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.   

[TrippyLighting]

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@rileyaT95SP wrote:

Don't. You can only virtualise Windows for Arm and Fusion runs utterly horribly on that because you are handing off the translation from the very efficient Rosetta 2 to the horrible Microsoft x86 emulation layer.

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Not only that. You'd have to get a beta version of Windows 11 because there  is no ARM support in Win 10. 

[Cap2020]

This change in technology must come at the same time as the change in machine! I don't want to buy those horrible Intel not ARM which consumes too much electricity and especially I don't want to change my computer ecosysteme! What a pain in the ass!

[TrippyLighting]

@Cap2020 I am not sure what you are talking about. For most people so far Fusion 360 works fine on the new M1 macs.

There's really no need to run Fusion 360 in Parallels on Win11 when it runs  through Rosetta2, which is almost certainly faster and more stable than a Parallels/Win11 beta installation!

I would also guess based on forum feedback and what I see in comments on youtube that many people have unreasonable expectations abbot the performance gain of a native vs. Rosetta version.

[Cap2020]

I admit I am in complete confusion and no one here can prove what they are saying. I'll contact the assistance who advised me against the M1 13" at the time.
I also hope that keqingsong will tell us more soon. It will not continue to work with these 15" late 2013 Macbook Pro, 15" 2017 Macbook Pro, OSX 10.13.3

[Anonymous]

Great...

[Anonymous]

Great....

[r.moss]

If I run F360 on my M1 iMac I find insertion is broken.    Also Screencast does not run so I cannot record the behaviour.

• Open F360
• Save an empty model.
• Open the file browser, select a model, try to drag it into the main window - nothing happens.
• Similarly if I do "Control-click" and use the pop-up menu for "Insert into current design" - nothing happens.

[TrippyLighting]

1. If you try to insert a component from the data panel into a new and empty design, you need to first save that target design and then insertion should work. Fusion 360 usually provides a warning message that states this.

2. Dragging components from the data panel into a new design does not work on macOS as AFAIK. It does not work on my 2017 MacBook Pro.

[r.moss]

Thank you - I tried that with my "save an empty model" step above but it still didn't work.

Roger

[r.moss]

It's a bit of a shame - I'm now running F360 on a 5-year old laptop instead of my new M1 iMac because Insert Component doesn't work on it.

[Phil.E]

Seems to be working fine for me on my M1 Mini. The screenshot below was made moments ago after inserting a design via right click > Insert. I tried with control+click and also had success. 

It's possible you may just need to restart your computer.

And @TrippyLighting  100% correct, drag and drop has never once worked on Mac. It's a limitation of macOS.

[1Macaddict]

I'm using an M1 Max on a MacBook 16" running Monterey 12.0.1 and I don't have an issue inserting components.

Maybe I'm not understanding what you are wanting to do but all you should have to do is: (this is from the Fusion support but is exactly what I do)

1. Verify all designs have been saved.
2. Open the design that everything will inserted into (the 'Assembly' file). 
3. Open the data panel. 
4. Right click on the thumbnail of the file that will be inserted.
5. Select Insert into Current Design.
6. All bodies, components, and sketches from that file will now be inserted into the Assembly file. 
7. Move the model into the desired position. 
8. Click OK. 

As was mentioned already, you cannot drag the component from the Data Panel into the design, you have to right click and select Insert into Current Design.

Do you get an error or nothing happens?

Jeff

[r.moss]

Nothing happens.  I open a saved assembly, find another file in the data panel, put the mouse over the thumbnail, do Control-Click to bring up a menu (keep holding mouse down so the menu doesn't disappear), scroll down to Insert into Current Design, release the mouse and...Nothing happens!

I have tried restarting my system as suggested in a previous post - no better.  When I want to insert a component I have to close F360 on the iMac, get out an old Windows laptop, start F360 on it, do the insert, then go back to the Mac.

[1Macaddict]

Since you are able to do this on your Windows computer, you obviously know how to make this work so I'm not doubting what you are doing and it should work.

One odd comment that you mentioned is that you have to "(keep holding mouse down so the menu doesn't disappear)" I don't believe that should happen. I normally use what Apple calls the "Secondary Click" which is tapping the trackpad with two fingers. I also tried the control click and both behave the same on my system. I do not have to continue to hold down in order for the menu to to stay active. I have attached a screencast of the process that I use which is what it sounds like you have tried. There is a process for a clean install of Fusion 360 but that is kind of a pain. I didn't read back through the postings so you may have already tried that too.

In the screencast, I do the secondary click on another model in the data panel, the menu becomes active. I moved the cursor around a bit but was not holding down on anything. I select Insert Into Current Design and it works as expected.

https://autode.sk/330Ao0p

[Phil.E]

@r.moss , @1Macaddict is correct. The method you are using to pull up the RMB menu and then try to pick something from it (insert) is failing because that doesn't work on macOS.

What you are describing is for "mouse up" to trigger the event. However, on macOS "mouse down" is what triggers events. 

Using your description, mouse-up is not firing the Insert command. Nor is it firing commands for dock items, like trying to open a new Safari window by RMB menu on the dock icon. 

What are your settings that provide this experience: Right click on an item does not provide a menu that stays up so you can left click on the Insert command?

[FrodoLoggins]

So after Fusion get's ARM support will my BRAND NEW Macbook stop crashing at least once a day or will we be looking at the same old buggy Fusion app? People pay for this software guys, just FYI...

I miss my old intel macbook, only crashed once every other day...

[TrippyLighting]

I work with Fusion 360 every day professionally and privately. I don't do any CAM or simulation, so I cannot speak to Fusion 360's stability in those areas. However, being a very advanced user of solid modeling, surfacing, T-Spines ,assemblies and rendering I can say that  Fusion 360 only crashes for me very, very rarely. Less than once in 2 weeks and much rarer can I reproduce a crash!

I work daily on Windows and MacOS (Intel) computers.

[1Macaddict]

Do you have any details that you can share on what seems to trigger the crashes? I too use Fusion everyday, I have a small shop in my garage and 3D print a number of items that I have designed and it is rare that Fusion crashes on me. I don't do a lot of complicated stuff so I don't know if that makes a difference.

A year or so ago, I was having issues in the manufacturing environment during simulations but that has seemed to go away. I'm on a new laptop now but the issues I was having went away even before I upgraded my computer.

[r.moss]

Yes.  I thought that was how you did a right click.  It has always worked in the F360 design window for pulling up the context menus.

I have now enabled Secondary Click in the mouse preferences and I find I can click on the right side of the mouse.    Amazing.  Insert now works!  Thank you!  Nice to have such an easy solution.

[atvtester4466]

It seems that F360 is not happy to do (STL/MESH to Solid) work.  It keeps freezing while I was simple trying to work on a single MESH model editing for 3d printing.  Below please find the steps I was doing .

- Open F360 new project

- Insert MESH

- Browse to pick a STL file to be modified

- place it in workplace

- Select MESH tab

- Convert MESH to solid (basic mode instead of pay feature, prismatic mode)

- The above steps are running normally, then...

- It runs endlessly and showing (Not Responding) in activity monitor app as attached 

- I did try to wait if the process will be ended later, but it keeps running over hours endlessly...

My System Configuration

- MacBook Pro 16" 2021 edition - M1 Max 64GB ram with 32core GPU built-in

- OS MacOS 12.1 Monterey