Post Processor Crash Issue

[terrence.matthews]

Creating post for user

Crash Issue: "This occurred when I was trying to run the post processor - an operation that normally runs with no issue. (I made a small mod to one part and regenerated the paths and ran the post processor) I filed a crash report - the number is 314036117"

[karina.harper]

Hey @terrence.matthews 

Looks like the user has not crashed (or sent in the crash reports) since the end of October - previous to that they were crashing into a bucket that the development team is aware of and addressing internally as FUS-81374. If they can help us to reproduce the issue, that would certainly help our team address this. 

For the post issue (October crash), I'll need to know a bit more about what happened. Can we reproduce this?

Cheers,

Karina

[DeeEmm]

Terence, it has nothing to do with the post processor.

Program randomly crashes. Crash is not related to specific use or action. It even happens when the app is inactive and does not have focus as in this most recent crash today.

Crash is not easily reproducible due to random nature.

Consistent issue since originally reported in May.

Issue started when license was changed from educational to personal

Please check error report 316135655 for more details

I have long suspected that it is network related - specifically a failed call home response. Crash frequency has reduced since increasing broadband speed.

/DM

[karina.harper]

Hi @DeeEmm 

Thanks for including the crash report - I just had a look at that. That particular crash appears to be mac specific and related to focus/waking from sleep, based on the other reports I see in there. 

Are you crashing frequently? I still only see one crash attached to your email address for this month - if you are crashing frequently, please send in those reports every time (even if you don't have time to leave a comment).  The ticket number I referenced above is not related to this crash. Based on the log file I can see that Fusion was open for 5 days, which indicates to me that the crashing is not very frequent. Additionally, we do recommend that you close Fusion out completely each day.

Regarding your comments in the crash report, this, the Fusion 360 product support forum, is the correct place to report this issue. Additionally I can almost guarantee that this is not related to a change in license. Of course there may be an off chance that it is, but almost all of the time license does not impact Fusion performance.

I'm happy to assist here and report any issues that you are seeing, I will dig into this crash bucket a bit more and see what I can do with it.

Cheers,

Karina

[DeeEmm]

This most recent crash was after leaving the app open for a period of time. Possibly 5 days, definitely a number of days at any rate. This is actually the longest it has been open without crashing. I left it open specifically to allow it to crash, so that I could send you the report. Specifically as this is the first time since reporting this issue back in May that I appear to have communicated with someone who knows what they are doing.

With that said, it is not how the product is usually used, however leaving the application open should not cause an issue. If there are caching or memory issues with the product that require the user to frequently close the app, then the correct solution is to fix the issues, not recommend a bandaid. 😉 

Previously the crashes were occurring after an hour or so, sometimes more frequently but rarely could I leave the app open for any amount of time without it crashing.

After the October update it pretty much crashed straight away - within a similar time period as all of the other crashes. I didn't send the crash report as it was just a continuation of the same behaviour as previously experienced.

Another thing to note is that when it crashed I could actually minimise the crash report dialog and continue using the app (see attached image), which led me to believe that it was not related to something like a memory issue or kernel panic as the app did not freeze. The issue therefore appeared to be related to an external resource, something like a network issue. I might be putting 2+2 and coming up with 7 but I never had an issue before changing the product license and suffered hourly crashes ever afterwards. My assumption therefore was that it was related to the change in licensing and I could only assume something like a failing call home function.

Regarding the correct place to report an issue and raise a support request. Why does it take 7 months to be told I am talking to the wrong people / department? I raised the issue as a Fusion360 issue as a support request in the help menu within my Autodesk account. As this is what your documentation recommends. My assumption is that a support requests trumps posting my issue to the community forums. I wanted technical support from Autodesk, not random unqualified opinions from Joe Public.

But regardless of all of this. There is still a persistent issue that is causing random crashes on my system.

• This issue has been present since changing my license
• It was not present prior to this point
• It is present on three different machines that I own (iMac / Macbook / Macbook Air)
• It persists even after a clean reinstall
• The frequency has diminished since upgrading my broadband speed (50mb/s to 100 mb/s)
• It is not related to a specific action or activity
• The crash appears to be random and will even occur when the app does not have focus
• I can [generally] continue to use the app without issue if I minimise the crash dialog and keep working, but eventually it will lock up.

The above information along with the plethora of crash reports that I have submitted since May is all that I can give you. The issue is unfortunately not reproducible. 

If you want me to test or try anything, please don't hesitate to reach out. It would be good to get this resolved.

I look forwards to your response.

/DM

[DeeEmm]

I should add that when I say I changed the license the license change process was actually carried out by support.

