Ridiculously slow

[Anonymous]

My Fusion 360 programme has been riduculously show in the past year. I can't model anything intricate without it either crashing (not responding) or having to wait sometimes 5 minutes for it to process changes on the model. I find it hard to believe my PC isn't good enough to run Fusion without issue, but it's so sluggish that it's almost impossible to enjoy the process of modelling. 

Rotating, zoom in/out, adding chamfers/fillets, deleting lines while in sketch mode; anything takes ages to come through. In the bottom richt corner, the green bar with 'Computing ... ' every single fillet and splitface and offset appears and needs so long to process the changes.

I try to remove sketch layers where I can to cut down on the data, but it doesn't always seem to help.

I've already changed some stuff within Fusion that should make it perform better, but it hasn't helped at all. 

[GPU Information]
GPU Device: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660
GPU RAM: 6016 MB
GPU Driver API: DirectX 11.0
GPU Driver Version: 451.67
GPU Driver Date: 07/07/2020

[Graphics Effects Settings]
Anti Aliasing: Off
Ambient Occlusion: Off
Object Shadow: Off
Ground Shadow: Off
Ground Reflection: Off
Selection Display Style: Simple
Transparency Effect: Better Performance

[Limit effects to optimize performance]
On

Specs:

 

[TheCADWhisperer]

Can you File>Export your *.f3d file to your local drive and then Attach it here to a Reply for testing?

[Anonymous]

Here it is. I've removed a few sketches by now to make working with it a bit easier

[TheCADWhisperer]

Do you need to preserve history?

[Anonymous]

Well I want to be able to control+z to undo stuff. I don't neccesarily need the bar that's on the bottom of the screen, but I do prefer a history that goes a long way back so I can undo a lot

[TheCADWhisperer]

In that case I would start over from scratch using what was learned from this attempt.

[Anonymous]

I'm sorry, but that's not a solution. As you can see, it's a pretty intricate piece, and I've been working on it for days now. 

Is this a Fusion problem, or should I upgrade my hardware? Different people say different things and if I were to believe them, I would have to get a new CPU, GPU, and ram even though my PC is a build from June 2019. 

[TheCADWhisperer]

In my opinion - the geometry is very poorly modeled - if it were my work I would start over from scratch.

For example, everything up to here could by done with one fully parametric sketch and Revolve.

The rest of the design can be similarly simplified, easier to edit and more robust.

I would not likely use any Moves or Delete Face commands in this design.

There are numerous unresolved issues highlighted in the Timeline.

I recommend starting over from scratch - that is exactly what I would do.

[Anonymous]

Well, it's my work and I don't want to start over now, since I've already added details to it. I don't see how the geometry could be off because I extruded it all from the same circle and just pulled it downwards.

For now, I've deleted all sketches and I've saved every part seperately so I can work on every individual part.

[TheCADWhisperer]

My recommendation is to start over.

[Anonymous]

Yeah I get a lot of errors during my process, but that's how you learn, right? And Fusion tends to cry whenever you try to do a fillet that it can't do for whatever reason. You can't try to perform any action without getting a pop up in the lower right corner about something not being possible (and then doesn't explain WHY it can't perform the action)

But starting over at every error is not very motivating. In my opinion that's just a sign of a bad programme when it doesn't allow you to make mistakes

[TheCADWhisperer]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

But starting over at every error is not very motivating.

---

That is how I learned.

In my experience - it will go much faster than you might think.

You should read Steve Wozniak’s book.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, for the next project. I'm not going to start over and over again while working on the same thing. Ain't nobody got time for that.

If a programme can't handle a history feature, than it's a ****ty programme. Just tell me what I need to update hardware wise to make it work, or just admit it's a **** programme.

P.S: "I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because lazy people will find an easy way to do it." - Bill Gates

[TheCADWhisperer]

The easy way to do it is to do it right.

