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

[mianos]

I have not had the problem since the update now.

Another thing to note, I got a utility called 'XRG' that monitors, amongst other things, GPU usage and GPU ram used. 

I have not seen the GPU ram used go over half way so far. Fusion does not seem to add more than about a quarter to the GPU usage. On cold start and bringing up Fusion with my current model it is only using 19% of the GPU ram (about 300M) and about 400M of normal system ram.

[travisbrown]

Yes, pinch zooming corrects the issue. But it's sure annoying if not using the trackpad as your primary input mousey thingy. 

[travisbrown]

And similarly and perhaps related, the toolbar ribbon disappears and a pinch brings it back. 

[travisbrown]

Actually pinch zoom doesn't always remedy the missing ribbon or deactivated view cube. Not sure what made it come back this time. Just did after a while. 

[Phil.E]

@travisbrown

Thanks for the update. I've been looking at another issue, similar to this, and wondering if it's not the same thing.

In this thread, 

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-support/fusion-360-mac-trackpad-problem/m-p/7462780/highli...

We've discovered that having Chrome (with several open tabs), "behind" Fusion can cause interference in interactions with Fusion. In other words, if you have Chrome "up" and Fusion 360 "on top" of it, and are using the icon on the dock to switch between Chrome and Fusion, never minimizing either one, some items like toolbars and view cube become unresponsive for a short time. 

Can you confirm this? 

Thanks,

[Anonymous]

I am experiencing this issue as well and I have a suggestion. It is resolved by zooming with the track pad (thank you so much for that! was getting tired of restarting fusion all the time).

In system preferences I allow various 3rd party tools to control my system to allow for enhanced functionality. Bettersnap tool, screenflick, cheatsheet to name some. Some of them do things like track the mouse. It is possible that Fusion 360 is not grabbing control back entirely just from clicking on the window as we switch between apps. Hence why trackpad zooming fixes it as focus is finally fully returned. (I don't know why mouse wheel zooming didn't also fix it)

Anyway, I would bet this is some conflict with those features. At some point I will try turning them all off, but I can't at the moment.

If anyone else has some of those enabled and is experiencing the problem, I suggest trying to turn off those things in System & Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Privacy (tab) -> Accessibility (Left Menu) -> all the apps there.

This is a mac solution only. Not sure if windows people are seeing this too.

--Derrek

[chris]

That is an interesting observation.

I have a wacom tablet connected up as my main input device to my mac.

It doesn't go thru the accessibility settings but obviously it does interface into the input system - so this could be an interesting area to look in to.

[Anonymous]

This worked for me. Thank you.

[Phil.E]

@Anonymous

Hi and welcome to the Fusion 360 community. 

Can you tell me what you turned off in Accessibility? 

Thanks,

[Anonymous]

@Phil.E

Here's what happened.

The view cube became somewhat inactive.

I could click and drag it to rotate

but I could not click any of the sides of the cube to jump to those views

the sides of the cube did not highlight when moused over

I went on the forums, found this one

And tried the solution of simply pinch zooming on the track pad.

And then the view cube became fully functional. 

I am running a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013)

High Seirra 10.13.2

[Phil.E]

Thanks for the followup.

We think we have found the issue, and it's not just view cube. Do you ever notice that when this happens selections are also impacted?

These are the steps to repeat the bug effect. Does this match your experience? My theory is that Mac has many opportunities to steal focus, to one degree or another. We're now looking for all the cases to test in the fix for this bug. If you can confirm this is what you experience, or not, it would help.

1. Make sure your Mac dock is set at the bottom of the screen and to hide when not in use.
2. Open Fusion 360 and pull the Window down very close to the bottom of the screen (so it will be covered when the dock is shown).
3. Make a few clicks in Fusion 360.
4. Hide the Fusion window with the CMD+H keyboard shortcut.
5. Make a couple of clicks in any other application.
6. Hover over the dock to show the Fusion 360 icon and click it.

Thanks,

[NewAmericanPublicArt]

@Phil.E

If I remember correctly, selections are also impacted.

I followed the steps but could not reproduce the bug. 

[Anonymous]

I tried your steps.  Cube remained activated.

