Mac trackpad zoom gesture engages very delayed or not at all

[marc.liyanage]

Doing a two-finger pinch on my Mac's trackpad is supposed to zoom in or out in Fusion 360, but I noticed for a while now that this particular gesture is very unreliable. The zoom either happens with a long delay (seconds, not milliseconds) or sometimes it doesn't engage at all.

It is very noticeable and extremely distracting and annoying.

Below is a screen video that documents the delay between when the system starts sending the touch events vs. when Fusion 360 reacts. Make sure to display it in 1:1 full size to see the Terminal window properly.

[marc.liyanage]

I'm pretty sure you won't have to use a custom gesture library. The dtrace probes are triggering off events in *your* code (well, Qt in the event handler case, but definitely code under your control and not OS/framework code).

The results show clearly that the events are delivered by the OS and frameworks to your application layer code and that one part of your code (event handling) is getting the magnify events, but  another part of your code (drawing/rendering) is not always invoked in response to that.

I think there is simply a bug somewhere in the zoom handling that drops some of the incoming events on the floor, especially ones where the zoom speed is low. I think in the multi-second cases, it's not that the application takes multiple seconds to render. Instead, it drops several of the leading events and then finally a later event manages to tickle the rendering engine. So the rendering delay from that last event to the render happening might be low, but that's not what the user perceives. The user perceives the delay between the first gesture event to the first render after that, and that is exactly what the dtrace script demonstrates.

If you have some time, maybe try out the script, it's very easy to use. Given what I see in the video you posted recently, I'd be surprised if you get no warnings when you try it, I'm pretty sure I see the problem in your video.

[Phil.E]

@marc.liyanage Thanks for your help!

[Anonymous]

Hi there!!

Is this issue receiving some attention? Over  year after getting this help the problem persists. What gives?

[noelQUDAY]

I would like to know as well. I really like Fusion, but this is an extremely inconvenient bug.  

[marc.liyanage]

I would not get my hopes up. From talking to people at Autodesk last year it sounds like they consider this not important enough to fix, ever. They think that this 3rd party extension is enough of a solution:

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

If you disagree, I would make some noise. The reason they think this is not important enough is that not enough Mac users complained.

[noelQUDAY]

It seems like issue has gotten worse for Macs recently. Now, rotating objects with the trackpad is often difficult. Is anyone else experiencing this?

[marc.liyanage]

@Phil.E  It seems that the "Native Trackpad" extension is no longer maintained, according to another forum post:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-support/mac-orbit-using-trackpad-no-longer-working/m-p/100...

It was great and I used it for years. I know Autodesk's Knowledge Base article even referred to that for a while as a solution to work around the issues in Fusion 360's built-in gesture detection implementation.

With that option now gone, Fusion 360 is again unusable for me when using the built-in MacBook trackpad. Would it be possible to prioritize a real built-in fix in Fusion 360 now?

[Phil.E]

Sorry to hear that Native Trackpad was deleted from your computer.

Version .13 is available on GIT, as the author explained

https://github.com/pravdomil/Native-Trackpad

Have you tried that version? It causes crash on start for some customers, but not all.

[gmooklee]

It is old post, but.. I am still experiencing this issue.

[noelQUDAY]

Yes it was never fixed, sadly.

I gave up on bringing it up. I really wish it would be addressed and fixed.

[marc.liyanage]

Same here, I just can't understand why this seemingly serious issue was never fixed properly inside the app, to this day.

[tom3YYFC]

Just adding my voice here that it seems a shame. I've got a 3D Mouse, but for linear orthographic views (sketch mode) it is pretty clunky and just simple pan and zoom are all one really needs - but it needs to work well. Here it just feels clunky and reflects poorly on the Autodesk brand for those of us coming from other CAD/CAM environments.

[dturbeville]

Chiming in as well. This is an incredibly frustrating issue that causes me to waste time.

[Phil.E]

Thanks for posting your comment.

Have you tried Native Trackpad? See this article. 

[dturbeville]

Brilliant! Thank you!