Autodesk Inventor

[#1]

Hi,

when I use a PC with more then one CPU can Inventor 2012/2013 use then all, or is it only running on one CPU?

BR

Tom

[#2]

For most of its use Inventor only uses 1 core.  The main things that take advantage of multiple cores/cpus are rendering, fea and with 2012 (and newer) each idw view is rendered/calculated with a separate core.

[#3]

This isn't just an Inventor limitation, unless someone's come up with something new in the past few years that I didn't get the memo on. The problem is with any 3D CAD application, each feature in a model tree has to be fully computed before the next one can. Only one processor can work on a feature at a time, hence only one processor gets used.

[#4]

I don't think FEA uses multiple cores.  At least it doesn't when I use it (I REALLY wish it did...).  I've only ever seen it run 1.  Maybe it does in 2013, but not in 2012.

[#5]

I can confirm that R2013 FEA (Stress Analysis) can utilize as many cores as your machine has for meshing and solving.  It is managed by the Windows O/S multi-core technology.

Hope this helps!

Best regards, -Hugh

[#6]

I agree the limitation that each feature in a model tree has to be fully computed before the next one can.

But there are many other time consuming tasks that could be distributed to multiple cores. As an example I do a lot of configurations in Inventor where one skeleton part is derived into many parts.

When I make changes in the skeleton part, perhaps 100 parts should be updated in the assembly. Each part could easily be calculated in its own process.

[#7]

DSS have figured out how to use more than 1 core at part level iin Catia - so it is possible, the question is now how long will it take autodesk programmers to figure out how to do it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4pS5kSBh6A