Poor Performance in Model Environment

[Anonymous]

Hi Everyone,

I have been looking all over this forum and, even though I did find lots of useful tips, nothing came close to actually solving my problem. I hope we can figure it out together.

My problem: Whenever I open my current (complex, but not “giant”) design it takes a long time to fully open up and then it continues to load, lag and freeze every time I want to do anything more than just stare at my screen. It does not matter if I just want to orbit the view, zoom, edit an existing sketch or add something new, it is always there and disrupts my workflow a lot. What can I do to make Fusion 360 perform better again?

I am running Fusion 360 on my two computers. The problem exists on both and it is showing in exactly the same way. Here are the specs:

macOS Mojave (Version 10.14)

Retina 4K, 2017

3.4GHz Intel Core i5

16 GB 2400MHz DDR4

Radeon Pro 560 4096 MB

Windows 8.1, 64-bit

3.6 GHz Intel Core i7-4790

Installed RAM: 16 GB

I already checked the box “Limit effects to optimize performance” in “Graphics Diagnostic”.

A while back I had changed the "Document Settings" of my threads to "Modeled", but changing it back to "Cosmetic" did not change anything at all. 

I know that the performance improves a lot when I take away the timeline (“Do not capture Design History”), but I really need it to be able to make changes to my design at any time. 

I do not have the same problem when I open simpler designs, but as I mentioned before my design is not “giant” and I do not want to believe that I already reached the limits of Fusion 360. I guess I could attach my design file (what format?) if needed.

Right now I am trying to "activate" my Nvidia GeForce GTX 150 ti, but I don't think it will change much since my Mac has better specs, but still shows the same problem. I will update you regarding the Nvidia anyway..

Thank you,

Annika

[TrippyLighting]

This is difficult to analyze without having access to the design to see what it is comprised of.

Can you share the design ?

[Anonymous]

@TrippyLighting - Thank you for your prompt reply.

Here is the link: https://a360.co/2Tx06mG

I will send you the password via private message. I kindly request that you treat my design confidentially. Please do not share the password or design without asking for my permission first. Thanks!

I just did a component count to show you guys that I am not talking about 500+ components here. As I said in my original post, it is not "giant" at all:

Component.Counts

With Overrides: LeafOccurrences 120: Bodies 120: VisibleLeafOccurrences 119: VisibleBodies 119: LeafOccurrencesWithVisualMaterialOverrides 4: OccurrencesWithTransformOverides 91

Thank you,

Annika

[TrippyLighting]

I've not gone through this step by step, but I can see already that there are a number of things that would need improvements.

• You have a good number of threads in this model and all are modeled threads. Modeled threads create complex geometry and you should probably remove that "modeled" checkmark form most, if not all of them.
• Then you are exclusively using the position capture feature to locate components. That is certainly going to kill performance. Its not that you are using it very often, but there is really not a single assembly joint in a design with 120 parts in it.

• Many of your sketches - I'd say 70%+ are not fully defined (fully dimensioned and fully constrained). 

I'll have to go through this in more detail, but my gut feeling  is that there are a lot of things that could have been modeled more efficiently thus allowing fewer features in the timeline.

All of that in combination causes tho be sluggish.

[Anonymous]

@TrippyLighting  - Thanks again for replying and all the suggestions that hopefully lead to me being able to significantly improve the performance of my design(s) in Fusion 360.

I already tried changing the "Document Settings" of all my threads to "Modeled", but changing it back to "Cosmetic" did not change anything, it did not optimize the performance at all. I already mentioned this in my original post, but I will give it another try, although I need to keep about 50% of all my thread "Modeled".

Do you know any efficient workaround for the "Capture Position" tool? I would like to give it a try. I use the "Capture Position"  tool, because I need certain components and bodies in a certain potion, but I do not necessarily need an joints. I did have some a couple weeks ago, but I erased them from the main design, because I found that it slows Fusion 360 down quite a bit. 

Today I started to fully constrain and dimension more of my sketches. I do have quite a big number of sketches so it might take some more time until I can say if it works or not. I will also try to have a look through the whole timeline and see where I can model more efficient. 

I will update you in the next couple of days and let you all know how it went and if those suggestions solved my performance problem. 

If there is anything else that you (or someone else) thinks I could try, please let me know!

Thank you,

Annika

[HughesTooling]

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@Anonymous wrote:

@TrippyLighting  - 

Do you know any efficient workaround for the "Capture Position" tool? I would like to give it a try. I use the "Capture Position"  tool, because I need certain components and bodies in a certain potion, but I do not necessarily need an joints. I did have some a couple weeks ago, but I erased them from the main design, because I found that it slows Fusion 360 down quite a bit. 

