Running Fusion with Rosetta 2 on Apple ARM-based M1 Chipsets

[keqingsong]

July 5, 2023 Update 

Hello all, the current Insider Build of Fusion now has native Apple Silicon support, and as you read some of the latest comments in this thread, the results are looking great. Our goal is make it available to everyone by our next product update, which should be happening towards the end of the month. If you want to try it now, you can sign up to join our Insider Program, and get access to the Insider Build. Keep in mind that once you become a member, you are under NDA and cannot sharing information publicly, with the exception of this particular project since it is already public knowledge. 

Click this link to sign-up and join: https://www.autodesk.com/campaigns/fusion-360/insider-program

Thank you to those you have who've expressed interested and have been testing it! Please continue to let us know about your experiences. 
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November 23, 2022 Update

As you know we have been working closely with Apple on native support for Fusion on Apple Silicon Chipsets (i.e. M1 & M2). We are pleased to announce that we expect to achieve full native support by Summer of 2023.

As we have explained in this thread, the delay is a result of the need to ensure 100% compatibility between components from over 100 3rd party vendors including Autodesk.

If you want to access this functionality as soon as possible, please consider joining the Insider Program. If you have any questions on the topic please contact @Rajkumar.ilanchelian.

October 28, 2021 Update

Hey all, thanks again for the passionate discussion here. Even though we haven't chimed into this thread as much as we wanted, we are reading every single response and are actively working on getting Fusion to be natively supported on the new Apple chipset. Here's what I know from talking to the development teams: 
We are actively working on getting native support. This is still going to take some time because Fusion uses a multitude of services to work the way it does (Autodesk-owned as well as 3rd party) many of which are also not natively supported on M1 chipsets yet. We are collaborating closely with those teams to taking the necessary steps to ensure that the services we use are also natively supported. There is a lot of passion internally to get this done as well, so we definitely feel you. Again, I can't not say when this will happen, but as soon as we have something more concrete to share, we'll be sure to update you all. 

April 29, 2021 Update

We've been actively working on resolving the issues mentioned below and are glad to report that these issues no longer exist when running Fusion on the M1 chipset. We are also working closely with Apple and are in the process of certifying Fusion as 100% compatible running on M1 chipsets via Rosetta 2. 

In terms of running Fusion natively on the M1 chipset without Rosetta 2, we are still working towards this goal but is going to take some time to reach. We are confident to say that running Fusion on the M1 chipset via Rosetta 2 should be indistinguishable from running it on an Intel-based chipset, if not faster. 

If there are specific issues you've experience and are not mentioned below (strike-through items), please chime in and respond to this thread so we are aware and can look into it ASAP. Thank you for your continued support! 

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Apple's original press release 

We are delighted to see Fusion being featured in the most recent Apple ARM-based M1 Macbook Pro announcement. Although Fusion isn’t natively compatible on Apple’s new M1 chipset architecture yet, Rosetta 2 should enable you to run Fusion*. We will be sure to keep you posted on our progress towards support of Apple’s new line of chipsets.   

-  
   
* While much of Fusion 360 works as expected under Rosetta 2, we discovered that some Fusion 360 components were not yet compatible. If you run Fusion 360 using Rosetta 2, you may experience issues in these areas:  

·         Switching Team Hubs in the Data Panel  

·         Insert from McMaster-Carr  

·         Explore Generative Design and Electronics Cooling Simulation results  

·         ECAD Tool Libraries and Content Manager  

·         Local Simulation Solves utilizing NASTRAN  

If you rely on the impacted areas for your work, we recommend you to stay on Intel-based Macs until we have these issues sorted out.   

[alannguyen]

I'm excited for the update! Hope it'll come soon.

[david.clawson]

That will be nice! Can anyone say whether they're beta testing the new version via the "insider program"? I'd be interested in checking it out, but don't have time for it to not work right now if they're still working out some of the bugs. 

[albertson.chris]

No. There is no mention of Apple Silicon native fusion in the insider program.

One would think, if this is going to be released in “Summer 2023” we will see a beta version sometime in early Summer.

[michael8WNBX]

@keqingsong It's been 8 months since your last update on Apple Silicon.  Is the release still scheduled for this summer?

[FrodoLoggins]

Should arrive by end of summer

[qkarmark]

I just received my brand new (refurbished) 13" MacbookPro Apple M2 with 16GB ram and will use it as much as I can to test out the Rosetta2 performance with F360. I am a hobbyist user, but I rely on this software as I am trying to make a go at designing retail products that I want to manufacture.

At first attempts to do a few simple things, F360 seems solid, the graphics are smooth and I have not had any lag or stalled tasks/operations, but it is still early. stay tuned hopefully next week when I have more info to share. 

