Delay calculation update after numeric input

[gregorhi]

Hi all,

I'm trying to use extrudes on some fairly complex models. When I want to extrude for 17.5 mm then Fusion starts the preview calculation right after I pressed the 1. Then I have to wait for the calculation to finish before it takes on the next number and so on. It means I have at least 3 wait times before it gets to the number I want and then of course the wait time of the full extrude starts.

is there a way to stop Fusion 360 from starting to recalculate right after the first numeric entry? Something like giving me 5 seconds to finish the entry before starting to react?

[g-andresen]

Hi,

please show this behavior in a screencast.

That´s what I see with an simple body:

extrude reaction

günther

[jeff_strater · Accepted solution]

this one is tricky.  The short answer is "no", there is no way to delay this today.  The current delay is about 1/2 second, I think.  I suspect that you really would not want it to be 5 seconds in 99% of cases - that would feel way too laggy, and people would be very unhappy.

However, you raise a good point about previews which take a long time.  There is a bit of "typing stress" involved when you know that a preview is going to take a couple seconds or more to compute.  If you have to type "12.3456", you have 1/2 second between each digit before the preview kicks off.  Which is plenty of time, if you don't make a mistake.  I have resorted, at times (especially with Shell), of actually typing the number into Notepad then copy/pasting it into the dialog.  Not a great answer, definitely.

One thing we do with a handful of features which are known to be slow is to have a "Preview" checkbox in the dialog:

Which lets you decide whether a preview is shown or not.  Is that a good idea?  I like extending this idea to other areas, and have tried to sell it to the UX folks, with not much success...

[gregorhi]

Hi Jeff,

I'm using 2 ways when I'm modelling something. I'm using the visual arrows when I'm not sure about the exact dimensions and there I surely want the live preview. But I'm using the numeric entry when I know the dimensions and I don't see the need for a preview until I'm done with entering the full value that I want. So personally I'd be more happy with the preview waiting for me to press enter to confirm that I'm done with the entry.

But in the end it's probably a question of individual preference and some option either way for the users to allow them to use your product the way they are most comfortable with would probably be appreciated by many.

Take the fancy equipment away from your UX team and give them the bare minimum required hardware might convince them to see your point 🙂

[Anonymous]

Hi @jeff_strater 

Put my name on the list...
I don't like the preview option by default.
Maybe create a general option in the preferences to be able to choose if you want previews?

[tenplus66]

I agree that the preview can be either great, for simple parts, or incredibly frustrating for complex parts. Assuming Autodesk aren't picking sides and want everyone to use F3D, I believe there should be user choice. Maybe a 'Previews' choice in preferences. I'd uncheck that for meshes and complex parts.

[tarek.knanneh]

For those people who have supercomputers or like the preview can keep it, but a setting to start calculating only after changing to another field or clicking OK or hitting the enter button would be amazing.

Fusion freezes for me for half an hour or so just because i am trying to correct 102mm to 100mm or whatever other dimension it ended at because it already got stuck before because of using the gizmo to push pull and as soon as it moves it gets stuck, freezes, recovers at an arbitrary point and when typing it in to correct it, it freezes at 1, then at 10, to finally get my result at 100.

Force closing fusion each time it freezes is annoying since saving already bogs it down and Autosave doesn't work when it is unresponsive or a dialog window is open.

Just a toggle in the settings -Patient mode or happy animation mode would be awesome.

I haven't seen this behaviour anywhere else. Even Blender waits until you TAB out of the Field or hit enter or click the mouse, so fusion having this behaviour is a no-go

[erik9C57P]

Yes a preview checkbox would be awesome and probably the most useful feature of Fusion since every time i am entering a number it seems to start calculating like crazy on my extrusions. and takes for ever and Fusion crashes all the time. Would be good to choose preview that way calculations start only once we hit ok button.  Or at least the users is given a choice.   Especially for us using a not too powerful laptop for fusion. 

[dfs59xy]

It's mind boggling to me that almost 5 years after the OP, this still hasn't been fixed.  Unless the code is absolute spaghetti, this should be relatively simple preference option to implement.  Even a preference setting for changing the 1/2 second per digit to whatever we want would help (although I'd guess that's hardcoded in 3 thousand places as well). 

After a quick skim through the features of each major menu heading, I don't see any 'Preview' buttons under Solids, Surfaces, Forms, Sheet Metal, or Plastic... but Mesh has the preview option in almost all the computation-intensive features.

So, it's fairly evident the Preview checkboxes were NOT added based on product-wide analysis of 'where are low-to-moderate H/W users feeling the most pain?', but instead by someone on the Mesh team for their own sanity.  Autodesk might benefit from tracking down that developer and promoting them to product management.