Milling simulation - Display - View - Viewpoint - Model not working

[leo.sandstrom]

I noticed today when simulating a simple milling operation that the camera resets to to the top of the tool holder and follows the tool around thus moving the model.

This is a new behavior, it did not do this yesterday.

It has several issues:

• Tool holder size vs part size means the actual part is not even on screen after each tool change
• Rapid movements etc. quickly gets confusing with the part flying around on the screen, off the screen etc. While this is fine for certain simulations, it is simply unusable as default
• If I pause the simulation and correct screen placement so I can see the part, it gets reset on the next tool change, this is exacerbated by different tool holders/sizes
• Turning this feature off does not work. I have tried to use the View menu and adjusting the viewpoint to model or tool back and forth. Restarting etc. It still follows the top of the tool holder no matter what I do
• Moving the viewport around to try and see the part means that the viewport is out in the middle of nowhere when I exit simulation - 5-10 seconds extra zooming way out and back in again to try and orient the part the way I want

This bug means I am now spending literally 10 times the time to verify a simple 3 axis milling program on a small part when compared to yesterday. Now do this 20 times due to optimizations and last minute changes and I am sure you can understand my frustration.

Especially considering this is a part that needs to happen now as I am typing this.

How do I resolve this and revert to the normal behaviour where the view is centered on the part and the tool is moving?

Any help is appreciated.

I might also add another question, is there a stable branch available for Fusion 360? I cannot have basic functionality change on me over night and finding out when I sit with time critical work is not the way to go.

Trust me, I appreciate the iterative process, but it is simply not acceptable with bugs like this since it is costing me money at this point.

[Phil.E]

Hi,

Sorry to hear of your frustration.

In the simulation dialog there is a view toggle.

There is more information on the help pages:

https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=GUIDE1AF5D8C-41A9-4505-AAEA-6CFDD40EDAF4

Help is found in the upper right hand corner of the Fusion 360 application window for future reference.

Does this help?

[leo.sandstrom]

Hello

Thank you, but this is unfortunately not the problem.

The viewpoint setting does not work.

No matter what I set it to it makes no difference and the issue persists.

I have also noticed that this is only an issue in some of my files, not all.

So the issue is a bit more intermittent and hard to pin down then I first thought.

I cannot say specifically why it happens, but once it happens for a file, I cannot unbreak it and from that point forward the setting is broken for that file.

Restarts etc. does not help. Deleting the setup and redoing it does not help.

[Phil.E]

• So if I'm hearing you correctly, the Viewpoint setting is set to Model and behaves as if it's set to Tool.
• Also, this seems to be data dependent, only for some designs.
• And no matter what you try, it persists.

Can you possibly share a downloadable link to one of these designs, or export the model for me? I'm happy to test it out and log a bug report for it.

[leo.sandstrom]

Thank you, I really appreciate the help.

That is exactly the current situation. Ill try and review the file that I was working on and see if I can share it with you so you can see how it behaves.

Also, I am not 100% sure that it is even following the tool correctly, since it sticks to the top of the toolholder with the tool and parts both off screen.

Edit: Just want to give a heads up that it might take me until tomorrow to get you the file. It is getting pretty late here and I have some work to finish before I can get back to testing and sharing this.

[Phil.E]

If you have time and think it will help to describe the effect, a video made with Autodesk Screencast would be perfect.

[seth.madore]

Do you have a Machine defined in your Setup, and were you at any point playing around with Machine Simulation?

[leo.sandstrom]

I have had a look at the file that I had issues with last time and I have managed to reproduce the issue and found it is tied to the machine definition or machine file.

I have one machine definition that causes this issue when selected, and a newer one that works as intended.

Seth, I am pretty sure that I changed the machine definition when I tried to get this working since I also read about the issues with machine simulation when trying to find a solution to this. I do not think I ever tried the full machine simulation, but I am not sure. I did actively try to disable it according to instructions I found but it made no difference at the time.

I also had a look at the machine definition that was causing issues and for some reason it is set up in inches.

I am 100% sure that I have never intentionally changed it to inches since everything I do is metric and it is a pretty obvious setting.

It might also be relevant to know that I use multiple computers, one near the machine and one in my office.

I manually copy the latest machine definition to my both machines when I make changes to it since I have not found a reliable way to save the machine in Fusion, but machine definitions are also saved in the files I created so I have a ton of old files containing old machine definitions.

Any time I work on a part I change to the new machine definition. So I am used to checking them.

I also remember having a Fusion 360 crash sometime near when I worked on this, I am not sure if the machine definition somehow got corrupted in this file. This is pure speculation though. I do not remember if I just restarted, had a recover file loaded or if this file was even involved. But it is a possibility.

I would rather not make this entire file public, but I presume some of you will need to have a look at the machine definition that causes issues and perhaps the file I was working on as well?

Perhaps I can send the links to the files via pm?

[seth.madore]

Absolutely, email me the files (all files used) directly:
seth dot madore at autodesk dot com