Is Autodesk ever going to Fix Fusion 360 for Apple?

[ckp66253]

Will Fusion 360 ever be a viable product for Mac users? Autodesk should let us know if and when they expect this product to work. Do I need to buy a PC just for Fusion? I'm running an Apple M1 Max Studio with 32gb on Sonoma. I had to live with no "multiple undos" for about a year until Autodesk went to native support for Apple silicone. Now I have continuous hangs (spinning color wheel now for more than 10 minutes) which require a force quit. The browser bleeds through other windows (see attachment). I have multiple crashes with reports sent to Autodesk and no improvements have been made.  My drawing goes into wireframe mode until I reboot my computer. It takes multiple attempts to perform an undo. Should we be asking Apple to check into this?

[ckp66253]

Follow up on my post.

[RajkumarIlanchelian]

@ckp66253 Thank you for sending in your crash reports. I took a look at the ones submitted and almost all of this points to graphics. Internally we do have almost the same hardware of M1 Max and macOS Sonoma and do not notice such experience but we have heard from a few other customers of similar experience. 

I have alerted our graphics team to this post and your crashes but are there any workflows that almost always end up with a hang or crash (on any particular designs etc)? It would be good to know of any specific workflows while we take a look at the crashes you sent. 

I have also asked to see if there are any settings changes that can help with a better experience. 

[ckp66253]

It doesn't seem to happen on any particular sketch. It seems that moving bodies causes a crash and when ever I try to offset a face using the push/pull arrow (its hard to make small moves with arrow and I often go beyond point where Fusion can compute offset) instead of entering a number in the edit box causes a crash. 

[RajkumarIlanchelian]

@ckp66253 For starters can you go into Fusion Preferences - General - Graphics - if this is on Auto, change it to OpenGL - restart machine and have it in this setting for a while and see if the experience improves? 

[ckp66253]

Am I looking at the correct screen? I don't see that option. See attachment.

[RajkumarIlanchelian · Accepted solution]

@ckp66253 @Right place but the General tab 

[ckp66253]

OK thanks. Done. Let you know how this works.

[albertson.chris]

It is still not 100% native.   Autodesk is using a 3rd party graphics library and I think this is the root cause of all the issues.   They need to code DIRECTLY to Apple's API and not depend on a buggy 3rd part solution.    But I doubt this will happen.  It is cheaper for them to code to one interface and compile to both platforms.

I find I can prevent most issues by quitting Fusion when I need to take a break and then restarting it

I guess that it is the same on Windows, but Windows users expect bugs and crashes and don't complain so much.

[HughesTooling]

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@albertson.chris wrote:

I guess that it is the same on Windows, but Windows users expect bugs and crashes and don't complain so much.

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No not the same! I use hibernate and can keep Fusion running for weeks.

Mark

[ckp66253]

This seems to help a lot (go into Fusion Preferences - General - Graphics - if this is on Auto, change it to OpenGL - restart machine and have it in this setting for a while and see if the experience improves? )

[ckp66253]

While the wireframe issue hasn't returned, the crashes have continued. Was just deleting an extrusion that I had previously suppressed when it crashed. Attached is the report #.

[FrodoLoggins]

I'm on a laptop. Do you know if this will drain my battery or something?

I don't know what I'm talking about but apparently OpenGL is deprecated on MacOS?

Didn't fix this:....

[albertson.chris]

I don't think we know if the random crashes are related to running on Apple Macs.   It could be that the Windows version crashes too.

For me, the most annoying bugs are the graphics artifacts where Fusion360 leaves little bits of the user interface on the screen after closing or moving a window.  This is likely a bug in a third-party library Autodesk is using.  This is the risk software engineers take when they decide to make their product dependent on some other product over which they have no control.

[RajkumarIlanchelian]

@albertson.chris 

"For me, the most annoying bugs are the graphics artifacts where Fusion360 leaves little bits of the user interface on the screen after closing or moving a window."

These are certain things that we are aware of and have some hard dependencies that we are working to resolve. 

@ckp66253 The report ID that you posted is certainly pointing to a graphics issue. Do you happen to have a consistent reproducing steps for this crash? 

[ckp66253]

Unfortunately, I don't.

[albertson.chris]

I worked as a software engineer for years.  I know, firsthand that getting the boss to give you the budget to "do it right" is a constant battle.   

In this case "doing it right" means writing to Apple's "metal" API.   Doing this ouild give Fusion-on mac jaw dropping performance and reliability and importerntly it would allow fusion to perform better each time Apple releases new hardware.  It would work well enough that Windows users would buy Macs just to run Fusion360.

You can see the difference.  Look at software like Pixelmator Pro where the software team was told to use Apple native APIs only

The suggestion to use OpenGL is risky.  Notice that Apple deprecated OpenGL support some years ago, and today does not reference OpenGL in any of its developer documentation.   Tomorrow Apple could pull the plug on this and remove it.  That day will come, we just don't know when.

All that said, I think Fusion360 is the best 3D CAD on the Apple platform with FreeCAD a close second.   Watch your rearview mirror.  Look what happened to Eagle CAD.  It was the market-segment leader until they were blown out of the market by KiCAD and had to sell out to Autodesk.    If someone with money adopts Freecad like CERN adopted KiCAD, Fiusion360 will be at risk too.

[FrodoLoggins]

If you want me to ship you guys my macbook (I'm not paying for shipping), give you my Autodesk credentials, and keep it for up to 3 months just let me know.

I'm sure the problem is with upper management and if it really is true you guys are working hard to stop this from happening I appreciate it:

But I obviously do not believe you. It's been at least 5 years, I can only assume this has been a thing since day 1. Hard doesn't take 5 years. Not with a bug this bad and this prevalent. And this is just one of countless "how did this exist in the first place nevermind stick around for at least 5 years". I'm sure you guys took shortcuts early on to speed development up and just don't care enough to fix it. Just boot up any Mac and open Fusion. I've had 3 brand new macs that have all had that. That's not a coincidence.

Why does my tool library look like this?:

The new tool library has been out of beta for like 3.5 years now. Why am I still able to do this?:

[RajkumarIlanchelian]

@FrodoLoggins The overlapping issue is a problem that we are aware of and looking at all the options we have to address it. Will look at the other two about libraries that you posted. 

[nadovich]

To be precise, this is not under Preferences -> General -> Graphics, which contains other stuff. Rather it's under Preferences -> General -> Graphics driver. And you select OpenGL Core Profile. Oh, yeah, and it didn't help wtih the screen/menu bleed things.