Display distortion - Can consumer/gamer cards really be used?

[davef]

Hello,

There's a ton of Internet content debating the necessity of professional video cards with Inventor.  (I am running Inventor 2014.)  My non-scientific estimation puts the pro consumer card crowd at about 65% of the total with the rest advocating for professional cards.  So, when building my mid-level machine about a year ago I "cheeped" out and went with a consumer card (an Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti).  For the past year, it's been OK.  There have been a few issues on larger models, but nothing that drove me too nuts.  (No system crashes; everything has been very stable. Phew!)

Until recently....  (That half moon shaped thingy in the pic below isn't part of the model.  It's a display distortion.  This is one of two very similar distortions on the part.)

I'm working on a new model (thanks to a kind contributor, mpatchus, on this board that got me back on track) that's small and shouldn't be very taxing on the graphics card.  I'm getting annoying distortions in two areas of the model when I set the material appearance to anything but "default".  The distortions are always at the same two places on the revolved parts in my small assembly but the severity of the distortions seem to change as I rotate the part and zoom in and out.

Setting the hardware graphic setting to "Compatibility" does eliminate the problem, but the model looks pretty crummy at this setting.

I suspect that I need a new graphics card.  But before I go out and buy one, I'd like to try to reconcile the conflicting posts and blogs that I keep coming across.  Because Inventor supports Direct X - I've read that Professional (Quadro) cards are unnecessary for Inventor as they provide users little, if any, benefit. (I don't use any other graphics intensive programs; just Inventor and office apps. I'm not a gamer.)  My recent experience with graphics distortions while running a GeForce GTX 660 Ti suggests that this might not be correct.  Or is my GTX 660 Ti an oddball consumer/gamer card that is one of just a few consumer/gamer cards that do not play well with Inventor?  Meaning, that I'm very unlikley to see similar problems if I switch to another consumer/gamer card.

I haven't yet come across a persuasive argument from a Professional card advocate (for Inventor) that explains why a Pro card is still necessary even though Inventor supports Direct X.  (My own experience suggests that the folks that advocate Pro cards for Inventor might be right, though.  I just haven't heard a good technical rebuttal yet to the consummer card argument that Direct X compatability is all you need.)

My drivers are up to date.  I've poked around and looked for other graphics/display/driver settings inside and out of Inventor to play with and have come up empty.  (I am running Windows 7 by the way.)  So is my card the problem?  Should I upgrade to a better consumer card?  Should I shell out the major bucks for a pro card (despite some peoples' advice that a pro card really isn't necessary)?  Is my card innocent; and the problem lies elsewhere? Is there some setting somewhere that I've missed that I should change?  Is there any chance that Inventor 2015, which I'll upgrade to, will solve this weirdness?  

Any advice and information that might be offered to help me sort out all the conflicting posts on the net will be greatly appreciated.  I'm hoping that among the users active on this forum there's some sort of concensus on the topic.  Thank you.

Dave

[blair]

We switch from Quadro cards back about 8 releases ago without any issues or problems. Make sure you are on the latest Microsoft Certified drivers for your card. It never hurts to blow out your machine and remove and re-insert the graphics card to reseat it (especially if you are in a humid environment).

[LT.Rusty]

That looks to me like a geometry issue.  Can you upload the actual file so we can take a look?

[davef]

Thanks LT Rusty.  Boy, I hope that it is a geometry issue.  This would mean that I can save myself the cost of a new card and improve my knowledge of Inventor at the same time.  The part ipt is attached.  Thanks for any advice you might be able to offer after checking out the part.  (This part has one area of distortion when I work with it on my machine.  It's that half moon looking thing near the bottom as pictured in my original post.  Does it show up on your machine?)

Thanks!

[LT.Rusty · Accepted solution]

Well, good news / bad news.

Bad news is that it's not a geometry problem exactly, and there doesn't really appear to be an easy fix.

Good news is that you don't need a new video card.  (Or at least, if you do, then so do I!)

The problem is with the texture and how Inventor is mapping it to the geometry.  Take a look at the picture I've attached - I swapped out your black cast iron texture for carbon fiber, because the CF texture makes it easier to see the way that it's mapped, since it's a checkerboard-ish pattern.  You can see that above and below that segment the texture is wrapping in a cylinder aligned to the Y axis of the part, or in a planar fashion on the flat spots.  In that one segment, however ... it looks like Inventor is trying to call that a sphere, and use a spherical projection of sorts for the texture.  The distortions you're seeing - and you can see it with the CF as well - are at the poles, and look like they're caused by the distortion of the image.  With the standard texturing setup in Inventor, you can't really affect the way that the images get mapped to your parts, unfortunately.  

Also, I noticed that your sketches weren't fully constrained ... you really should get in the habit of doing that ...

[blair]

I did a quick 360deg render, it looks fine in the Showcase render: http://a360.co/1jIbGE9

[LT.Rusty]

Yeah, in showcase it'll look better.  Showcase has a little more intelligence built in as far as texturing goes.

[jeanchile]

It's a good thing they took Showcase out of our suites. Wouldn't want things looking better now would we?!?!

[blair]

That's so we can all go to AU2014 and load up on 3dMax classes now.

[davef]

Thank you Blair and LT Rusty for helping me with this.  Glad to hear that I shouldn't run out and buy a new video card.  The distortion isn't holding back my work; it was just annoying and made me a bit concerned that things will get considderably worse as the part grows in complexity.  For my immediate work, I can just do my modeling with the default (non textured) appearance and then use Showcase to make things pretty for the customer.

Autodesk - shouldn't Inventor's ability to handle textures have been tightened up before you dropped Showcase from the suites?