Severe lagging

[mikemussmann]

Is the New Fusion360 update just slowing everything down ?
Running a very good computer, I am a PC guy, I have been using Fusion360 for CAM for sometime. I was designing today and it is lagging so bad I feel like I should just give up. Funny thing is all I am doing is trimming some lines… it lags and loads extremely slow I'm talking 15 to 20 minutes per edit/ move. I have also tried this on another very capable computer I have with the same results. It is not my internet does not my computer it has to be the software any ideas anyone else having this problem in the last couple days?

[lichtzeichenanlage]

Can you share your design? If I have to guess you have a sketch with lots and lots of lines. Perhaps imported SVG. 

[mikemussmann]

Yep, did not realize SVG was yyyyuuuuge!

[g-andresen]

Hi,

My experience shows that every "too big" sketch (many elements) forces the fusion to its knees, no matter if SVG, DXF or even created in Fusion itself.

günther

[Anonymous]

Was this resolved? I am having similar issues with the software locking up for several minutes at a time with a relatively small design for a desktop 3D printer, and everything else I work on that has more than 5 components. Why is this so buggy?

[mikemussmann]

Never really addressed, SVG I had imported was extremely large in this case causing my issue

[lichtzeichenanlage]

It's not buggy. Fusion 360 just can't handle large sketches and that's what SVG imports are. The 2D engine has to make many checks over and over again. An very important performance rule in Fusion 360 is "Keep your sketches as small as possible". This might be not what you want, but it's what it is and we have to adapt our workflows. 

[Anonymous]

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

The funny thing is, I am not importing anything. Everything is designed in Fusion from scratch. I'm not sure what you mean by "keep your sketches small", that is a relative statement and is not a solution to a problem many people are having. I'm designing a 3D printer, not a front end loader. There are many sketches and each one of them is small. I have invested much time and effort into learning this software as I see the possibilities of it and it's use in a new career. But as soon as I have more that a handful of components in a single design it locks up for sometimes several minutes while "recalculating" something as simple as a line extension of adding a bloody circle. I have tried to bring this directly to Autodesk but I have the educational license and they do not offer online support to non-paid subscriptions. Frustrating to say the least. Maybe this will get their attention. Thanks for your response, in the meantime I will break up my designs into smaller designs of each assy.

Cheers.

[jeff_strater]

@Anonymous - if you would like to share your design here, we can take a look at it.  Do you use large sketch patterns in this design?  Those are known to be slow, and usually we recommend using feature or face pattern instead

[TheCADWhisperer]

There is nearly always a logical explanation and solution.

File>Export and then Attach your *.f3d file here and end all doubt.

[lichtzeichenanlage]

But you can still create unnecessary large sketches. Some general performance and stability rules for sketches are:

• Keep sketches small
• Always constrain and dimension your stuff 
• Always include a fix point in your sketch, preferable the origin
• Prefer origin faces over body faces
• If you have tools in the modelling workspace that can do the job use those. Examples
  • Mirror
  • Pattern
  • Fillet

If you want a less general answer you might File -> Export your design and share here. 

[Anonymous]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for your attention. It seems that I can't export this file as 3df, I have attached a step file that has been compressed. I hope this is useful for you. Any constructive input you have will be greatly appreciated.

If this is as common as it seems to be, wouldn't it be prudent to fix it in the software rather than figure out work-arounds? In the mean time, these techniques should be included (and clearly explained) in the courses used by learners.

Again, thank you. Mike.

[jeff_strater]

@Anonymous - a STEP file won't really help, as STEP export does not contain sketch information.  See this article for information on how to share a Fusion design:  How-to-share-a-Fusion-360-design .  Any of those methods will work.

Regarding:  "wouldn't it be prudent to fix it in the software rather than figure out work-arounds?".  Obviously, yes, but any such fix is likely to take a long time to implement and make its way to the outside world.  In the meantime, there are best practices and other recommendations that will make life more tolerable.  It's up to individual users to decide whether those recommendations are worth following or not.

Also, not to be too defensive, but a constrained sketch implementation will always struggle if you throw a lot of complexity at it.  Having the capability to dimension and constrain sketch primitives means that a lot of solving has to take place.  Where other unconstrained sketch tools like Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape can handle thousands of primitives, that is largely because those tools don't have the ability to drive the sketch with dimensions and constraints.  So, there is definitely a tradeoff here.