It is flaky - dropped out at least four times tonight.  I also did find the inability to click within a drawing as you suggested.  So those may be related

And I also find that rotating an image is totally unpredictable.

Running latest OS on a MacBook Air.  This bug has been going on for over two years and I hope you find a fix.

Restarting is no fun in the middle of a project.

Graphics diagnostics:

[GPU Information]
GPU Device: Intel HD Graphics 4000
GPU RAM: 1536 MB (Integrated card)
GPU Driver API: OpenGL

[Graphics Effects Settings]
Use high-resolution graphics: Off
Anti Aliasing: On
Ambient Occlusion: On
Object Shadow: Off
Ground Shadow: On
Ground Reflection: Off
Selection Display Style: Normal
Transparency Effect: Better Performance

[Limit effects to optimize performance]
Off

Thanks for helping to diagnose this - 

neil

[Phil.E]

@Anonymous

We have also found that this happens a lot more with Intel integrated graphics. Can you try the option to shut off graphics effects (in the graphics diagnostic)? Also do you ever restart your machine?

Can you describe what you mean about rotating an image?

Thanks,

[Anonymous]

Yes I have tried restarting my machine with limited luck as it shows back up after a bit.

I just turned off the graphics effects so will see if that helps.

When I mentioned rotating an image, I mean with the icon at the bottom of the screen on the left of the center.  Sometimes it works fine but other times it seems to be jerky.

This might also be related to not being able to click and select a face sometimes.

Thanks and I'll let you know if things change.  Hope you can find the problem with the community help.

neil

[Anonymous]

Hey Phil I am the original poster of this issue. I think I figured out what is happening. It seems to be caused by Chrome browser ( at least for me). If I have Chrome running and behind Fusion, it is way more likely to act buggy. The cursor becomes laggy, the view cube become inactive, and other odd behavior. when I minimize Chrome, Fusion acts normal again. Hope this helps!

[Phil.E]

@Anonymous

Thanks for coming back to this.

We think we know at least one workflow that causes this and/or very similar behavior.

It has to do with the dock on Mac, if it covers the Fusion window (over the timeline) and you switch back to Fusion, the UI gets a severe interruption, including View Cube. Some interaction is possible at this point.

Can you try these steps and see if what you experience is the same as the result of this test?

The steps to reproduce the UI issue (and maybe view cube problem) are below:

1. Make sure your Mac dock is set at the bottom of the screen and to hide when not in use.
2. Open Fusion 360 and pull the Window down very close to the bottom of the screen (so it will be covered when the dock is shown).
3. Make a few clicks in Fusion 360.
4. Hide the Fusion window with the CMD+H keyboard shortcut.
5. Make a couple of clicks in any other application.
6. Hover over the dock to show the Fusion 360 icon and click it.
7. Observe your interactions with view cube at this point. Is it the same as the problem described in this post?

To recover:

1. Click anywhere in the grey area for the design timeline.
2. Observe selection now acts normally.

If this is your experience, then I can say with some confidence we may have fixed this. We're testing the fix right now and it should release in a future update.

Thanks,

Phil

[Anonymous]

I replicated the steps listed above and I can confirm the viewcube became inactive. This is the same behavior I described in my last comment regarding Chrome. Seems to be the same issue? 

cheers

[Phil.E]

Thanks for confirming. I'll add this post to the list that will be notified when the actual fix is released. 

When we figured out what was going on, I tried to find all the possible cases like this on the forum and update with those steps, but I clearly missed this one. Thanks for refreshing the post and testing the issue/workaround. Sorry it took so long to figure out.

For now, avoid the dock interactions as you found in the test.

Regards,

[Anonymous]

When this happens to me, a the mouse arrow turns into a tiny mouse (in the computer sense) when it is over the viewcube.  I have no control over the viewcube.  The bar of controls (zoom, fit etc.) has no response either.  This can happen regardless of whether I am using a SpaceMouse, or not.

Reading someone's post from a couple of years ago, I tried right-click over the viewcube, holding it down, then dragging out onto the general Fusion workscreen, rather than the pop-up menu selections, then releasing the right mouse button.  Full functionality was restored when I did that.

Unfortunately, I do not know what gets it into that state.

If it happens again, I will do a screencast of the remedy.

Lewis.