Fusion 360 system requirements

[fredF3SB9]

Hi All,

I am going to need a new computer to run Fusion 360..

What are the Basic Requirements, or Specs I should be looking for as I shop for my new computer, probably a lap top?

Many Thanks,

Frederick

[James.Youmatz · Accepted solution]

Hi @fredF3SB9,

Welcome to the Fusion 360 Community!

Check out this article here laying out our minimum specs. I did want to note however, that these are our minimum specs however and depending on the complexity and size of the models you plan on creating - you may need more than the minimum. Personally you may want to look at laptops that have decent CAD video cards as well as a strong processor. Personally, I am on a Mac right now and here are my specs:

[kate.raskauskas]

Hi @fredF3SB9,

These are the latest minimum requirements needed to run Fusion 360:

• Apple Mac® OS® X Yosemite (10.10.5), OS® X El Capitan (10.11.x), OS® X Sierra (10.12.x)

• Microsoft® Windows® 7 SP1 or Microsoft® Windows® 8.1, Windows® 10 

• CPU: 64-bit processor (32-bit not supported) 

• Memory: 3GB RAM (4GB or more recommended) 

• An internet connection of 5mbits/s or faster (10mbits/s recommended for Simulation Solves) 

• Disk space: ~3.5GB 

• Graphics Card: 512MB GDDR RAM or more, except Intel GMA X3100 cards  

• Pointing device: Microsoft-compliant mouse, Apple Mouse, Magic Mouse, MacBook Pro Trackpad  

Good luck with your shopping!

[Anonymous]

Hi All,

thinking of buying a Mac desktop and the million dollar question is, does fusion use multithreading for the simulations or let me rephrase, do I buy a higher clock speed processor with less cores or a little lower clock speed with 8 to 12 cores? I am interested more in the non linear simulations then anything else.

Thank  you

[mcmillr]

Hi Robert.

Fusion Sim will use multiple cores for meshing and solving when these operations are run locally, but it doesn't use multiple cores all the time. Meshing can use more cores if you have lots of parts, but it will only use one core if you have a single part. The solves you are able to run locally will only use up to 8 cores, but only at certain points during the calculation. You can also only do one local solve at a time.

Nonlinear Static, Event Simulation, and Shape Generation are cloud only, so your machine specs won't come into play when you use those study types.

Generally you are better off getting CPU with a higher clock speed for Fusion, as there are many operations which do not benefit from multiple cores. For example, you might be better off with an 8 core, 3.4+ Ghz system, than with a 16 core, 2.2 Ghz system.

Hope this helps.

[Anonymous]

That helps a lot.

Thank you

Robert Semaan, PE, SE
President
Tower Engineering Solutions, LLC
O: 972-635-8236
M: 919-802-3822
Robert.semaan@testower.us
www.TESTower.com

[Anonymous]

In similar fashion to the question regarding the clock speed, I was wondering about video cards.  I have researched and found where softwares like Solidworks and others really run well with CAD spec'd video cards, such as the Nvidia Quadro and AMD FirePro.  Similarly, I believe some of the higher end machines have CAD focused processors, such as the Intel Xeon.  For Fusion 360, are these cards/processors a benefit, or would higher end i7's or something like that be better money spent?

[Anonymous]

James, do you have any issues on your MBP with those specs?? I’m a rookie greenhorn to fusion 360 but life long Mac user/Audio Engineer, and I’m not really trying to build a PC that’s dedicated to just drawing/fusion360 and my learning curve..... A new MBP is for sure in my future and I’m just doing the dollar dance trying to see what’s the best bang for my $$$. My PC friends both said get a Intel NUC Skull Valley with 16G DDR4 and a SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2 500GB, or better...... I think it would be nice to have it on a MBP, but am open to whatever works best for getting me going on this new venture of learning!!! Many thanks in advance for the help!!!

[Anonymous]

I am F360 on a maxed out 2012 retina 15 Macbook with absolutely no trouble at all.

I'd absolutely stay on the macOS world and grab one of Apple's pro devices. If rendering is on your radar, try and jump to the best GPU available as that will help, especially as the AMD 'pro' cards suck pretty hard against Nvidia cards. 

Apparently updated macbooks might be dropping at WWDC, so perhaps hold out if you can.
I'm going the opposite way to you and am starting to play with Logic Pro.

[jaybird180]

I just installed F360 and it has a banner at the top of the screen complaining about the NVidia graphics capabilities on my Acer Aspire R15. It has 2GB GDDR5.

[jaybird180]

Uh Oh...looks like I was wrong. It has only 128MB. Time to check what's on my iMac.

[ORHRO]

Thanks for your explanations! I have a related question about CPU usage. One of my projects is having quiet a few components, so that the calculation-all-command (Ctrl+B) of the project takes currently > 30 seconds. However, when I check the CPU usage none of the 4 cores is really busy. The top usage of one of the cores is maybe 60%. The others remain inbetween 10 and 40%. You explained that some the calcualtion cannot be done with more than on core, so that's ok. I am wondering why that main-core is not showing a usage of close to 100%? Is the program performing "delays/no-operation-commands"?

Is there anything I can do in my project desing to speed up the calculation? I was already making sure to have as few relations in-between components as possible, so many components do not depend on each other.

In other situations, for instance when I just click on the top-level entry of the projekt and no calculation seems to be required (at least to me) then all 4 cores show a usage of 100% for several seconds and the PC freezes.

[mcmillr]

Without looking at your model it is difficult to determine why the CPU usage is not near 100% on recompute. It is even possible that this is something that we could improve. When you click on the top level entry of the project it will probably try to select the entire model, and this requires a graphical effect to be applied. The graphics processing in Fusion is highly multithreaded, so it isn't surprising that this maxes out your CPUs.

[ORHRO]

Thanks! 

[MoshiurRashid]

For average performance, 

Cpu: 64 bit (32 is not supported)

Ram: 4 GB

GPU: 2 GB

[Anonymous]

I see numerous places the graphics card is to be 512 MB BDDR RAM or more, except Intel GMA X3100 cards. What does THAT mean?! Intel cards can't be used no matter what? Intel cards are so good any of them can be used? WHAT?

[ORHRO]

Thank you again Rob for your explanations. Very useful!
Would it make sence to send you my project so you can find out why none of the four CPU cores shows 100% usage when the Ctrl+B (Calculate all) command is called? 

If your time permits to run this test, how would I send the project to you?
Thanks, best regards Lothar.

[mcmillr]

The percentages in taskmanager are averages over the unit of time determined by the update frequency. If CPU A is 100% busy for 10 milliseconds, then it asks CPU B to do something and then has to wait for 10 milliseconds, and the refresh frequency is 20ms, then the utilization for both CPUs would be 50%. I expect that during the update interval, Fusion is cycling between main thread processing and multithreaded processing, resulting in the numbers you are seeing. There is also the possibility that sometimes there are multiple threads waiting on a shared resource, something called 'contention'. Sometimes this is unavoidable, sometimes this can be fixed or improved. You could export your file to a Fusion archive and log a support ticket, but I can't make any guarantees on how soon the modeling team will look into it.

[ORHRO]

Great! Of course they need to work on real issues first. What we were discussing is more a question than an error. Thanks.

[Anonymous]

I was looking at getting this system to better use the Fusion 360 software (my current set won't work.)

Possible Solution

Will this be sufficient?