I look forward to seeing the design and understanding the source of the lagging that you are seeing.

[Anonymous]

Looks like the f3z file is 226MB, can't be compressed and too big to share on the forum. Could you PM me your email and I will try to add you to the project. This should be fun as I have never tried this before. Thanks for your patience.

[Anonymous]

Finally it is letting me share.

Here is the link.

https://a360.co/2O4Wgxd

Thanks again.

[TheCADWhisperer]

I see many other issues, but from the foundation - this sketch profile only need occur one time, should be fully constrained and could be simplified with a Feature Pattern. And then Component Pattern.

I see unresolved yellow highlighted issues indicated in the Timeline and tons of Moves.

The deeper I dig the more I find.

Unnecessarily complicated faceted faces.

This entire model could probably be simplified down to 5Meg or less.

[Anonymous]

Hey there, thanks for taking the time to look at this carefully. 

I will sift through the timeline to resolve the yellow highlighted issues you mentioned. The high number of moves is due to the development process of the location of parts and components. If there is a more efficient way to do this please share. I have tried to go back and edit moves and dimensions as much as possible in stead of adding more but sometimes that isn't possible. 

Admittedly, the profiles gave me a hard time and I chose to go the simplest route I could see with them. I will go back in and dimension and constrain them as best I can.

The faceted faces were converted from mesh (stl) to brep, I was unable to smooth all of the facets to a single surface in a timely manner so I reluctantly accepted them as is (it actually bothers the hell out of me).

I will definitely implement these tips into future designs as I learn more.

Thanks, Mike.

[jeff_strater]

thanks for sharing the design, @Anonymous .  It wasn't clear to me exactly which operations are "severe" for you.  This started out as a sketch thread, so I assumed it was sketch issues, and I did find one sketch that has some concerns, but I wonder if your observations are more general than sketch.

A few observations:

• the mere size of the F3Z is an indication.  This is not a very complex design, and it is 232MB (and that is compressed). That is a lot of data, and probably is at least partially responsible for the performance issues
• what I see is more of what I would call "compute performance".  This is when you do a Compute All, or edit an early sketch and exit sketch mode, or change some parameter.  This operation is VERY slow in this model.  There are 871 features in this model.  The 3 most expensive features are:
  • Combine2 in "X_Carriage Assy" - this feature alone takes over 1 minute to compute.  I'm not sure why, but it's worth looking at - is the tool body or target body extremely complex?  Lots of faces?  I did not look in detail
    
  • Split1, also in "X_Carriage Assy", takes 10 sec to compute.  Takes 10+ seconds to compute  Again, worth investigating
    
  • Sketch1 in "Y_Shaft_Clamp" takes over 8 seconds:
    
• the sketch, I was able to look into.  It does have a LOT of projected geometry - from that faceted model that @TheCADWhisperer referred to.  So, that body causes problems not just in its own complexity, but in the complexity of this sketch.  You mentioned that you used mesh to BRep on that part.  IMO, it would be worth re-modeling this body.  You can use "Create Mesh Section Sketch" and "Fit Curves to Mesh Section" to help you create a sketch that would result in better geometry, which might help a lot.
• I noticed while I was investigating the sketch, that at that point in the timeline, there is a component called "OLD parts", which it looks like you may have used to contain previous versions of some of the component.  I suspect (though I did not investigate any further) that you may have later "Removed" those components.  THis is just a theory, but this may explain the F3Z file size.  Remove is a timeline feature.  Those components get removed only at that point in time, but all the geometry from them are still part of the design.  This can get expensive, in terms of both compute time and file size (upload/download file open/save time).  Might be worth seeing whether you really need those to hang around.

Finally, though it would be hard to do in this design, this is more for future designs:  A lot of people have had success in segmenting large subsystems of the design into different F3Ds and assembling the whole thing in one top-level design - this can help with just this sort of compute performance, as it localizes those sub-assemblies' compute

[Anonymous]

Thank you Jeff for your insight. I will try to resolve the noted issues and possibly re-model the mesh imports outside the design and link them. I am learning a lot today.

My complaints about lag were in general but it seems you found some obvious (to you) problems that I will sort out as I learn more.

Thanks again, Mike.