GRAPHICS CARD

[jhaney]

We are looking for a new Graphics card that works will with Civil 3D 2015 and InfraWorks.  Have you had experience in this area? Recommend anything?

Thanks for any help.

[tom.bucci]

We don't make recommendations for any one specific graphics card or hardware but we do have a list of all cards and hardware that has been certified and recommended for the specific product and version. As long as you select the best match for your needs within the list you will be fine.

How to find information about certified hardware

Tom

[jhaney]

Thanks Tom!

[AllenJessup]

What level of use are you planning for the software. Do you want to work in a 3D view a lot? Do you want to do renderings and drive throughs?

basically if you're not doing too much of this a good gaming card is said to be sufficient. I always want one of the Nvidia Quadro cards because I have much less trouble viewing and rotating complex corridors in 3D.

So a lot depends on what you plan to do.

Allen

[autoMick]

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-civil-3d-general/help-me-solve-the-quadro-versus-gtx-video-car...

This thread has some of my thoughts.

Cheers

- Mick

[braudpat]

Hello from France

Welcome to the Autodesk/AutoCAD Forums !

Please look at this Thread :
http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-2013-2014-2015/help-me-decide-on-a-cpu/td-p/5299911

My "dream" PC : the fastest CPU (Quad-Core is quite enough) so the Intel Core i7 4790K overcloked (4.4-4.6 Ghz) is the TODAY right choice ... With the NVidia GTX 780 TI ... The fastest available graphic card for ACAD, Revit, Inventor, etc ...

An other French very-high level 3D user "Titi95" has for 3D ACAD Modeling & other softwares :

Software : Autocad - Lumion Pro - Keyshot - Photoshop - Win7pro - 64bit
Hardware at Job : Intel I7 3970X 4.6ghz + Swiftech H220 - RAM 32Go - SSD 840pro 256Go + DD 2To - GTX Titan 3xFans 980mhz - HAFG 932 - 2x24" Dell - Perfomance MX - Spacenavigator
Hardware at Home : Intel I7 3770K 4.4ghz - RAM 16Go - SSD 840pro 256Go + DD 2To - GTX 680 4Go 1137mhz - 1x27" - M510
Please note that the "Titi95" Hardware is about one year old ... But you can notice that he is always using Core i7 overclocked !!
A sample from "Titi95" : https://grabcad.com/library/sports-car-with-details-bac-mono-1

Many other happy 3D French Users have the same hardware ... Fast Core i7 (overclocked or Not) & GTX 780 / 780 TI ...

I agree completely with THIS Hardware for ANY version of ACAD, Revit, Inventor, etc and even for SolidWorks !!! ... And I am Workstation Engineer certified ... 

Of course for large 2D/3D drawings, you have to remain with versions 2014 (or 2013) because the 2015 is not enough reliable even with SP 1 (SP 2 has some strange side effects) !?

CIVIL 2015 + SP1 is better than CIVIL 2014 + SP1, I am not sure except if you require some of the new features of CIVIL 2015 !?

I hope this Info will help you !?

[jhaney]

Allen,

We will use 3D view, drive through often. We are working  towards doing more and more renderings. 

We will be using Civil 3D for all things civil engineering related – grading, survey, parcels and right-of-way, pipe networks, alignments, corridors, cross sections, surface analysis, etc. As well as GIS work.

InfraWorks – we are going to start using this more for exhibits, prelim design, maybe even some final designs, etc.

We will be using Vehicle Tracking, Raster Design, Storm and Sanitary Analysis.

Thanks for all you help.

Jeff

[jmayo-EE]

I have not seen any noticeable difference in performance using Quadro vs gaming cards in any release beginning with 07 up to 2015. I agree with the statement that Civil 3D performance has much less to do with the graphics card than processors and memory. I would like to add that IMHO data manamgement is more important than any of the hardware.

Right now I have a $10k Dell CAD station at work with dual Quadro K4000's, I have a home PC I built with an 3yr yr old nvidia gaming card and a 4 yr old laptop with an ati gaming card. The two PC's perform the same. The laptop is a bit slower and may crash a bit more but this is due to a dual core processor and only 8 GB of ram. It still runs 2015 fine and does not crash often.

We have a 3600 ac surface built from contours and points. The surface has over 16 million vertices. All of the machines have a tough time with this file but they all can open and work with it. The Toshiba laptop cost $700...

[jhaney]

Thanks John.

That’s good to know.

We have also been looking at the Quadro K4000/K5000 so that is good to hear as well.

We have a site that is 956 acres. With some road alignments with corridors.  The drawing is so slow and always wants to keep regening, saving, and displaying contours.  It takes about 5 minutes every time.  Opening Object viewer is a waste case it crashes, as well as trying to do a drive through.  We turned off Hardware acceleration and that helped a little with the crashing but we cannot rotate it or anything like that.  The problem is not just this drawing.  We could have a surface for 15 ac and it would be doing the same thing.

We currently have this computer type:

Dell Precision T3600

16 GB RAM, NVIDIA Quadro K600

Win 7 Pro, 64bit, Intel Xeon CPU E5-1607 v2 @ 3.00 GHz

We do plan to use Civil 3D a lot with grading, survey, alignments, pipe network, and corridors. We do want to do more rendering.  And as a company want to use InfraWorks as well, but Civil 3D will be our work horse.

Thanks for your help on this.

Jeff Haney

CADD Designer and Manager

[jmayo-EE · Accepted solution]

Surface performance is directly related to the density of data. A 2 Ac high def scan could produce millions of more points than a 200 ac field topo and the smaller surface would perform worse in this case. If you still have persistant issues with smaller surfaces then something is wrong. I work with 2 MS viewports. One 2d and one 3d when I do grading work. I can keep this running for quite sometime w/o crashing on most of our projects. Yes I do get some crashes but not consistently.

The large surface I spoke about performs the same as yours on all of my machines. The expensive work computer just crashed this morning trying to get a 3d view of the triangles in modelspace...

With data this size and density I would divide the surface up into phases or other areas of concern and try to work with the smaller surfaces as dref's. I would never try to bring this entire surface into a file for engineering work. Data clips and/or cropped surfaces will help break the surface up into pieces.

Also note that the orbit command (type OR into the command line) is much more stable than a transparent orbit (hold Shift and middle mouse). I have edited my cui to replace the transparent command with the real command. FYI I never liked the object viewer...   😉

[jhaney]

Thanks John.  Appreciate all the help.

Thanks,

Jeff