Speed, and generally unacceptable slowness in CAD

[dammitcotezee]

I am tired of slow CAD software. SolidEdge is slow. SolidWorks is slow. Inventor is slow. Onshape is slow. Fushion 360 is extra slow. Why can I play a game with millions of polygons rendered, shaded, and physics simulated all at once but my cad program grinds to a halt when I try to draw a circle. 

Basically I'm saying I won't accept any excuses for speed. Not when I can shoot imaginary projectiles through imaginary cloth and see imaginary rips, tears and fluttering debris at 60fps and then go to fusion 360 and can't drill ten holes without it thinking real hard about it. I know all the reasons why it's slower. I'm just saying that while they may be true reasons, they aren't good reasons. They can all be worked around.

When I can drill three thousand filleted holes wrapped on a curved surface in under thirty seconds the software will be fast enough. Honestly, if this software could do this right now I would toss solidworks in the bin, I would campaign at companies I don't even work for for them to switch. I would shave my head and become a fusion 360 monk, spreading the good news throughout engineering offices everywhere.

[TrippyLighting]

The Idea Station is generally not a good place for rants.

It is meant to provide input to Autodesk about features that users desire.

I fail to see anything constructive in your post that one could concievably vote on.

[roambotics_scott]

Performance. He's asking for things to work faster / general performance improvements (which seems pretty constructive to me).

Perhaps I'm not the right person to comment on rants, and maybe this is a cultural thing, but to me the «rant»* just shows strong(ish) feelings, frustration, and maybe an attempt at persuasion. I'm sure there are a bunch of «ideas» on performance but how many of those have bubbled to the top ?

To me this doesn't come across as angry or aggressive and, in fact

if this software could do this right now I would toss solidworks in the bin, I would campaign at companies I don't even work for for them to switch. I would shave my head and become a fusion 360 monk, spreading the good news throughout engineering offices everywhere.

That sounds pretty positive to me, and echos my own feelings.

If F360 were dialed in a bit more on a few things (performance, stability, usability, etc), it'd be insanely great. 

Maybe it's just that the tone is lost in text, or that people are looking for ways to feel wounded, but it's pretty annoying that someone can't say something with a modacome of passion without it being taken as a verbal assault.

* note that I don't even think this qualifies as such

[TrippyLighting]

 @roambotics_scott 

The little green flag in the upper right corner labeled "New Idea" indicates what the purpose of the Idea Station is. New ideas!

A general wish for more performance without outlining a specific problem is realy NOT a new idea. Lets say there are enough folks that vote on this idea. What actionable item would you generate out of that ?

In contrast there have been a number of threads that dealt directly with performance and particularly wth viewport rendering performance ( not o the Idea station) that resulted in very substantial speed inprovements. The reason for that was that users asked for very specific things and users were asked for very specific feedback from the Fusion 360 team which provided thm with vauable information to provide better performance.

Certainly the next big area o fimprovement is the sketch engine/solver.

In general, the more specific the requests are in the Idea station and the more people can releate to an Idea the more votes it can receive and the better the chance for implementation.

I did not say that this was angry or aggressive I said it is misplaced in the ideastation. I stand by what I said.

[roambotics_scott]

Fair enough - I'm probably just being overly defensive because I worry that I come off as ranty. He does have a kernel of a specific idea in there if you mine for it but it may be impractical with current hardware without a major innovation in the underlying data structures and algorithms.

[cekuhnen]

However I have to agree with him - Fusion on my sides often runs with a 6 to 12 frames per second which is extra slow. Honestly I think most of those CAD apps simply have bad 3d engines.

Alias for example runs circles around Fusion but Alias is for trans design where data will be heavy so it has to be fast. What is the general solid model people do in SW or Fusion - much much smaller and easier.

Oddly I found onshape blazing fast but well the detail level is also pretty coarse!

[SGoldthwaite]

How about this as a specific suggetion: Hire someone from the gaming industry to work on graphical performance. There's so much gaming that these guys must have learned a lot about getting the best performance from computer hardware.

