flickering graphics when zooming, bug?

[manuel.fr]

Hello everyone, i'm using Fusion360 for years on Mac and i always have the same issue. If i apply a material the graphics start to flicker like crazy when zooming and a lot of parts stay very light then, like almost white. 

If i zoom further out most parts get back their material color. but also no all. Zooming and rotating toggles the material between normal and the bright version of it. But it never returns to normal.

If i restart Fusion it works for a very short time like 5s, then it starts to flicker again.

Only thing that helps is deleting all materials in the design. 

The flickering looks like 10 times per second or more. Its very disturbing cause not all parts are flickering synchronized. 

turning on and of graphic effects has no impact. 

i tried to record it now, but suddenly it was gone?! I try to upload the record later.

But anyone knows this issue?

[manuel.fr]

https://autode.sk/2Ww6EVW

here's the screencast

[TrippyLighting]

Really ?

 

[manuel.fr]

sorry... never used screencast before, i tried to change it, does it work now?

[TrippyLighting]

Yes, that worked. I see what you mean.

Does it look OK when you render it?

It could be a case of Z-Fighting when 2 geometries/surfaces occupy the same space, although it looks different from cases I've seen previously.

[manuel.fr]

there aren't two surfaces or two materials for sure. did not try to render yet.. is this still possible with private license? Thought that was removed. 

This happens all the time to me... very annoying to work with that. 

[TrippyLighting]

Rendering is still possible with a free subscription.

I also work with a mac and don't recall ever seen this behavior reported elsewhere on this forum.

If you can share a model I can try to reproduce the behavior. Export as .f3d and attach to next post.

[jeff_strater]

this does look like z-fighting to me.  Can you share the design here so we can experiment with it?  Thanks.

[manuel.fr]

The format f3d was not available to me? i choose f3z. Is that ok? 

See attachment. 

But this flickering does not appear at the very first start. I takes a short time to start. Maybe click some parts, hide them and so on. At my normal workflow it appears maybe 10-30s after i started each time. 

No update ever changed that for me... 

[jeff_strater]

thanks for the model, @manuel.fr - I do see some of the effects that you show in the video.  And, I don't see any strange surfaces here, so I will have to turn this over to the graphics team to see what is going on.  Very strange...

[manuel.fr]

glad to hear that you also see those effects, i also thought about some issues of my mac or graphics driver. Looking forward to hear from you! Thanks a lot for investigation.

I also have this effect if i create materials by myself. 

In my current session it was ok until i activated a sub component. Then it went crazy like always. 

in the render it was fine, but tried it only once. 

[TrippyLighting]

Do you have "Ambient Occlusion" tuned on by any chance?

If so, turn it off and see if it gets better.

I have most of the screen gimmicks turned off:

 

[manuel.fr]

no is not active, im running fusion on an 5k iMac that's 5 Years old, so nope... that's to harsh for him😅

but i will get a new Mac hopefully soon... gain a bit more power.

[manuel.fr]

what i also want to mention... very often it happens that suddenly parts are not visibly anymore, then i have to save, close and reopen fusion to make them reappear. Or the suddenly shift their position without moving them. 

Also in this assembly it happens every day that some small parts disappear until restarting.

and no, i don't do anything by accident to make them gone, i know some stuff about CAD, i'm working in my full time job as a design engineer for almost 15 years, build machines that are sold for millions. So i'm not a total noob... just want to mention that. 😅 

[manuel.fr]

i can't get some parts to reappear.... spend almost 50% of todays time in fusion with keep it running. tbh its very frustrating to work with currently. 😞 

[TrippyLighting]

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@manuel.fr wrote:

... i know some stuff about CAD, i'm working in my full time job as a design engineer for almost 15 years, build machines that are sold for millions. So i'm not a total noob... just want to mention that. 😅 

---

It seems you come from a dominantly bottom-up design workflow, which is commonly used in machine design.

You should almost never use the position capture feature to locate/orient components, but use Joints for that.

I would not expect to see a single body move feature in such a design.

Also, your casework would be much easier to design if you used a skeleton sketch approach where you create many components from a single sketch.

[TrippyLighting]

I have an example of a very simple table attached to explain what I mean with Skeleton Sketch.

The entire geometry and components of this table are created using a single sketch. 

 

[manuel.fr]

i work with CATIA in my main Job, fusion is just a hobby and i don't use it that much lately. normally i use joints to assemble stuff and the caption position feature to get things in the rough position. 

Its hard to switch thinking to fusion from CATIA. i spend my whole life designing in CATIA, and its completely different approach. 

at first i also tried to work more with combined sketches and so on in fusion, but it always ended up in a mess when i need to edit stuff  or delete whole parts and build new ones. So i ended up trying to keep parts as separate as possible. Thats how we keep in our company, everything else did not work over time. External references or links between parts would be our killer there... 

So my designs in fusion my not be the best ones from the eye of an "Fusioner" But in the end all worked properly what i build with it. 

[manuel.fr]

that's something very very interesting and i know that fusion is capable of such approach, but my mind is not yet.

a circular pattern to get the frame done?! god **** peter... that makes me speechless, never ever would come up with such an idea! Genius 😄 

I worked nearly 15 years in an CAD system where you need to draw parts separately, something like that would never work there. 

And also alongside CATIA and FUSION i work with Blender to design vehicles for miniature models that are 3d printed. 

Blender is also a totally different world. 

So currently its a hard time for my to build this new low board 😄 

[TrippyLighting]

Most other CAD systems I am aware of requiring parts to be external. While "virtual" parts can be created in SolidWorks I am not sure it can create more than one part from a single sketch.

I've worked with a number CAD and 3D modeling software over the last 3 decades and top-down modeling is one of the areas where Fusion 360 really shines. That is particularly the case for concept development.

I don't work with Catia but started working with Blender 18 years ago. It took me ages to understand what the purpose of an edge loop was. But some of the concepts are similar. The modifiers, for example, are somewhat parametric.

If a model is constructed of proper quad topology, the model can be exported into a .obj, imported into FUiosn 360, and converted into a T-spline with no loss of fidelity.