view cube becomes deactivated

[Anonymous]

hello,

i have noticed that occasionally the view cube is not working correctly. the small house icon disappears and the cube becomes inactive. clicking on it does nothing. also it seems like its is a lighter shade of grey? that may be due to it not being clickable. i have not found any solutions to this issue, and i cannot determine the cause. usually it becomes usable after a while. hopefully this is just user error and someone can tell me how to fix it. its not a huge issue but it is very frustrating. 

thanks

[Phil.E]

Thanks for letting us know.

I'll repeat my request from two years ago: 

I'm happy to escalate as a high priority for fixing, any method that can reliably repeat the frozen view cube today. 

There is a particular habit, workflow, or action that causes it regularly for some users. What is not known is what these habits, workflows, or actions are. The only way to debug a software problem like this, and later test the fix, is to be able to repeat it. It has to break on demand, and then the fixed build must withstand all efforts to break it. 

I work mostly on crashes. Which means I try as hard as I can to break Fusion and report it to developers. If you can help me break the view cube, I will escalate the issue to a very high priority. But I can't figure out how to break it, so your help is appreciated in that regard, especially everyone who has commented here who obviously is deeply impacted by this problem. I'd love to see it fixed for you all.

[ad_johnson6E7LY]

I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary, just using the application so I can't say what I did to cause it.  It worked fine and then it didn't the next time I went to adjust the view.  All I can say is at the time I was using the Hole tool, had closed it and wanted to re-home the view.  At that point, it was completely inactive in the sense that (a) the home icon wasn't visible; and (b) the cube couldn't be clicked on or rotated.  It's the first time it's happened to me and I'm not doing anything at all complicated, and it's not even a particularly complex model that I'm working on.  Finding this thread, and finding a potential solution using the trackpad, I tried that and the home icon re-appeared and I could click on the cube.  I don't use the trackpad for view manipulation - when I want to re-orient the view I either (a) click on the cube side I want to view; or (b) hold the shift-key, press the middle button on my mouse (Logitech MX Master) and directly manipulate the model orientation to work on it by moving the mouse. 

[kontactFAH6Y]

I have not found a cause for the issue, but the pinch mentioned seems to solve it.

[sebastian1_mejia]

I believe that existing for 10 years does indeed qualify the bug as "persistent".

[untrustedone]

Phil,

It would be a good idea if there was a way to force an application dump after somebody experiences an issue. Capturing the flow of the last X number of user interactions and getting that in to the developers would be very, very helpful. Some command line command from within the application or a nice clickable button under the question mark would be beneficial to users and developers.

Thanks

[ad_johnson6E7LY]

Today, it became impossible to zoom in and out with the mouse.  I could pinch on the trackpad and it worked, but that didn't re-enable to functionality via the mouse.  I had to quit and re-start for it to start working again; I don't know if this is related or not as the view cube was still active.

[travisbrown]

Same. Losing zoom, view cube becomes non-responsive.... I’ve closed and re-opened the same file eight times today just to continue working. 

It’s awesome that this issue has persisted without resolution since 2015....

[Phil.E]

Since it happened 8 times, did you notice any pattern to what you were doing when it started? We're looking for help to reproduce the effect so it can be repeated while debugging.

[travisbrown]

No apparent pattern. Just tooling around in design mode doing basic sketching and extruding. Seemingly random. 

I’m not aware anyone in the years of this thread has ever found a pattern. 

[Phil.E]

Was it

• When dragging the view cube
• When clicking OK on the extrude command

Something like that?

[travisbrown]

No identified causal action and not predictable. Only noticed it when either zoom or view cube occasionally quit working. 

[ad_johnson6E7LY]

Sometimes, you just have to trawl the code: the symptoms are pretty well documented so someone who knows the code base related to the cube needs to make considered investigations about what may cause it and either make changes to see if it fixes the problem, when released, or perhaps capture the debugging information to look at when it does.  I see no other way if you can’t reproduce the problem.  In my work, we were being given reports of our software locking up but I couldn’t reproduce it.  All I could do was rationalise the symptoms, use experience to think about what may be causing the issue - race condition - and trawl the code making changes where such a condition could arise.  I could test that the code wasn’t broken but couldn’t test if the problem was fixed until it was released and in use.  

If it has been an issue since 2015 - I’ve only noticed it since the last-but-one release (I’m not a hardcore, daily user of the app) - then I see no alternative bar ignoring it.  I only use the MacOS version.