[DeeEmm]

Additionally the fact that this happened on more than one machine also led me to believe that the issue was server / account related.

[karina.harper]

Hi @DeeEmm 

I'm glad that Fusion is able to stay open longer - and yes technically you can leave it open as long as you want but any software will recommend that you close it out every now and then. 

That screenshot you have attached is troubling - I don't like seeing all of those crash reports all at once. Most likely a particular area of Fusion is crashing but core Fusion is continuing to run. I have only ever seen this happen with Drawings, so I would be curious to understand exactly what is happening there. That being said, I do want to differentiate between what you're currently seeing and the issue you had that was resolved in the October Update (which is what the majority of your crash reports are from). I think your screenshot seems to be from September 10th? Have you seen this happen recently?

Being able to determine the state of Fusion for you currently would be the best path forward for me to isolate exactly what is happening. Any crash report you send in gives me a good deal of information, but without more recent data I'm just looking at an old issue that was already resolved. Does it seem to be related to a particular file/data set or environment in Fusion? 

Regarding your questions about support - I can't speak to what happened in that case as I am not in the EDU department, but ordinarily only subscription customers are entitled to technical support through our case system. For Personal and Educational users we utilize the support forums. There are quite a few very smart Joe Publics on this forum in addition to me and other Autodesk employees.

Cheers,

Karina

[DeeEmm]

Hi Karina

I'm happy to concede that this may be more than one issue and that the original issue may well be addressed. I only have past experience to go on which is obviously not as detailed as a crash report and from the outside just appears to the the same problem over and again.

I have not tried the same 'trick' to keep the app open after it has crashed since that particular time. I'll try it again the next time it crashes to see if I can still do the same.

To be honest I cannot find any association or action that seems to trigger the crash, I have had it within both the design and manufacture screens, I have had it whilst editing and also whilst just using the orbit tool. It has happened whilst dormant and whilst active. Always on different files. No two crashes are the same. This is one of the reasons that it made me think that it is not the core app but some other aspect. It is only ever Fusion360 that crashes, never the OS or other apps. There appears to be no rhyme or reason to it.

I'll report back here next time it crashes. I have a badge I need to design so will be spending some time using the app over the weekend. I suspect that I might get a crash at some point.

/DM 

[DeeEmm]

This is interesting and not something that I have seen before.

Yesterday when reopening the app I got an active sessions exceeded message.

(the app is not open on any other machine)

[DeeEmm]

It crashed again - Crash report # 316256504

[karina.harper]

Hi @DeeEmm 

Hmmmmm, that is an interesting one. You mentioned in the comments that the 'open session' is listed as being on the same machine - it sounds like after the update the other session didn't fully close? It is quite strange that it's saying it was open since April. Maybe there was a latent process that has been running in the background? How often do you restart the computer?

I will be curious how Fusion runs now that the process has (presumably) been killed, let's see if this error happens again.

Cheers,

Karina

[DeeEmm]

BOOM. There it is.

I would wager that this is the issue. 

The computer does get left on and generally only restarted for updates. Which are usually about once a month, however I can guarantee that it has been restarted multiple times since April in fact I did an update a few weeks back, so I would suggest that the session data you are seeing at your end is definitely incorrect.

Just generalising here as I don't know how your handshaking and authentication is set up but mismatched session data could definitely cause the issues I have been seeing. 

I would also bet that April is when I changed licenses. The dates I can see from initial email communication are back In May, but these are only responses, the issue was reported and initially experienced prior to this.

Regarding how often my computer is restarted - this should be irrelevant. Server side session data should be cleared down every time that the app contacts the server for initial authentication. This is basically every time the app is opened - i.e. every session.  

The app itself is used very now and then. It is not left open when it is not in use, but does get left open for the duration of whatever I'm working on simply as it take an age to launch.

Generally after crashes I have to reauthenticate. (log in using my credentials).

I cannot recall if I need to do this when opening the app normally. (just checked - no).

However having just closed the app and then reopened it what I noted is that OSX went through it's application authentication process. This implies that the app checksum has changed i.e. it has been updated. Not sure of this is relevant but it should not happen in normal use, only on initial use.

Despite using the app I haven't had any more crashes over the weekend. I'll post here when the next one happens.

[DeeEmm]

Additionally. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the license management or license change process but the issue started when I moved from the education license to a personal license.

My understanding is that this move required some server configuration change as it needed to be undertaken by the techs. I also had to undertake a clean reinstallation i.e. manual uninstallation of the app along with all system related library files and kexts before reinstalling the app again.

(I've done this a number of times at the behest of the support guys)

Might be irrelevant but this is certainly when the issue started. Not sure how that links to the session data issue you have noted but there may be a link there.

