Meshmixer crashes always, no workaround works

[CapGuy]

Hello,

When sending 3D print from Fusion 360 to "Meshmixer" utility (the last today v3.4.35) it crashes every time.

After trying the workaround as replace "custom" app with Meshmixer or even after opening with success Meshmixer as a standalone app manually, it continues to crash when sending 3D print from Fusion 360.

What happens ?

Thank you very much for your time,
Guy

[paul.clauss]

Hi @CapGuy

Thanks for posting! It looks like MeshMixer is crashing when a file is sent to MeshMixer from Fusion 360. When you say " after opening with success Meshmixer as a standalone app manually, it continues to crash when sending 3D print from Fusion 360," do you mean when sending a file opened manually in MeshMixer to a 3D printer (or a different 3D print utility) through MeshMixer? Or does this crash only occur when a file is sent to MeshMixer from Fusion?

When we have seen this issue in the past, it has occurred because MeshMixer is crashing while opening - it may be worth posting on the MeshMixer forum to further investigate this problem. The resources there may be able to give more help on the MeshMixer side of this issue. 

The article at this link contains some suggestions that may help you avoid this issue - I hope this helps! It does look like you are submitting crash reports when MeshMixer crashes - if you could record a screencast illustrating the crashes you have experienced, I am happy to reach out to development to see if there is any perspective they can provide on this behavior.

[CapGuy]

Hi @paul.clauss,

You will be able to reach the screencast I just done for you there in few minutes :
http://autode.sk/2I9d1m0

Hoping this will help,
Cordially,
Guy

[paul.clauss]

Hi @CapGuy

Thanks for posting the screencast. As I have still been unable to reproduce this crash on my system, I will ask that you please submit a MeshMixer bug report at this link - this will be sent directly to the MeshMixer developers, who will be looking into a resolution. This will allow you to provide your operating system information and a detailed description of when the problem started occurring - we appreciate your input! Please let me know if you have any questions.

Please be sure to include the link to your screencast in the bug report.

[CapGuy]

Hi @paul.clauss,

Done.

In addition to the others already done by the automatic bug report in Meshmixer itself.

Please note the automatic send report sent to a "3.3" Meshmixer report web page while I'm running the 3.4 (last version)...

Hoping this will help,
Guy

[anders_thelander]

Was this problem resolved? I have the exact same problem.

[paul.clauss]

Hi @anders_thelander

Thanks for reaching out! I do not believe this issue has been addressed - please submit a bug report through the link in my previous post to the MeshMixer team to increase the priority of the report. We apologize for any inconveniences this may cause.

[Anonymous]

I have exactly the same issue. further if I export the file and then open in it meshmixer, it opens but the resolution is poor. so as a result, all my files print horribly. Is there a solution that will export the file in high resolution? I literally only need meshmixer to change the orientation so it prints correctly so I can use something else but it doesn't matter if the export is so poor, i can't print. 

I also am unable to submit an error report per the above link.

thank you

[CapGuy]

Any update for this annoying problem ?

In the meantime, I've found a quick solution : 

Hoping this will help,
Cheers,
Guy 

[alastair.glendenning]

Part the sea, I have found a solution that works for me (at least).

The problem is that Fusion 360 starts Meshmaker but doesn't switch the active working directory before calling the program file (meshmixer.exe). The folder that it starts in is an Autodesk program folder (%localappdata%\Autodesk\webdeploy\production\ce69b5085f183e9fbd0b866247cde236e92ac45c for me), and that folder contains tons of DLL files and other system goodies that an application needs to run. If you start a program in another folder while this Autodesk folder is still "active", that program you call will try to load its DLLs and other support files from the active folder FIRST, before trying to look in its own program folder. That causes the crash, because of a version difference between the DLLs.

So, to get around this, I created a little .cmd file in the Meshmixer program folder, that I point Fusion 360 to, which in turn switches the active directory (cd /d "%~dp0") then calls "meshmixer %1" to open the file it generates. In effect, it "fixes" the problem by switching the active directory before executing meshmixer.exe.

tl;dr:

1) go to your Documents folder

2) right-click blank space, "New" -> "Text Document"; call it "fixautodeskscrappydevelopers"

3) open that new file, copy/paste the following into it:

cd /d "%~dp0"
"%~dp0meshmixer" %1

(above: the term "%~dp0" refers to the path that the script itself resides in, so the first line switches to the correct folder [which is what fixes the crashing issue] - whereever it may be - and the 2nd line calls Meshmixer with the same command-line argument the script itself was given)

4) go to file->save, and put the following in the filename field, IN QUOTES:

"script.exe.cmd"

(.exe.cmd because it seems Fusion 360 looks for a ".exe" and greys out the "OK" button if it's not an "exe", but I can't quite find a pattern to why/when it greys out the OK button, so this might not be necessary)

(*but putting it in quotes IS necessary so the new file will have the CMD extension instead of TXT*)

5) Open up the C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Meshmixer folder, and bring your Documents folder back to the screen as well

6) Drag your new "script.exe"[.cmd] file into the Meshmixer folder, it'll ask for permission to do so (that's why you created it in Documents, as you can't create a file directly in a Program Files folder 🙂 )

7) Finally, in Fusion 360, select a "custom" print utility in the 3D Print dialog, select the Browse button, navigate to C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Meshmixer, then type "script.exe.cmd" into the filename field, and it should select the script. The dialog may show either [script.cmd] or [], can't quite find a pattern to that either.

8) Enjoy as Meshmixer now works like it should.

9) Come back here and confirm if this works, so the Autodesk devs know to get their act together on leaving active paths dangling like this... switch the current directory before calling third-party programs, man! 😉

Hope this helps a bunch of people. Sure helped me.

[CapGuy · Accepted solution]

@alastair.glendenning : thanks for this tip, which surely will help some people, maybe for other issue lie this one.

Now I have to say since Meshmixer is renewed with its version *3.5*, it is no longer a problem to use it directly from Fusion 360 !

I used the 3.4 one without knowing there was a new version, and within the update function there was no alert nor notification for this new version, so I did not know nothing about it 😕

In a nutshell : nowadays Meshmixer 3.5 seems to work well with Fusion360 (and it is enough to fit my needs) 😄

Cdly,
Guy