New modeling bugs, glitches, slow performance.... what is going on?

[jmsimmons460]

I don't know if any one else has experienced an overall drastic decrease in Fusion's capability/performance in the past few months but the past couple weeks the program has become near unusable for me. We aren't talking one model or assembly, I'm talking across the board with everything I'm doing. Some issues I'm having:

- Sketch performance. The software can no longer handle even mildly complex sketches. I can't edit sketches in models I created 3 years ago with this same software without it freezing, crashing, or simply not computing the sketch. I get the "sketch is over constrained" message when adding constraints that do not yet exist. I can move the sketch components freely, yet Fusion believes they are fully constrained. The only solution I have found is to delete and re-draw the affected parts of a sketch. Copying/moving sketch components has also become extremely glitchy and near unusable. I wont even start on 3D sketching.... too many issues to list, non of which existed in old versions of the software. Sketching used to be fast and easy even with many complex constraints.

- Rotating/Orbiting. Another area that has become extremely slow and buggy. When trying to rotate a part that is 6" long, Fusion acts like I'm rotating a house and throws it waaay out of frame. Its doing this with models/assemblies that never had this issue before.

- Computing Features. I'm seeing the same lack in performance while re-computing complex features after a change. it will either freeze, crash, or simply not compute. 

- Rendering. Half the time I attempt to create local renders, Fusion claims it started rendering and nothing ever shows up in the rendering window. Again, its doing this with models previously rendered without issue. Rendering speeds are also drastically slower than they used to be and often in-canvas rendering will indefinitely freeze the program.

- Large Assemblies. I can no longer even open certain assembly files with the software. Again, many are assemblies I created years ago that performed fine on far inferior machines. Usually the program will just freeze up and stay non-responsive for an hour if you let it.

I've been using this software for over 5 years. It used to be so fast and useful and I feel its become so fluffed with other features its no longer suitable for basic parametric modeling. It runs so slow and so buggy these days that its hindering my ability to meet deadlines with my designs. I bill hourly, and using Fusion is now taking 2-3 times as long as it used to which I can't exactly bill for, so I'm losing money. I'm running the software on multiple high performance machines (late generation i7 & i9 CPU's, Nvidia Quadro and RTX GPU's) and yes I've done multiple clean re-installs on both. What is going on? Has the program just become this bad?

[jmsimmons460]

8 crashes today in a 6 hour period... All were indefinite freezes (most during simple sketching), CPU usage was under 15% when they happened, GPU at less than 2%, and memory hovering around its normal 30-40%... There is no logical explanation for the way this program is behaving and its happening on both of my machines running on different networks...

[jeff_strater]

You mention "indefinite freezes (most during simple sketching)".  That sounds likely to be data specific.  Can you share a design?  Can you describe the sketches involved here, and what you are doing with them?  There are likely to be techniques than can help you here, such as not using sketch pattern, using feature pattern instead, turning off profiles in large sketches, etc.  Likely that these are not indefinite freezes, but just a very long compute.  In my experience, these will finish, but you will be better off if you change your workflow to avoid these problem cases.

"CPU usage was under 15% when they happened".  Yes, this is because many of the algorithms in sketching and modeling are inherently single-threaded, and your computer has multiple CPUs, which are not being used for these operations.  As far as I know, nothing has changed recently that represents a general decrease in Fusion performance, but we would like to see your design so we can see what in particular is causing this slowness, to help us improve it over time.

[Phil.E]

Hi @jmsimmons460 I could only find one crash report from this week with your email address. I was checking to see if you might have a graphics problem and sure enough the crash report from this week is in the graphics area. It looks like you are using Intel graphics with out of date drivers, according to the report data.

If your machine has a dedicated video card such as AMD or NVIDIA please let me know because it would appear your machine has stopped using it for Fusion 360. Otherwise, go to the Intel site and try to get newer drivers for your GPU.