Video cards

[jeremyj]

I use Inventor 2012 and am make a very large assembly and as it gets bigger, the longer it takes to place components and constrain them as well as move my model around.  I'm thinking it's a graphics card thing as my computer is pretty powerful.  I have a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 gaming card right now.  I don't really want to spend several thousand dollars on a top of the line CAD card, but is that my only option?

[r_baker11]

For large assemblies you really need a NVIDIA QUADRO card. While these are not cheap cheap they can be got for a few hunred dollars.

[mcgyvr]

---

@r_baker11 wrote:

For large assemblies you really need a NVIDIA QUADRO card. While these are not cheap cheap they can be got for a few hunred dollars.

---

Bull crap!!!

A quadro card with Inventor is simply a waste of money.His current card should be more than sufficient. 5 years ago a quardo card was the suggestion when Inventor relied on openGL but with the move to directX that is no longer the case. Now you pick a decent gaming card and spend the money you saved on other hardware.

Jeremy, Please list the specs of the other hardware on your computer. Like RAM,Processor,OS,etc..

CPU speed and amount of RAM are way more important than a graphics card.

[PACDrafting]

I have a geforce 560 and it is great on large assemblies.

You dont have to purchase a high end quadro card as inventor uses direct x which is what games are run on.

[Ray_Feiler]

I don't think it's your video card. http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

[jeremyj]

I have a Intel core i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07 GHz with 12 GB of RAM with windows 7, dual 500 GB hard drives

[PACDrafting]

That machine looks ok to me. I have a solid state HD and it flies.

How large is your assembly? Occurrence number?

Maybe your modelling structure could be improved.

[PACDrafting]

Are you using level of details?

Try setting up a few of them. If you don't need to see every item in your project then set LOD's.

[jeremyj]

Right now my assembly is 77 MB and is acting very slow.  I have 137 occerences right now.

[jeremyj]

I have one level of detail that it put in for me but I don't really know much about it.  I need to read up about it a little more.

[PACDrafting]

That doesnt seem right.

Add a screen image of your model.

[PACDrafting]

That would be your master LOD.

Do a test. Select a couple of sub assemblies and right click and select suppress.

This will create a new LOD as ask you to save it.

To get to the master LOD double click on  it.

[jeremyj]

I can't really do that for privacy reasons.  There are several componets to it though.

[Ray_Feiler]

Something like the attached pic will slow down my machine but it is no where as powerful as yours.

IBM IntelliStation M Pro
Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 2.66 GHz
4 GB PC2 5300 CL5 ECC DDR2
73 GB 15,000 RPM SAS HD
NVIDIA Quadro FX 3500
Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP3
Inventor 2010 SP3

[cwhetten]

Wow, I am shocked that that assembly doesn't bring your 32-bit machine to its knees.  17108 occurrences and only 342 unique files?  Do you put all of your fasteners into your assembly?

-cwhetten

[Ray_Feiler]

Yes all fasteners are there. It was done in 2005 with Inventor 8 or 10. I could only work the the main assembly for around 1/2 hour before I needed to restart Inventor. And get this the system was a IBM IntelliStation M Pro, Pentium 4 3.2GHz, 1024MB PC2700 CL2.5 ECC RAM, 80GB EIDE HD, NVIDIA Quadro FX 1000 128MB Video, Microsoft Windows XP Professional 32 bit.

[jeremyj]

It is a 64 bit system.  I havne't put the fasteners in the assembly yet but will probably at the end.

[mcgyvr]

Are you working from your local hard drives or network to a server? Right now I'd guess that's your weak link. Are you running raid on those hard drives? and are they 7200RPM or somethign else.

If you are working locally via vault or just don't have a networked server that files are on I'd suggest solid state drives would be the smartest choice. If working over a network are you on a gigabit network/hows the server performance/usage,etc..

Everything else on your computer is more than sufficient. (you should be able to see RAM usage to figure out of you have enough)

There is no computer setup in the world that Inventor couldn't slow down with a specific large assembly. So throwing money/hardware might not help any at this time.. Learning large assembly management techniques could be what you need. Like LOD's/Substitutes,etc...

[mcgyvr]

and do you mean 77Mb is the size of the actual iam file or all the parts/subs,etc..?

Are you adding lots of assembly features,etc.. 77Mb for an assembly (iam) file with only 130+ occurances seems totally wrong though.. The iam file is really just a container for links to parts/subs and stores constraints,etc.. It shouldn't be an overly large file size.

Heck most of my larger assembly files are only 750Kb (yes Kb) for the iam file alone.. But a pack and go of all parts/subs is in the 100Mb+ range easily.

[jeremyj]

I am working locally from Vault.  I'm not sure what RPM it's running at.  I do have enough ram.  I've been watching that closely.