[DeeEmm]

So Just before Xmas I received an email from licensing support stating that I had an export screening block on my account. In discussion they confirmed that this could possibly be the cause for the random crashing. The fix was simple - I just needed to confirm my name and address. It would appear that this block was put on my account when the license was changed back in May.

After supplying my credentials I received this closing response from the agent just before Xmas

"Just wanted to send you one last message regarding the Export Screening block that existed in your account. I have worked with my internal team and have got this removed. As for your program crashing frequently, I have been informed that those occurrences should stop now." 

So it would appear that my suspicions were correct but despite constantly reiterating this point no one actually checked this. This was also the first time I had received any correspondence relating to this specific issue.

I have had no more crashes since this time. Although my usage has not been extensive, so this is not an entirely exhaustive test.

I have got to say that I am pretty disappointed that it has taken a dozen support agents and 8 months to get to the bottom of this. 

@karina.harper, if it was you that figured this out and passed the details on to the licensing team, thank you. 

Regards

/DM

[DeeEmm]

Ok.

Might have celebrated a bit prematurely here.

Haven't used F360 too much / too intensively since the last post but today experienced another crash (Report #318282756)

Not sure if it is related, but until advised otherwise I'm assuming it is same issue.

Also had the same issue when restarting - that app is required to be verified (see attached screen shot)

Please advise

[DeeEmm]

Additionally, after submitting this I reopened the app and received the 'Active Sessions Exceeded' message.

Seems like the same issue is still present.

[DeeEmm]

Hi,

Just following up on this

Please advise.

[karina.harper]

Hi @DeeEmm 

I only see one crash report from you from January 25th. The most recent one before that was December 10th. 

This most recent crash report seems to be related to an issue with the model as I see some Bug Alerts in the log just before your crash:

Thread Info: [Name: Main], [Id: 9284048]
20220126T134702 E .9284048 NEUTRON_BUG_ALERT(curves osculate at vertex - cannot evaluate order)
Function: _check_outcome
File: ../../Core/Neutron/Server/ASMInterface/ASMInterface.cpp
Line: 7184
Thread Info: [Name: Main], [Id: 9284048]
20220126T134702 E .9284048 NEUTRON_BUG_ALERT(illegal profile wire body and repair failed)
Function: buildProfileBody
File: ../../Core/Fusion/Sketch/Server/Sketch/ProfileBuilder/ProfileBuilder.cpp
Line: 3076
Thread Info: [Name: Main], [Id: 9284048]
20220126T134702 W .9284048 New Alert message. Tooltip: Sketch1, Short Message: Sketch1, Long Message: Sketch1
20220126T134711 I 9284336 PUT 200 https://f360sc-p-ue1.api.cosv2-p-ue1-dn.autodesk.com/api/v1/sessions/66592521 - workflow:SLM_heartbeat attempt:0 requestId:f360_SLM_heartbeat__1-61f0bd36-4495696f16394a40a45738f2 dt=0.79
20220126T134732 E .9284048 NEUTRON_BUG_ALERT(illegal profile wire body and repair failed)
Function: buildProfileBody
File: ../../Core/Fusion/Sketch/Server/Sketch/ProfileBuilder/ProfileBuilder.cpp
Line: 3076
Thread Info: [Name: Main], [Id: 9284048]
20220126T134733 E .9284048 NEUTRON_BUG_ALERT(curves osculate at vertex - cannot evaluate order)
Function: _check_outcome
File: ../../Core/Neutron/Server/ASMInterface/ASMInterface.cpp
Line: 7184
Thread Info: [Name: Main], [Id: 9284048]
20220126T134733 E .9284048 NEUTRON_BUG_ALERT(illegal profile wire body and repair failed)
Function: buildProfileBody

If you want to share the file and the steps you were taking just before the crash, I can try and reproduce and report the issue.

Cheers,

Karina

[DeeEmm]

Hi Karina,

Thanks for getting back to me.

I'm not entirely sure what I was working on or indeed what I was doing, one of the unfortunate joys of getting old. I suspect that it was the attached file based on the date, a resin earring that my wife wanted. This is pretty straight forwards design-wise, however I am far from a proficient CAD user so there is every possibility it is some kind of schoolboy error.

Essentially this is a part that I 3D printed so workflow would have been to export this using the 3D print option in the file menu however I do not recall any error with export / 3D print most of the crashes happen randomly in use. 

One thing I have found recently is that the shortcut bar at the bottom of the screen and the browser pane have been disappearing from the screen and I have to go to manufacture mode and back again the get them to reappear. Restarting has not cured this.

The issue with the the app needing to be validated on launch is also still present.