[Anonymous]

Are you and I done? I'd rather have a proper solution. Yes, I'll try to get that particular shape done differently next time, but that doesn't solve the fact Fusion is ALWAYS slow on my PC

[jeff_strater]

I took a look at this design.  I won't make any value judgements about whether this is "good modeling" or not.  But, you specifically asked why the design is, as you said "ridiculously slow", and that can be traced back to your modeling technique.  You can certainly model however you want, but there are different costs associated to different modeling styles.  You've just chosen a high-cost method.  For the shaft of the axe, you did in about 84 features what @TheCADWhisperer suggested could be done in 2 - one sketch, one Revolve.  Yours is a perfectly valid modeling method, the result is great, it is just less efficient than some other approaches.  I describe the kind of modeling here as "direct modeling, but with the timeline turned on".  I would either go one way or the other - do Direct Modeling, but then turn the timeline off, or do Parametric modeling with the timeline on.  A lot of this is just experience - you learn what works and what does not.  @TheCADWhisperer has many decades of experience, so I tend to respect his judgement.

Another comment on errors.  A design with lots of errors in it can be slow.  This is because when Fusion encounters an error, it will try some different approaches to try to make it work.  These retries can slow down processing.  So, yes, an application should allow errors, and Fusion does, but Parametric modeling takes those errors and makes them permanent, so you pay this cost on every compute.  You will have a much better experience if you fix those errors in the Timeline.

Most tools of any kind are made to be used in certain ways.  It's an overused analogy, but if you use a pair of pliers as a hammer, you can most of the time get the nail to go in (I've certainly done that), but it will be slow and frustrating.  But, does that make the pliers "a ****ty" tool?

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your reply, I appreciate you taking the time and effort to write out constructive feedback. While I'm sure CadWhisperer has the experience, saying 'turn off the history feature and start over whenever you make a mistake' is not constructive or evern remotely helpful. It'd be deeply unmotivating.

I think the errors accured because I removed many sketches I was done with. However, I've started over since the file was just unusable and I wasn't satisfied with the axe head. After I model the base shape, I will create a save as a sort of blank and copy that a few times and model the intricate designs seperately in each file.

I'm still of the opinion that Fusion is way too fiddly. It starts shouting errors at you whenever you do something wrong without really saying what's gone wrong or *why*. Using the history bar is therefore neccesary to correct mistakes to just make the programme bend to one's will and just keep trying making small adjustments that are close to what you actually *want* to achieve. I don't have any official training in Fusion, and all I know is what I've learnt on the internet. And while we agree that there is no 'right way' to mode in Fusion, Fusion itself can't handle more than 1 way before it starts getting laggy as heck. Plus when a programme is THAT slow, it makes people hesitant to try out other ways, because experimenting could result into the programme becoming unusable; this has certainly been a reason for me not to pick up modelling in the past (before I purchased a better PC) 

[jeff_strater]

@Anonymous - you raise some good points here, definitely.  The error messages in Fusion can be really unhelpful - they sort of rely on a base of knowledge, and don't do a good job of explaining why the errors occurred.  The worst are the ones from the modeling kernel:  "inconsistent face/edge relationship", for instance.

And, on performance:  Yes, Fusion currently has some performance concerns, I agree.  It will be an area of focus for us, and I'm hoping to see significant improvement this year.  There are techniques that can help to make it more tolerable, like keeping your sketches simple, avoiding expensive operations if there are other ways to do things, etc.  Even the most powerful CAD programs, though, will not perform well under certain conditions.  Some operations are just geometrically expensive - large patterns, for instance, or offsetting complex surfaces, etc.  So, you build up a store of experience around what works well and what doesn't.  The other thing, which is sort of woven through this whole thread, is that Fusion at times guides you towards operations that work well on small models (because they are easy), but when used on larger designs can be really expensive.  Things like auto-projecting geometry into an active sketch - really convenient, but can result in expensive sketches, because you just don't realize that each of those conveniently projected edges takes time to compute, and if you have enough of them, it adds up.  Press/Pull is one of the worst offenders here, IMO.  Super easy to use, but you can end up putting hundreds of features into your timeline just by repeated tweaks of your design.

Anyway, appreciate the feedback

[Anonymous]

A lite version of Fusion would be useful, I suppose? I personally don't use the majority of all the functions so maybe a lite version to create the easier models would make a difference?

[HughesTooling]

@jeff_strater  I was going to reply to this thread yesterday to suggest using Extrude To rather than all the split face and press pull features but found what might be a bug. In the screencast below you can see when using the chain faces option some profiles extrude correctly when I enter 1mm but one needs -1mm! Not sure if this is a bug in extrude or if it's because of all the errors in the timeline and Fusion struggling to know what direction the faces are.

You can find where I am in the timeline if you right click the sketch and select find in timeline. 

Mark