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Autodesk Inventor PC Recommendation

21 REPLIES 21
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Message 1 of 22
rlantzjr
1210 Views, 21 Replies

Autodesk Inventor PC Recommendation

The company I work for has requested what PC specifications Autodesk recommends for use with inventor.  We are currently using 2011 but would like to have the recommendation for the latest release.  We are having major issues with crashes, and running out of memory constantly on working with images as well as routing tubes in assemblies.  Any recommendations for PC specifications I should report?  Thank you!

----------------------------
Autodesk Inventor 2011 Certified Associate
21 REPLIES 21
Message 2 of 22
Cadmanto
in reply to: rlantzjr

I would check out their website here as a start.

http://usa.autodesk.com/autodesk-inventor/system-requirements/

Best Regards,
Scott McFadden
(Colossians 3:23-25)


Message 3 of 22
rlantzjr
in reply to: Cadmanto

Scott,

Thanks for the site, I printed that page out to give them but the specs dont seem that high as far as memory, which suprises me with all the crashes we are having.  Is there any more specific detail like the speed or RAM, size of memory card, just a single core processor?

 

All I know is I have never experienced Inventor crashing as much as it has in the past, and i have been using Inventor since 5.3.  What are the PC specs that people here use that dont experience crashes? that would help as well.

 

Thanks again all.

----------------------------
Autodesk Inventor 2011 Certified Associate
Message 4 of 22
mcgyvr
in reply to: rlantzjr

Its actually very simple...

-12G RAM (minimum)

-3.0+ Ghz multicore processor (core i5 or i7's work nice)

-Solid State Hard Drives (I run the OS and Inventor ONLY on the SSD and everything else on a regular HDD and its working perfectly)

-top of the line gaming (GTX series) NVIDIA graphics card (direct x10 or higher)

 

 



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Inventor 2023 - Dell Precision 5570

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Maybe buy me a beer through Venmo @mcgyvr1269
Message 5 of 22
stevec781
in reply to: rlantzjr

Have a look at this thread.  Most people attached their machine specs so you can compare performance

 

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Autodesk-Inventor/Rebuild-time-comparison-volunteers-wanted-for-5-mins...

Message 6 of 22
blair
in reply to: stevec781

My spec's below, work really well. I do a lot of Rendering and really need the multi-core CPU. Inventor loads in 15 seconds.


Inventor 2020, In-Cad, Simulation Mechanical

Just insert the picture rather than attaching it as a file
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Delta Tau Chi ΔΤΧ

Message 7 of 22
vmcarbonneau
in reply to: Cadmanto

Really depends on what you are doing, Autodesk requirements are too low.

 

We are 4 Engineers, 3 of us are using HP z400, about 2 years old, still perfect for what we are doing (Assy of 1000 to 1500 parts). We had very good luck with these workstations, never had any problems. 

 

Here are the specs:

xeon w3540

8gb ram

quadro fx580

300gb 10000 RPM

 

I would definitely go with the new HP Z420, here is the guidelines I would use.

 

CPU: go with the fastest quad core you can afford. (More cores will only help for ray tracing or FEA analysis)

Ram: 8gb is minimum, probably enough, 16gb is more than enough (choose the fastest)

Video: Quadro 600 is good, Quadro 2000 is perfect (Nvidia should release new quadros soon, I would wait)

HD: Go with a sata3 SSD, 120gb is enough if you are using Inventor only, no other large software.

 

For business environment, do not build your computer or buy consumer computers. Go for a dedicated workstation. If you are on a budget, buying a used Z400 is a good idea (don't go with older workstations).

 

If you need mobility, mobile workstations are now very powerful, not the case 2 years ago. You will, by cons, definitely pay more than a desktop for the same specs. I own a Dell M6600, it does the job perfectly.

 

Hope it helps,

Message 8 of 22
mcgyvr
in reply to: blair


@Blair wrote:

 Inventor loads in 15 seconds.


Really?.. I just installed my SSD last week and Inventor loads in 5 seconds flat. (it was 19 seconds with a regular HDD)



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Inventor 2023 - Dell Precision 5570

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Maybe buy me a beer through Venmo @mcgyvr1269
Message 9 of 22
Cadmanto
in reply to: rlantzjr

I am running 12 GB of memory on a 64 bit Dell T7500 w/3.5 GHz machine.

I crash once in a while, but not all that often.

Best Regards,
Scott McFadden
(Colossians 3:23-25)


Message 10 of 22
blair
in reply to: rlantzjr

The load times were on IV2012, IV2013 loads in 5 seconds.


Inventor 2020, In-Cad, Simulation Mechanical

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Delta Tau Chi ΔΤΧ

Message 11 of 22
trumpy81
in reply to: blair


@Blair wrote:

The load times were on IV2012, IV2013 loads in 5 seconds.


