Application Hangs with High Memory Usage

[Anonymous]

Hello! About two weeks ago, I started having a problem where try to create new or edit existing drawings has become almost impossible. Fusion will lock up and memory usage will spike to 20GB+ (85-95% use) and it will sit. Sometimes it comes back down to 2-3GB, and sometimes it will recover. It can happen on almost with the simplest of commands. I've tried reducing the visuals, clearing the cache, etc. with no success. I'm running an i7-9700K (not OC'd) and 32GB RAM with a GeForce GTX 1650 Super with latest drivers. I've scanned my drives (M.2 and SSD) and reinstalled Fusion. I don't have much hope, but figured I'd try asking if anyone here has solved a similar problem. Thanks for any help!

[jeffprice26]

I've started having similar hanging, memory hogging issues recently.

Models I've had no issues with before hang on the simplest operations.  Create sketch, split body, almost anything.

I've tried wiping my design history, and even copying the bodies into a new empty design, but still having the hanging problems.

I have completely different hardware from you too (AMD RX 580/Ryzen 5), so i doubt it's hardware related.

It literally started happening in the last week or so.

I'm tempted to blame a windows update, lol...

[jeffprice26]

So I've been deep down the rabbit hole of driver/system updates.   AMD issues aside, I've got the latest graphics drivers finally installed, and my win 10 is current on updates.  Sadly, still the same issues.

So I decided to try on my step-son's PC, which is i7/nvidia 1660ti, current drivers, and a fresh install of fusion.  ...and still the same issues.  😞

I ended up turning off 'capture design history' (which i could have sworn I tried before, but I guess not), and that seems to have done the trick.  It's still slightly laggy, but it's gone from a few minutes for simple operations, down to just a few seconds.  Which is very acceptable to me.

So it seems it's something inherent in my design which is making fusion think too much during modifications.

I've seen people do things in fusion which are infinitely more complex than what I'm doing.  So beats me what the issue is.

[jeff_strater]

can you share this design here?  We'd like to take a look at it and see what the issue is.

[jeffprice26]

here's a fresh copy of the design, and an image of the split operation that i just tried as a test.

that split took several min and ate up about 10GB of my 16GB of system memory.

then i did a ctrl-z to roll it back. and that took even longer.

[jeff_strater]

thank you for sharing the design.  I will take a look at it.

[jeff_strater]

 @jeffprice26 - it looks like you shared the version of the design after you had turned off history.  Do you have the version with history, that was causing the problem?  We'd like to see how the model was built, and that information is not in the DM version.  Thanks.

[jeffprice26]

but the problem exists in the version i gave you.  (at least for me it does)

or are you unable to replicate the problem with this version?

to be honest, I'm not sure know which project has the actual design history of this part.  I've made so many copies and tried so many different things i've kind of lost track.

i'll do some digging and see if i can find it...

[jeff_strater]

I do see some issues with this model, and I have a theory as to the cause, but without that parametric version, I cannot know for sure.  You might get better results (assuming you are OK with direct modeling) if you export this model via SMT or even STEP format and re-import.  Again, that is based on my theory, which I hope to be able to validate with the parametric version.  Thank you.

[jeffprice26]

I don't doubt that i probably don't have an optimal/efficient workflow when using fusion 360.

But I would have figured that copying an object into a new project, where there's no design history or list of sketches that it was based on, would have freed it of it's "design baggage".  But i guess it's still embedded in the object.

Quick question about accessing previous versions.  If i promote v10 of a project with 20 versions, can i still get back to versions 11-20?

Basically I'm going to have to look through previous versions to see if i can find one that has most of the design history.

I'm also curious to your theory on the possible cause.  Do you suspect some specific process that was done?

I basically have a mostly linear workflow.  Instead of modifying past operations to make changes, i just create new operations to modify the existing to suit.

In this case, that part was split off a larger piece (that already had a long workflow), the new piece substantially modified, duplicated, and then modified again.  Yeah, i know, crap workflow.  I have my reasons.  Some probably justifiable, others likely a result of ignorance.

Anyway, i'll keep digging...

[jeff_strater]

@jeffprice26 - you do not have to "promote" a version to open it.  Just expand the versions, and open it directly.  Once opened, you can Export it as F3D, then just close it.

But, to answer your specific question:  "If i promote v10 of a project with 20 versions, can i still get back to versions 11-20?"  The answer is yes.  Promote of v10 will make it v21, versions 1-20 (including v10) will still exist.

As to my theory, I suspect that there is a lot of "face merging" going on.  Usually, this takes the shape of copy/pasting bodies, then doing Combine to join them together, and where two planar faces are co-planar, they will be merged.  That face will then carry the feature information from both bodies.  If you do that over and over, we can amass a lot of old feature data that, yes, is kept even when converted to a non-history design.

[jeffprice26]

As to my theory, I suspect that there is a lot of "face merging" going on.  Usually, this takes the shape of copy/pasting bodies, then doing Combine to join them together, and where two planar faces are co-planar, they will be merged.  That face will then carry the feature information from both bodies.  If you do that over and over, we can amass a lot of old feature data that, yes, is kept even when converted to a non-history design.

---

Thanks Jeff.  I think you've hit the nail on the head.  As that's exactly what I was doing quite a bit of.

Also, I tried your earlier recommendation of exporting as a STEP file and then reimporting.  Running the same operations on that project are instantaneous. 

So the solution is for me to get better with fusion, and use this export trick when I'm not.  😉

Still wonder if this is the same issue as what the original poster had.

[akirwin87]

This happened to me too and yes, there was a lot of face merging going on. How to I create a zipper without tons of face merging? Back to the drawing board...