macOS Graphics Performance
@kellings Thanks you for posting this. I've been procrastinating in doing this but the difference in graphics performance between the Windows and macOS implementation is really quite pronounced.
It starts with the file opening dialogue and continues with the collapsing/expanding of the data panel, both of which are pathetic.
Gestures are basically useless on macOS due to the terrible lag.
I also run a 2017 MacBook Pro and and Win10 installation using bootcamp and the difference on this same hardware is really pretty disappointing!
This goes along with recent degradation in the ability to select things after swiping to another app in full screen mode, inability to select the view cube etc.
This is strange as many of us here us our macs as either primary support or work computers, @paul.clauss, @James.Youmatz, @jeff_strater and @Phil.E to name a few. And i'm very curious of their input on this one too.
I've not experienced that lag or really any lag with gesture navigation. Focus loss happens to me, where i switch applications and eventually fusion can't get focus back but Phil has gone over that many times.
I'm regularly in many different files some of my own and customers files all in varying degrees of complexity and rarely see a performance lag - save for the files of extreme outliers and problems.
@kellings, the lag is clearly shown in your video i am curious if you are using a peripheral mouse/spacemouse rather than the touchpad
Ryan Bales
Fusion 360 Product Support
I don't have much to add except that I use a 13" MBP with intel graphics. I do all classes with this, at AU and Fusion Academy. Recently, for a large model performance class I had over 1 GB of model data loaded and the machine performed well. Obviously when there are several thousand components on screen, some sluggishness was seen, but nothing that would stop or slow any workflows. This included full demos of modeling workflows.
I think one thing that is very different for people who work in Fusion development is that we tend to do things like restart our computers*, we don't have chrome open with dozens of persistent tabs, we don't install a lot of extra apps that are constantly running, and probably many other computing habits that vary from typical user machines. We get live updates for development builds up to 3 times a day too.
The other factor at play here is repeatable bugs. In order to fix any bug we need a few ingredients: a repeatable case, the right hardware, and the time to do it all. Graphics issues defy all of these factors. There is a dedicated graphics team that has recently expanded a little and are getting a lot done, so there is hope for more improvements going forward. I've asked them to take a look on this post.
*believe it or not this works wonders.
Phil Eichmiller
Software Engineer
Quality Assurance
Autodesk, Inc.
There is this one known issue, that technically cannot be fixed at this time due to dependencies on external apps.
When you go away from Fusion to another app, if you switch to Fusion using the dock icon, and it covers the timeline, this can lead to loss of most selection focus in Fusion. The remedy is to run your mouse over the timeline icons, not clicking just pass the pointer over the area.
Phil Eichmiller
Software Engineer
Quality Assurance
Autodesk, Inc.
Could you share your design to us for further investigation. From the video, the performance dropped a lot when zooming into the model that applied “orange” appearance, or you can just create a simple deign with the same appearance applied and share to us?
And could you use istat menus to monitor the CPU and GPU states on Mac, and share us a screenshot like below when you running into this low performance issue:
Thanks a lot!
Sally
Sally Yang
Software QA Engineer
Fusion 360 Quality Assurance Team
Autodesk, Inc.
@Phil.E wrote:
I don't have much to add except that I use a 13" MBP with intel graphics. I do all classes with this, at AU and Fusion Academy. Recently, for a large model performance class I had over 1 GB of model data loaded and the machine performed well. Obviously when there are several thousand components on screen, some sluggishness was seen, but nothing that would stop or slow any workflows. This included full demos of modeling workflows.
I think one thing that is very different for people who work in Fusion development is that we tend to do things like restart our computers*,
*believe it or not this works wonders.
Yep, it does. But this is MS Windows like behavior and not acceptable to most Mac/Unix users.
I don't shut my Mac down for days, or sometimes weeks on end. I do fairly often have to shut down Fusion 360 because it still does not seem to release all of the memory associated with a design when that design is closed and over time the memory footprint gets bigger and bigger.
The issues I am experiencing I believe are mostly due to me using Fusion 360 often or really most of the time in full screen mode. I swipe to the side to look up a web site and maybe find a supplier model on Grabcad or 3D content central and load it down. When I swipe back I cannot select the view cube anymore. Fairly recently I had problems selecting sketch elements.
What I call "laggy" is really the performance difference between a Windows and MacOS installation in the same machine. The windows UI is noticeable snappier.
I recently started watching Alias tutorials from Handlebar 3D and looking how he works with the gestures in Alias I don't see that same totally lag free gesture behavior in Fusiosn 360 on the Mac, which is the reason I don't work with gestures anymore.
Thanks for the insights.
"The issues I am experiencing I believe are mostly due to me using Fusion 360 often or really most of the time in full screen mode. "
Phil Eichmiller
Software Engineer
Quality Assurance
Autodesk, Inc.
Thanks for sharing all the details to us.
We can finally reproduce this issue with the same Mac model like yours now. The interesting thing is when we ran Fusion 360 on High Sierra, we couldn't reproduce this issue; but, just after we upgraded the High Sierra to Mojave, it reproduced.
From the investigation, we found the graphics effect "Ambient Occlusion" consumed a lot in your case, so would you help to verify if turn off "Ambient Occlusion" can improve the performance. Thanks!
Sally
Sally Yang
Software QA Engineer
Fusion 360 Quality Assurance Team
Autodesk, Inc.
Thanks for your confirmation, Kevin!
Development team is working on the fix. But just like I said, this issue couldn't reproduced in High Sierra, so this is actually Mojave's defects to support Nvidia Graphics well. As Apple had stopped maintaining NVidia drives for a long time, we can't expect a fix from them, so we can only fix it from product level which may only handle the cases like yours.
Sally
Sally Yang
Software QA Engineer
Fusion 360 Quality Assurance Team
Autodesk, Inc.
I have a Macbook Pro 13" with Mojave 10.14.3.
I just recognised that my Anti-Aliasing was off. Tried to turn it on again - but it is greyed out. The mentioned Ambient Occlusion is turned ON and greyed out as well.
How can I turn ON anti-aliasing and turn off Ambient Occlusion ? 
Please try to turn off the options that may limit your effects in below areas:
Sally
Sally Yang
Software QA Engineer
Fusion 360 Quality Assurance Team
Autodesk, Inc.
