Fusion
30 components do not constitute a large assembly by any means!
The often stated threshold for parametric designs for Fusion 360 is 1000 components.
If you are in a position to share your design, please do so.
The advantage of the new M1 MacBook Pros is the number of cores, either CPU or GPU cores in combination with their low power usage. A lot of functionality is built around video and image processing workflows and pipelines, which really benefit from all the hardware in the new M1 MacBook Pro's
However, most modeling operations in all current CAD systems are performed by the geometric modeling kernel and are single-core operations. So, much of that hardware is idle when working with CAD.
Rendering is a completely different story ...
@kunitsavova wrote:
... Why doesn't the software company tell customers what you told me about: M1-based Macs are not designed for CAD software.
Or have I not noticed a warning on the Autodesk website that the M1 version of Fusion 360 is far from perfect on Apple computers?
Seriously?
Very, very few desktop computers are designed specifically for CAD and even fewer Notebooks.
That market is completely insignificant compared to gaming, image and video editing, and other general-purpose tasks.
Just because it wasn't specifically built for that purpose does not mean that you cannot do CAD perfectly well on an M1 MacBook! Computers are mostly general-purpose tools with slight modifications for certain specializations.
This thread in the Support section of the Fusion 360 forum was started by an Autodesk Employee to inform users and collect possible problems. I suggest you read through it!
For your info, there are quite a few macOS users and fans amongst the Fusion 360 team members.
Can you export your design in .f3d format and attach it to your next post?
@c.schmidTXJCD I don't doubt what you experience on your side.
If you can share a model I'd be happy to look at it and see how it performs on my side.
However, your experience and symptoms in respect to the trackpad seem to be relatively unique and I cannot recall another post with the same symptoms in respect to the trackpad. I personally very rarely use the trackpad for CAD. The controls are lacking, I agree. Navigating a 3D model using the trackpad works much, much smoother in Blender for example.
But for any serious 3D modeling, regardless whether that is CAD or Polygon Sub-D modeling I cannot recommend a trackpad.
Also, what many don't realize Autodesk jsut as anot other software maker has to relay in 3rs party software for many thigs and sometimes that is where the problem is
Both of these files contain an identical number of components, for obvious reasons.
That component count is 3757!!! So in fact you do have an assembly on hand with over a thousand components!
Nonetheless, on my 2017 15" MacBook Pro that has a lot less processing power than a Mac Pro M1 it is very fluent to navigate and edit.
Frankly, I had hoped for a native Fusion 360 design with a timeline. There isn't anything to analyze in this model. It has no timeline and gets to that component count by a lot of instancing identical components. Fusion 360 used approximately 3.5 GB with this one file open.
I don't find it surprising that Fusion 360 uses a different and higher amount of RAM on this new hardware/OS combination. I've worked with computers, computer graphics, rendering, and CAD since studying for my engineering degree and professionally afterward for over 30 years. Different computer architectures handle RAM differently and it isn't unheard of that new OS and all the applications that run on them also have to go through a phase of optimization, including memory management.
Fusion 360 also does not run natively but through Rosetta2. That might also result in higher RAM usage and is nothing I personally would worry about.
I would hope you ordered that new machine with at least 32GB of RAM. As long as macOS doesn't start paging memory our to SSD there is no noticeable performance penalty, at least on an Intel MacBook.
I spend a lot more time here on this forum than most and definitely more than you. I also know some of the Fusion 360 team members personally. They generally are interested in feedback and are trying their best to improve performance etc. I doubt they are trying to dismiss your: "case". However, you clearly are looking for someone to blame ...
Can you create a screencast and demonstrate your performance problems?
I recently switched from a 2016 16" Macbook Pro 8G to a 2021 M1 Pro 16" Macbook Pro 32G and overall have been happy with the upgrade.
There were a couple of minor bugs in Fusion360, but it's pretty amazing the dynamic recompiling of the code for a new architecture works as well as it does. There's certainly nothing wrong that keeps me from getting work done.
Here's one of my typical projects with 1,152 visible bodies. Overall performance seems better than with my old laptop, but I don't have any way of actually measuring that. The biggest change for me is the performance has improved so I can now use high-resolution graphics for the display while editing, which I really love. (Or at least it did-- there's an outstanding support post in the forum for that)
@kunitsavova wrote:
... I can only imagine how many thousands of comments similar to mine you had a chance to read. I'm sorry...
I don't, that was my point 😉
I have no doubt that you and other users are experiencing the things you describe and by no means do I want to dismiss those experiences. Having worked with 3D modeling, rendering, CAD and software in general for over 30 years I am also no stranger to the frustrations that go along with it.
It is no surprise to me that the file you attached creates problems. Can you explain what your aim is with this chain ?
If you are trying to simulate the dynamic behavior of a chain in a mechanical system, then that won't work. Fusion 360 does not have the tools to do that. Just animating a moving chain is very laborious undertaking using motion studies and usually not worth the time other than proving that it can be done.
If you are happy with a static chain then there are better methods to achieve that, without the performance penalty.
I would start to draw the chain line in a sketch. A hand full of pattern features patterning components (not bodies!) and a single rigid group joint will take care of that.
