended up doing just what you suggest and for my current purposes, it worked just fine so I am happy.   But what if I wanted to model something like a fixture plate, seems to me 500 or more holes isn't that big of a deal.   Is this just the way it is or are there ways to do this more efficiently.  I suspect it's got a lot to due with the rectangular function.   Odd that it doesn't take more CPU though, what's it actually doing?

[wmhazzard]

I knocked this out quickly but with no regard to spacing and there are 720 holes and it only takes a few seconds to update a change. I have only one sketch with only one hole sketched. 

[g-andresen]

Hi,

Try the option "faces" instead of "features". My attempts with this are much more positive.
About 2 years ago I described it in this thread.

günther

[wmhazzard]

Hi,

Try the option "faces" instead of "features". My attempts with this are much more positive.
About 2 years ago I described it in this thread.

Good point, I patterned the faces and I was actually surprised at how fast it would update the 720 holes. 

[SEIZMICdesign]

While there are certainly various solutions to any given problem, over the years I have noticed that Fusion does not like big/complex sketches or patterns. I designed a grater a while back and patterning those grater features... really got Fusion to thinking..