[roambotics_scott]

I'm say behind that. Bonus points: do the same for basic collision detection and rigid / soft body dynamics.

[dammitcotezee]

Thanks guys. Yea I realize this came off as a bit ranty, and it was. I guess the Idea, or feature request, is that speed be a really really serious consideration. Whenever you read the changelog of cad software performance enhancements gets a little bullet point at the bottom. This is the industry standard. No one really comes out and brags about how they have the fastest model calculation, the most responsive drafting, or the most framerates. No, mostly the renderings are appallingly bad and jagged and low res. I mean, realview in solidworks is a joke, and that's the best I've seen out there. Solidworks actually can't render something that looks like a circle, I cannot fathom why. It's got relatively zero polygons on display compared to say, Bioshock Infinity, or Skyrim.

Speed matters. It matters a lot. There is nothing worse for your morale late at night than waiting five minutes for your CAD software to recalculate the entire geometry because you changed a hole size. It is bad when I have to ask myself, should I make the geometry and complexity I want, or should I make the geometry the software can handle? 

If I had to pick specific areas where I find fusion 360 the most appallingly slow. Well, it would have to be sketching. In solidworks I can sketch like a demon. My constraints are instantly applied, there's no lag at all between my mouse movement and the updates on the sketch. I actually think 360 has gotten good enough now that if I didn't dislike the sketch speed so furiously I would start using it now for my personal stuff. (It's a buyer's market and I have solidworks through my job.)

Next is where all CAD software fails. recalculating geometry. I really don't know why this is so slow. I think it's half lazy programming, half difficult programming, and half cognitive dissonance. The lazy programming I think comes from speed not being a priority in the team. Hence that bottom bullet point. Why work hard on what you aren't rewarded for? The difficulty is well, because it's stupid hard to make parametric CAD software, no one can argue this. The dissonance that I think happens is: When I'm just working in the software I don't need a precision perfect model in front of me. Cause I honestly can't tell. I just need the holes visually approximated in the right place. I think the software wastes a lot of cycles rendering a perfect model when It should be just putting a dang good approximation up there. I only need a perfect model for drawings, CAM, and 3d printing. Then the software can spend three days baking the model.

I think there should 100% be a few game engine developers on the team. That is a great idea.

[roambotics_scott]

It's hard but seriously - performance and stability are absolutely essential.

I feel like I've said this a million times here but F360 is (and has been for a long time) so close to insanely great and all that's standing in its way from exploding is that it's painful to use for serious things (I complain more about stability than speed because that's a more immediate barrier to using it but subjective performance is almost as crucial).

I really can't say what the problem is but there is definitely something systematic. I think part of it (not too far from your dissonance) is that anything critical of the software gets met with the same sort of response you'd expect if you told someone their baby is ugly. Autodeskers get defensive and even the community here yells that you're being an a-hole and overly picky (and often ranty).

[most] people don't go off on rants because they enjoy it, they do it because they care and perhaps they're frustrated by seeing wheels stuck spinning in the mud and being told that everything is fine.

[tgsell]

I design enclosures for PCB's.  When I import a PCB model with several hundred components Fusion will take several minutes to load the design.  Then every time I need to move the part Fusion will stall for several minutes, so I need to go for a cup of coffee every time I want to move a component!  FreeCad will run much faster on the same design.  Currently I consider Fusion to be only usefull for tiny designs.

[roambotics_scott]

Yeah @tgsell F360 definitely has some major performance issues with even modestly complex assemblies.

That's one of many reasons why I feel like it was built to demo well and for light tinkering but not for actual use

[mcolinp]

I agree with some of the sentiment here. I really want to like Fusion and run with it; but I also feel that the performance is in the way of not looking back at my other options. I use Alias everyday; and it makes Fusion look terrible in viewport performance. The irony is that Fusion is included in the Subscription with Alias.