Large Assembly, any ideas on how to make this faster?
Thanks for sharing this model, @paulctan . To better answer your question, it would help if you could give a couple of specific examples of operations that are slow. Is it adding a new component, moving/dragging a component, adding a joint, animating a joint, etc. This will be helpful to us - we currently have a project in place to investigate large assembly performance to try to improve it.
As to specific actions that you can take to help improve performance, the first thing I noticed which might affect it is the large number of Rigid joints in this model. Rather than to join pairs of components together, it can be more efficient to create a Rigid Group containing multiple components, all of which need to be mutually rigid together.
Jeff Strater
Engineering Director
yes, you should be able to just create the rigid group, and then delete the rigid joints that are no longer needed. It's worth a try, definitely.
Also, I notice that your fasteners all have fully modeled threads in them (most likely because you are downloading them from McMaster-Carr, and all their models have threads). This can cause bad performance in some areas, and might be worth trying to modify the fasteners to have cosmetic threads. It would be a lot of work, I realize, but all those faces can cause general slowdown as well as graphics slowdown.
Finally, I have a request for you. When you have Fusion in a good state (all designs saved and closed except this one, everything OK), can you try a Compute All on this design, to see what you get as a result? In the version I uploaded to my hub, Compute All results in a lot of Joints failures. This is an issue we are actively working on right now, and I'm curious whether my version is bad, or something is wrong with the F3Z download/upload process. Thanks.
Jeff
Jeff Strater
Engineering Director
@jeff_strater While these certainly are ways to make this faster, this assembly is really a picturebook example of how to build an assembly!
It only has 200 or so components. It is time for the Fusion 360 team to really seriously look at computing performance!
In machine design 200 parts is a pretty small assembly.
I took a close look at the model, here are the actual statistics, just for your information and just for the sake of helping the OP work with this model:
351 components and
953 or so bodies
21418 faces
52664 edges
In addition to all the other performance needs this model has, there will be selection performance impacts as well as graphical. Turn off graphics effects to start. There are other more drastic workarounds like making the extruded aluminum parts temporarily invisible or unselectable. @paulctan Let me know if you'd like a more complete rundown on how to optimize Fusion for working with this model.
Phil Eichmiller
Software Engineer
Quality Assurance
Autodesk, Inc.
Thanks for the feedback @Phil.E !
The model is public and it would be great if you could share these methods here in this thread, preferably in a screencast. It would be an excellent resource that can be referred to.
Glad to help.
As @jeff_strater mentioned, your model has some unnecessary detail, but I would not assume that makes up the majority of performance problems here. However, some optimizing will help.
- Modeled threads: remove modeled threads. I'll post a video in a few minutes showing how to do that.
- 3D logos: just like threads, these can be removed if you don't need to render or print them.
- Turn off graphics effects.
- Use <4k resolution.
- Make parts invisible or unselectable. This keeps the mouse from overworking your CPU with selection logic. All those edges and faces are giving Fusion a lot to think about as your mouse moves over them.
Those are all just habits I picked up from 20 years of 3D modeling. Many of those years in 32 bit computing, with 2.85 GB RAM dedicated to Inventor via a registry hack. The goal was to produce goods, not run Inventor. We did whatever we could to make the application work in the hardware we had, and it always slows down as your model gains complexity. The same problem exists today, despite huge advances in technology.
I can't say your model "should" be this heavy in Fusion, I sort of doubt that, and more investigation is needed. Thanks for the example. However, your model will benefit from trimming down the excess overhead, as my list of tips will do.
Perhaps Jeff has some more tips.
@TrippyLighting Here is your selection counting video.
Regards,
Phil Eichmiller
Software Engineer
Quality Assurance
Autodesk, Inc.
Funny thing. I'm not seeing any performance problems working with this model at all. Can you tell us more about your hardware and perhaps give a video showing your workflows that reveal performance issues.
Anyway, here's how to remove screw threads. The idea here is to do this once for each screw size/type and re-use the cleaned up model where applicable.
Phil Eichmiller
Software Engineer
Quality Assurance
Autodesk, Inc.
Here's how to get rid of those 3D logos.
Phil Eichmiller
Software Engineer
Quality Assurance
Autodesk, Inc.
@paulctan - I'm seeing the same thing as @Phil.E - performance is about what I expect for a model of this size. Most of the slowness I am seeing is in view rotation, etc, which will definitely be affected by the number of faces (and amount of detail) as Phil suggests. Here is a screencast showing me updating a subassembly, inserting a new screw, and placing a joint. It is not lightning fast, but it seems acceptable to me. I don't have a super machine - a couple year old Macbook Pro.
Jeff Strater
Engineering Director