But it takes another 5 + seconds to load the first assembly or drawing etc.... Smiley Very Happy

Regards
Andy M
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Autodesk Inventor 2013 Pro SP1.1, Win7 Pro - 64Bit - SP1, Intel i7 960 @ 3.333 GHz
Asus X58 Sabertooth, Corsair 12Gig DDR3, AMD Radeon HD6970, Samsung 830 Series 256G SSD, 2x 3TB Seagate, 2x 2TB Hitachi,
1x 1TB Samsung, 4 x 2TB Seagate in Netgear ReadyNAS NV+, Dual Asus VE278Q Monitors
Message 12 of 22
Rich.O.3d
in reply to: rlantzjr

Main points for consideration: (from one of my previous posts)

 

overal clock speed not so important

clock speed of individual core...some importance

fast read write from your drives (try opening 50,000 part files from a 5400 single drive) important

lotsa fast ram (see if your page file can handle 200,000 instances of 80,000 parts) important

good chipset and mobo with good buslines and no bottlenecks....IMPORTANT(this is the one that most people get wrong)

good pc setup (temp folder and page file isolated to reduce fragmentation etc) important

good pc maintenance (defrag defrag defrag) important

graphics card...looks like pretty much any half decent gaming (directx) card will do

 

 

the ssd drives as per mcgyvers post are great for the os and programs, but not so good for data retreaval rates.

frastest data config will be scsi (but cost is bad value compared to amount of extra kick) stripped 10000rpm sata3 hdds (ones with a high platter density) are the best bang for buck atm, if you need redundancy a 4x hdd in raid10 is the go.

CAD Management 101:
You can do it your own way,
If its done just how I say!
[Metallica:And Justice For All:1988]
Message 13 of 22
trumpy81
in reply to: Rich.O.3d

Richos, you forgot to mention some important points about defrag.

 

Disk defrag on SSD drives = bad bad bad!!

 

If Windows has not automatically removed your SSD from the defrag schedule, then do it now.

 

For conventional plater based system drives defrag occassionally (Once a month). Non system drives used for storage where deleting of files is a minimum, do not need frequent disk defrag, it only wastes resources/time.

 

On drives where files are frequently deleted then defrag should be used accordingly.

Regards
Andy M
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Autodesk Inventor 2013 Pro SP1.1, Win7 Pro - 64Bit - SP1, Intel i7 960 @ 3.333 GHz
Asus X58 Sabertooth, Corsair 12Gig DDR3, AMD Radeon HD6970, Samsung 830 Series 256G SSD, 2x 3TB Seagate, 2x 2TB Hitachi,
1x 1TB Samsung, 4 x 2TB Seagate in Netgear ReadyNAS NV+, Dual Asus VE278Q Monitors
Message 14 of 22
Rich.O.3d
in reply to: trumpy81


@trumpy81 wrote:

 

 

Disk defrag on SSD drives = bad bad bad!!

 

 



good point, thanks

 

i generaly setup defrag to run every aternoon...whilst i wash my coffee mug...if done daily and before/after new software installs, then it only takes a couple of minutes (the time it takes to wash my mug)...so for the little effort i think it is well worth doing....i have identical setups to other drafters, defraging is the only difference...they seem to have a LOT more lagging and crashing issues.

CAD Management 101:
You can do it your own way,
If its done just how I say!
[Metallica:And Justice For All:1988]
Message 15 of 22
trumpy81
in reply to: Rich.O.3d

Obviously, that's a good regime for you Richos, but I often see defrag abuse ... Smiley Very Happy

 

A lot of unknowing folks, think that defrag is the be all and endall of computer maintenence, not so, of course. Cleaning ones 'temp' folder often has more effect than defrag does.

 

But in some cases it does help to defrag, especially in an office type situation where the drives are usually being hammered, in the home it's a different story though and it depends on the user/s and the amount of usage in general.

 

Also, try waiting for 10TB + worth of drives to defrag .... not fun! ... Smiley Very Happy

Regards
Andy M
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Autodesk Inventor 2013 Pro SP1.1, Win7 Pro - 64Bit - SP1, Intel i7 960 @ 3.333 GHz
Asus X58 Sabertooth, Corsair 12Gig DDR3, AMD Radeon HD6970, Samsung 830 Series 256G SSD, 2x 3TB Seagate, 2x 2TB Hitachi,
1x 1TB Samsung, 4 x 2TB Seagate in Netgear ReadyNAS NV+, Dual Asus VE278Q Monitors
Message 16 of 22
Rich.O.3d
in reply to: trumpy81

all valid points trumpy

 

i have a routine...clean sweep temp files, defrag, incramental backup (if done daily without fail it takes less than 5 mins...miss a day and wait 10 mins...miss a week wait half hour...miss a month wait up to 4 hours)

Working on large assemblies, Inventor opens and closes a ton of files, if you are using skeletal modeling, every time you update the skeleton, all files that reference it directly or indirectly are modified this makes for a rapid fragmenting of your files, when the assembly goes looking for 1000 files to load and each one is in 4 or 5 fragments on your hard drive, you will be hearing a lot of whering and whizing from the box (for what may seem an eternity), this is the hard drives trying to put back together all those fragments of files. this is where the performance of opening and saving large assemblies will drop off dramatically

if your not working with big models, then your scenario is fine.