[david.clawson]

I'm running an "old" M1 MacBook Pro with the M1 Max, 32GB of RAM. I've used F360 for some home projects and for a couple of consulting projects. It's generally really fast, but I have noticed that if you have patterns or complex geometries, it slows down. Also, some of the UI doesn't feel "native". Like if you quit F360 from the command-tab open apps menu, sometimes it panics or doesn't close the right way. Also, some of the floating menus will sometimes appear above other open apps while F360 is in the background. F360 sometimes takes a few minutes to open, which seems kind of odd. One pet peeve: I still haven't figured out how to quickly get it to open using spotlight. "Auto" "Fusion" don't bring it up as a top result. Not a big deal, but kind of strange. 

All in all, I'm happy with it. I think it's still kind of expensive, but maybe I'm not the best target market. I don't use ALL of the features, so I wish I could pay 1/2 price for just the modeling and the 3d printing (STL) export. 

[alannguyen]

Exciting! Yay, finally, Hopefully it'll be butter smooth and less glitchy. I also can't seem to get rid of that weird ass glitch where the browser just stays afloat even though there are other active Mac apps on top.

[albertson.chris]

Generally, your experience mirrors mine.    I am waiting to see if the "new" Fusion 360 for Mac is an actual Mac App or if they when cheap and used some multi-platform GUI library.

I can also crash Fusion on my M2-Pro-based Mini.  Rendering full screen kills it and a few other things but I learned to just "don't do that".

If you think Fusion is expensive and you want a good app to run native on Apple Silicone, look at FreeCAD.   It is free and Open Source.  The user interface is something Solidworks users might like more than Fusion users.  I think Fusion has a faster-to-use user interface design if only it were native to the Mac.

I guess we will see soon enough.   

[smjEX9KK]

For me on a 2022, Macbook Pro M1 Pro Fusion 360 crashes at least once every hour or two, takes a very long time to start and generally runs like a dog compared to every other app.

[The.Broken.Engineer]

I think we can all agree that F360 + ARM = runs like a dog. Even slower with the latest update which totally blows.

This is an opportunity though, become an insiders member and you get early access to the ARM release when it does finally get ready for release. Two things which are appealing:

1) Everyone finally gets access to the native version early

2) If there are problems the F360 team are pretty good at addressing the problems provided you give them enough information so that they can reproduce the problem and fix it.

Like everyone here, I am hanging for a native version of this software, it has been way too long.

My two cents.

./M

[paulLHSQL]

Good to know. Thanks! Will the Native Apple Silicon version use the GPU-cores specifically? I'm up for a new Mac and want to know if the upgrade to more GPU cores is worth it, regarding Fusion 360 performance.

--Paul

[hijazh]

If your use case is anything like mine (predominantly surface modelling using T-Spline tools combined with larger component assemblies), I can safely say that a lot of the time I'm hammering the GPU cores using Apple Silicon (MacBook Pro M1 MAX).:fire:

[paulLHSQL]

Thanks a lot for the info!

[lance.carocci]

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@albertson.chris wrote:

I am waiting to see if the "new" Fusion 360 for Mac is an actual Mac App or if they when cheap and used some multi-platform GUI library.

---

Both? Fusion 360's UI is built on the Qt framework, and that will still be the case post-release. The UI is still going to be the same experience cross-platform.

I must caution to everyone that - as exciting as a native build is - it is not going to be a magical fix for all current Mac issues. The main benefits will be slightly faster code execution for specific workflows and the removal of a dependency on Rosetta 2, but it is still the same Fusion 360 app underneath.

This is not to say improvements to the underlying UI and framework aren't on the table - they are, just not part of this specific ARM client effort.

[odencustoms]

So are you saying the laggy response on larger files and sudden crashes , which for me happen atleast 3 days a week , some times more , will not be solved by this Mac update , or am I reading that wrong ? 

I get crashes all the time and always send in the reports. I never have followed up on them but for me , those are the 2 biggest issues. 

I monitor my gpu, cpu and ram and it’s never maxed out. 

[lance.carocci]

I would expect large files to benefit; that is generally a CPU-heavy workflow dependent on fast memory access - two things often made more efficient by moving to a native code architecture.

I greatly appreciate you submitting your crash reports and comments - it makes it much easier to prioritize and investigate issues. Rosetta 2 is a highly stable translation framework, and in my experience there have not been any crashes specific to ARM or x86 Fusion 360 clients - but, never say never, right?

[smjEX9KK]

Today's Insiders beta update brings good news on this.

[The.Broken.Engineer]

I can see a lot of new signups to the insiders program now😀

Now to send a feature request to 3D Connexion to release an arm version of their space mouse driver!

[j_borD8QNR]

Hi Guys

I've MacPro M2 2022 whit 24gb and 1TB, so its fast even its got only m2 chip, I'm Using Fusion every day for manufacturing 10h daily minimum, half of this time I'm working on windows pc and the other half on my mac, and on mac it's SOOO buggy, lots of features are generating lot more time on mac then on windows, Please Guys make this native version for Silicon chip's ASAP other ways I will be forced to sell mac and buy pc laptop, and I hate WINDOWS 🙂 its must be this summer !!!