Thank you,

Annika

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Seems strange that joints caused more of a slow down compared to Capture Position, normally the opposite is true. What sort of joints were you adding, Rigid?

Also are you following Rule #1 and creating components that are as self contained as possible? Personally I also try and keep my component features grouped in the timeline as well.

Here you can see after creating the component I've grounded as the assembly is static then created all features for that component.

Generally I design components in place so no need to move anything, other times after creating the component I use it's origin with a joint and position it on another component then create the part with the component already fixed in place.

Mark

[Anonymous]

@HughesTooling  - Thank you for your reply and your suggestions.

I think I mostly used the "Revolute" joints, but, as I mentioned, I do not have them in my current version.

Yes, I have components and I followed Rule #1. I also have components with multiple components inside. Is this a problem? I do not think all my components are self contained. Sometimes they are "related" to another component, because I projected a certain part of a body from a different component into a sketch for the new component or I copied a body from a different component into the new component to use as "eraser" or the other way around. I am not sure if it makes sense the way I explain it.. Do you know what I mean? I need those relationships, otherwise there would be way more sketches and duplicate steps involved. I also sometimes add stuff to some components at a later stage in my timeline, is this a problem?

My timeline looks similar to yours. Although I've never grounded the components. Should I do that? If yes, how do I do that?

I design components in place too, but I have a couple of components I designed outside of my current design and then I put them in my current design (and I cut the connections to the original design, which means I have the full history in my timeline). I guess I thought it will make it more neat, but that is why I have about 4 (or 5) "Capture Potion". I definitely will not do that again in a future design.

Thank you,

Annika

[Anonymous]

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to give you @TrippyLighting, @HughesTooling and everyone else who might stumble upon this thread an update: I am about 75% through my timeline and about 90% of my sketches are now fully defined, I was able to get rid of some of the "Capture Position" features and I also tried to model certain parts more efficiently. So, has my performance improved? I would say MAYBE. It is better, but only by a bit and it is still not good enough to really enjoy working with Fusion 360 on my design again..

I never mentioned it before (I only recently thought about it), but I used the "Airfoil Sketch from File" app and those are also some of the few sketches I can not fully dimension and constrain and it also seems to make my Fusion 360 performance slower. Maybe some of you have tried it out and can confirm or deny it?

Here is the app: https://apps.autodesk.com/FUSION/en/Detail/Index?id=213381023559758782&appLang=en&os=Win64

As always, if there is anything else that you think I could try, please let me know!

Thank you,

Annika

[HughesTooling]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hi Everyone,

I never mentioned it before (I only recently thought about it), but I used the "Airfoil Sketch from File" app and those are also some of the few sketches I can not fully dimension and constrain and it also seems to make my Fusion 360 performance slower. Maybe some of you have tried it out and can confirm or deny it?

Thank you,

Annika

---

Have you tried selecting all the geometry and using a Fix constraint? Can you attach a f3d file with an example airfoil, If there's a lot of points it might be a problem even with the 3d geometry created from it.

Mark

[Anonymous]

@HughesTooling - I'll attach a sample design where I used the "Airfoil Sketch from File" app to created a basic wing. I used the following airfoil: http://airfoiltools.com/airfoil/details?airfoil=s8036-il as an example and yes, it has a lot of (spline) points. The app allows me to create a very accurate airfoil shape in a very short amount of time, especially when it is something like a semi-symmetrical airfoil. Let me know what you think!

I also just used the "Fix" constraint for all my airfoil sketches. Thanks for the suggestions. I have not checked if it indeed improved my Fusion 360 performance, but I should know in a short while.. I tried to avoid it before, but I guess it is better than having those sketches not fully constrained.

Thank you,

Annika

[HughesTooling]

@Anonymous This post might be interesting, advice on sketch performance. If does mention splines with lots of control points being a performance hit. Also sketch fillets, @jeff_strater  mentions a fillet adds 2 tangent constraints but thinking about a rectangle normally would have 8 constraints, 10 if you add dimension. Add a fillet you remove one coincident constraint but add 2 more and 2 tangents and a dimension, fillet all corners and fully dimension and I think you'll end up with 26 constraints so avoid sketch fillet as much as possible.

One other thought is are any of the components totally self contained and could actually be in another design and imported as a linked part? Normally the advice is to keep the full assembly in one file but if you have parts that are only needed for reference and don't need to be modified by the assembly you might be better off using some linked parts.

Mark