Computing power needed

[purplebear.customs]

Hey, thanks for the help in advance! Right now I am running fusion 360 on a MacBook Air. I know, super slow. 

I am mostly using fusion for woodworking design in the CAD/CAM side of things. But I am getting really frustrated in two particular situations with speed. Generating 3D toolpaths for intricate carvings and converting mesh to bodies. Both of these functions take my computer hours upon hours to do if it doesn’t just crash. 

I am looking for advice on how to upgrade my system to get through those functions with a little less frustration. I’m not looking to buy a powerhouse computer. I’m mostly curious what people think is necessary in terms of computing power for me to decrease the time to completion markedly. Do I just need a computer with more ram and I’ll be fine? Or do I need more than that? And given I updated to whatever is recommended how much time should I expect these operations to take?(I know every case is different but just curious in general)

[TrippyLighting]

Can you share a design that exhibits these problems, perhaps including the original mesh (.stl or .obj)?

[purplebear.customs]

Here is the most recent mesh I was using as a test. This one took 6+ hours to compute a 3D adaptive clearing toolpath. But this is not a standout, this happens all the time.

[TrippyLighting]

Are you machining the .stl directly (which can be done in Fusion360 AFAIK) or do you first convert this into a solid body?  

[jhackney1972]

I am using a Windows 10 Pro computer with a very old Intel i7-2700, 2.4 GHz chip (over 12 years old), 16 GB Ram, and a Nvidia Quadro 2000M video card.  It is not new technology and I did the 3D Adaptive toolpath generation in around 30 minutes.  I do not use, or know anything about, MACs but I think most anything will do better than what you have now.  i just chose a 3mm ball mill, but that would not affect the toolpath generation time. Model is attached.

Edit: Your STL file has to be repair before using it "Directly" in the Manufacturing environment.  Maybe this was some of your time issue?

[purplebear.customs]

In this case I machined the stl directly because my computer could not handle converting to a body.

[jhackney1972]

As my Edit, to my previous post says, I went directly from the STL after I repaired it.  As I said, maybe the repair will cut down on your generation time.