 

wow you have 10T of space on your PC...impresive what raid config are you using

[UltimatePlantDesignSuite - WinXP64pro (I know...IT dept is gonna go to win7 one of these decades) HPz800 - XeonX5690 @ 3.47GHz (stupid IT dept with there 12 core cpu's) - X58chipset (i aske for x78) - 24GB ram - quadro5000 (i do a lot of autocad3d aswell so opengl helps for that) ]

 

I ussually do the server maintenance as a seperate issue

working on large assemblies live on the server is not a good way to work. thats why autodesk recomend vault...your working on the local files...as long as the server is maintained properly you shouldnt have to wait too long for check in check out at the start/end of the day

CAD Management 101:
You can do it your own way,
If its done just how I say!
[Metallica:And Justice For All:1988]
Message 17 of 22
trumpy81
in reply to: Rich.O.3d

I see that you have a very good work ethic and diligence. Unfortunately, that's rare Smiley Very Happy

 

I'm not running any raid unfortunately, most of the drives came from other computers and were already formatted and contained valuable data. I also don't have enough free space to consolidate the data onto one or two drives, so that I can create a raid on the remaining drives. Besides, running raid 1 reduces available drive space. I'd like to be running raid 5 or 10 with at least 4 drives, but the costs involved are prohibitive ATM.

 

I do plan to add another 2 x 3TB drives in the near future and I will setup a few raid volumes then, but for now I have to live with it Smiley Sad

 

I do have another two machines handy, but their drives are near capacity as well. Smiley Very Happy

 

Do you know of any inexpensive drive hosts, raid capable or not, but able to handle 8 drives plus?

Regards
Andy M
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Autodesk Inventor 2013 Pro SP1.1, Win7 Pro - 64Bit - SP1, Intel i7 960 @ 3.333 GHz
Asus X58 Sabertooth, Corsair 12Gig DDR3, AMD Radeon HD6970, Samsung 830 Series 256G SSD, 2x 3TB Seagate, 2x 2TB Hitachi,
1x 1TB Samsung, 4 x 2TB Seagate in Netgear ReadyNAS NV+, Dual Asus VE278Q Monitors
Message 18 of 22
SBix26
in reply to: rlantzjr

I'm not convinced that hardware is the solution to crashing issues.  With a 32-bit operating system, we are in a serious memory pinch, and run into yellow and red zones regularly, but crashing is not an issue.  Up to date drivers and a well-configured system (don't ask me to define that!) seem to be most important for Inventor stability.

Message 19 of 22
dpsmith85
in reply to: SBix26

We were running a Dell Precision T5400 with 4GB of ram on a 32 bit system.  I can't remember the exact processor but it was an older (2008) xenon model.  Honestly the thing crashed all the time.  Our assemblies have about 700-800 parts.  We did the 3gb switch (search forums for details) and it helped when using Inventor but robbed the system of too many resources.  When trying to take a screenshot of inventor windows would give a "not enought memory to paste to clipboard error".  It didn't leave much room for multitasking (outlook, excel etc.)  Finally we bought a new computer from the dell outlet center and it's working without any issues.  It was refurbished but here are the specs:

 

Optiplex 990

8gb of ram

i7 2600 processor 3.4GHz

Stock graphics card: In fact this is the lowest rated item in the windows experience score.  (I haven't had any problems though)

 

The i7 performs great.  FEA calculations are quicker.  I'm still using Inventor Professional 2010 but I've got to assume that 2011 would perform at the same level.

Message 20 of 22
Rich.O.3d
in reply to: SBix26


@sbixler wrote:

I'm not convinced that hardware is the solution to crashing issues.  With a 32-bit operating system, we are in a serious memory pinch, and run into yellow and red zones regularly, but crashing is not an issue.  Up to date drivers and a well-configured system (don't ask me to define that!) seem to be most important for Inventor stability.


At no point has anyone on this thread suggested that hardware is the be all and end all of crashing issues.

Poor hardware configuration is DEFINATELY one of the causes of system instability and poor performance.

So too is the OS

So to are the drivers

and your pc config

and the modeling methods you employ

AND your pc maintenance

 

I have not used 32bit windows for engineering or cad for several years. (XP64, Vista64, soon Win7-64bit)

Even my kids pc's are 64bit.

The cost of good hardware these days is very insignificant compared to the software costs and hourly rates demanded for using these high end drafting solutions.

You can build an excelent Inventor machine that will handle large assemblies for around 3 grand.

Compared to the 10 or 12 grand you will pay for a machine that will run autocad3d to any ability.

For a definition of a well-configured system try reading through some of the white papers on large assembly performance....

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=inventor+large+assembly+performance

CAD Management 101:
You can do it your own way,
If its done just how I say!
[Metallica:And Justice For All:1988]

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