[untrustedone]

I agree. My gut feel is that there are fewer developers that really understand the code. My gut tells me that there is a redrawViewCube call( not real name) that is called from a multitude of places. Mayhaps if it could be colored or a number badge could be added to it, depending on where it is called from, and then the color or number could be cited by the people that notice it. maybe that change is enough to fix forever(dreams).

At any rate, there does not seem to be anyone in Fusion that uses the tool enough that they have the problem internally for them to notice it. Do we need to start a gofundme to buy Autodesk some macs for them to test on? /rant

[Phil.E]

Please do not assume that every Fusion user experiences this. Instead, please help figure out what makes you unique, which will lead to a solution much faster. 

Regarding making random code changes: We can't trawl the code and guess what might work. This requires a reproducing case for debugging.

[travisbrown]

It’s 2024 and with this last F360 update this problem has gone from annoyingly intermittent to basically just happening by default with every session. Used to be that forcing a version save would reinitiate the viewcube. Now the only recovery is to close and relaunch F360, only for it to happen again within the first few minutes of typical design activity.

I’ve given up that Autodesk will fix this super obnoxious bug and I just try use the viewcube controls blindly.

Fusion 2.0.20981 arm64 [Native]
Active Plan: Subscription
macOS 15.1.1 (24B91) on MacBookPro18,2

[prune29J97]

I haven't gone through all the thread here... but I experienced 2 issues:

- viewcube is greyed (haven't had this one for a while)

- viewcube just disappear... It's still working when you click at the viewcube's place, but it's just not there...

going to the View menu at the OS top menu and -> 'Hide ViewCube' then 'Show ViewCube' does NOT make the viewcube re-appear. That said, when hidden, it's not possible to click on the viewcube. When 'Show ViewCube' is selected, we're back to NO viewcube, but the viewcube is still clickable if you click at the right spot.

So far, the only solution is to restart Fusion360.

See video attached...

Fusion 2.0.20981 x86_64 [Native]
Active Plan: Personal
macOS 15.2 (24C101) on MacBookPro16,1

with a SpaceMouse (the small one) but happen also when spacemouse is not connected

[ad_johnson6E7LY]

i know it's quite an old reply and I didn't respond at the time.  I understand your thinking but I wasn't suggesting that any of your software engineers would "guess" at what might work: the question to ponder is "why would the UI code fail to draw the cube but still leave that space active as if it was visible?"  For someone who understands the code base for that cube they ought to be able to use experience and knowledge to make reasoned assumptions about what could cause it.  Having worked in software development myself it's not ideal but if there's no specific identifiable set of steps but it causes users frustration then I've had to take that approach to problem solving.

I tried to think of what "makes me unique" but I'm really not a power user, not even a daily/weekly user.  I just use it when I need to - the model I was creating at the time (which I forget now) wasn't even particularly complicated and I tend to stick with a small number of tools.  Subsequent replies from others at least imply that it happens without any specifically identifiable use case.

It's clearly an issue for a number of users who can be bothered to report it and has been for a long time now (years.)  Interrupting work by closing/re-opening the application isn't a great solution for us and I guess we'd appreciate some acknowledgement that you have registered it to look at.

[asherFTSTR]

There is no justification for this. It’s simply laziness and poor management. Both come with the don't care development model that Autodesk prefers. It been 12 years.

@asherFTSTR -this post has been edited due to Community Rules & Etiquette violation.

[travisbrown]

“Regarding making random code changes: We can't trawl the code and guess what might work. This requires a reproducing case for debugging.”

No, but this is what unit testing is for. Viewcube must be a discreet code unit. If we couldn’t over eight to ten years across major GA versions fix a persistent and constantly reported bug that hinders basic use of the software, and has even regressed further as in the latest F360 release, we would have rewritten the whole code unit by now.

Seems that there are a good number of users here who experience/can reproduce this bug consistently and give explicit and detailed descriptions.  I would never suggest that revenue subscribers should be your bug test team, but if no one at Autodesk can reproduce like the users can, perhaps give a few users a free subscription and have them help you root the problem out. 

A friend who is an high school Industrial Arts teacher recently asked me what platform he should adopt for a design class. My response was literally, “Well, I’d suggest Fusion, but there’s this thing…”

[asherFTSTR]

Anyone who knows how to develop software knows there are appropriate ways to handle this - after 3-4 weeks max, not 10+ years.

These are excuses that make clear it’s just not important to Autodesk what the user experience might be.

Also, every user that uses the cube on Mac does experience these issues. So it’s also gaslighting.

@asherFTSTR - this post has been edited due to Community Rules & Etiquette violation.