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Throwing money at hardware will only partially compensate for bad data management. The relationship between software performance and hardware cost isn't a straight line - you could spend $10K on a computer and get only a marginal increase in performance. That file size needs to come down. Are you following the recommended work practices regarding XREFs and data references?
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If you are going to fly by the seat of your pants, expect friction burns.
"I don't know" is the beginning of knowledge, not the end.
If you are going to fly by the seat of your pants, expect friction burns.
"I don't know" is the beginning of knowledge, not the end.
If you have a suite product, I would highly recommend you use Navisworks for client presentations. Quality is somewhat less than 3DS MAX but the learning curve is so low as to be non-existent (we have salespeople using it for client presentations!), and with the no-license Freedom program allows others to navigate at will through models published to NWD.
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If you are going to fly by the seat of your pants, expect friction burns.
"I don't know" is the beginning of knowledge, not the end.
If you are going to fly by the seat of your pants, expect friction burns.
"I don't know" is the beginning of knowledge, not the end.
In my experience the quality of Navisworks output is dire, I use infraworks for visuals but would prefer to use navisworks sometimes
AEC Collection 2024 UKIE (mainly Civil 3D UKIE and IW)
Win 11 Pro x64, 1Tb Primary SSD, 1Tb Secondary SSD
64Gb RAM Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-11855M CPU @ 3.2GHz
NVIDIA RTX A5000 16Gb, Dual 27" Monitor, Dell Inspiron 7760
neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
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AEC Collection 2024 UKIE (mainly Civil 3D UKIE and IW)
Win 11 Pro x64, 1Tb Primary SSD, 1Tb Secondary SSD
64Gb RAM Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-11855M CPU @ 3.2GHz
NVIDIA RTX A5000 16Gb, Dual 27" Monitor, Dell Inspiron 7760
Modern mobile computers will automatically throttle back performance to improve battery life. Might want to confirm this isn't being done behind your back, even if you are docked.
Using Xeon processors have two main benefits: you can have multiple processors on one motherboard to throw more cores at a problem (not very helpful with Civil3D), and the amount of accessible RAM increases proportionally with the number of processors e.g. a motherboard with four Xeon processors can access somewhere in the region of 100+ GB RAM. Kinda-sorta useful for Civil3D but there are other, easier, and far cheaper methods to improve performance.
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If you are going to fly by the seat of your pants, expect friction burns.
"I don't know" is the beginning of knowledge, not the end.
If you are going to fly by the seat of your pants, expect friction burns.
"I don't know" is the beginning of knowledge, not the end.
For a single processor, a fast i7 (even an i5) will beat the pants off an Xeon processor.
Multi-threading is a tricky business. I'm not intimately familiar with the processes involved in rebuilding a corridor (for example) but here's the rub: for work to be spread out between multiple threads, the data they rely upon cannot be altered before they are finished. If the data required by one calculation requires another calculation to be finished first they cannot be run at the same time.
Throwing more money at hardware won't address any structural problems with data or file size, so its better to address those before you pull out the wallet. Your specs should be sufficient for most work. For RAM considerations, use the built-in tools to monitor how much is being used when things are slow (hint: it will only take as much as it needs; forcing it to use more wouldn't do anything). If it gets close to your maximum then yes, more is better. "Accuracy of the display" is a bit of a misnomer as the numbers and math are in the model and manipulated by the CPU, not the GPU. Better video cards hold more data so need to be refreshed less often, and process more quickly so the data that has been loaded can be manipulated more quickly. Civil3D doesn't make a lot of use of those functions however - those benefits are mostly for visualization software and associated GPU rendering methods.
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If you are going to fly by the seat of your pants, expect friction burns.
"I don't know" is the beginning of knowledge, not the end.
If you are going to fly by the seat of your pants, expect friction burns.
"I don't know" is the beginning of knowledge, not the end.
I probably should have been more clear on the RAM vs. number of CPUs point. I'm not referring to the amount available to the system, but the maximum amount that can be supported on the motherboard. Desktop motherboards only support up to 32 GB RAM (24 GB limit was common on earlier products). A motherboard for a single Xeon processor has that same limitation. When the motherboard supports more processors, it will also support more RAM e.g. dual-processor motherboards will support up to 48 GB RAM.
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If you are going to fly by the seat of your pants, expect friction burns.
"I don't know" is the beginning of knowledge, not the end.
If you are going to fly by the seat of your pants, expect friction burns.
"I don't know" is the beginning of knowledge, not the end.
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