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new hardware suggestions

15 REPLIES 15
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Message 1 of 16
enigma
766 Views, 15 Replies

new hardware suggestions

Our company will be upgrading the engineering departments workstations in the near future, and I'm looking for some real world suggestions vs. Autodesks recommended specs.
My current station, which is one of the better ones in our group, is as follows:

Dell Precision T3500
Windows 7 Professional 64 bit
Intel Xeon 4 core W3565 3.2GHZ
24 GB RAM
Nvidia Quadro 4000

All of our work is run off of a network. I have copied this project onto my local drive to see if that makes a difference, and it did not. Local hard drive is about 50% full, 141 GB free space.

I want to suggest something to our IT/purchasing dept that will let me work on the large plant scale assemblies in Inventor 2013 pro so I don't spend half my day watching a circle spin.

I think my current bottle neck is the video card, as I can spin my assembly (which is only 91 unique parts and 203 occurences of a large energy plant) around and zoom a few times before it chokes and regenerates awhile with some of the parts visible until it fully regens. This can take several minutes every few minutes, very frustrating.
According to task manager, my PC is using around 45% or so CPU usage and 65% RAm while I'm flying around.

Any suggestions? We don't have a NASA budget as much as I'd like one.

edit: I'll also add I've followed the "guidelines" as much as possible regarding large scale assemblies to reduce the lag. The parts in it are simplified (while still keeping required detail) shrinkwraps of the various components (conveyors etc), everything is grounded and then the constraints deleted, any colour overrides removed, etc etc.



As this current machine is a multicore, I do have a few programs running at the same time, which shouldn't affect Inventors performace as it only uses multiple cores in the drawing state. I usually have running MS Outlook, web browser (Chrome or Firefox), Adept Synergis 2013(Our networked document management system), and at times during the day Windows Explorer folders, MS Excel/word, photo viewer, and perhaps a few personal programs like Uconeer.
I also run 2 24" Samsung SyncMaster monitors.

From everything I've read off the internet, my current system meets or exceeds the highest specifications for Inventor, but "I need more power captain". We have 3 other very experienced Inventor users here who share my level of frustration with the hardware performance when we work on these "large" assemblies. And by large they do not have a massive part count as mentioned earlier, but lots of surfaces, lines, etc etc etc. (Various conveyors and pressure vessels, with many more components such as ducting, hardrailing, structural platforms, piping yet to be placed into the model.

Due to our company IP policy, I cannot share any screen shots or files.

15 REPLIES 15
Message 2 of 16
schnautza
in reply to: enigma

NASA doesn't have a budget either anymore.

(couldn't resist)

 

But seriously, I'm also looking to upgrade graphics cards so I'll be watching the responses for some cheap but effective solutions.

Message 3 of 16
LT.Rusty
in reply to: schnautza

Skip the Xeon, skip the Quadro.

 

Just get a high-end i7 and a good upper-mid-range gaming video card.

 

It's a lot cheaper, and just as functional for working with Inventor.

 

Basically, if a computer will run new-ish games well, then it's going to run Inventor well.

Rusty

EESignature

Message 4 of 16
schnautza
in reply to: LT.Rusty

I've got the i7 in my machine (HP Pavilion Elite HPE with Windows 7 64 bit) and 9GB RAM.

Graphics card is AMD Radeon HD 6450.

I am still getting hung up with large assemblies (1000+ parts).

 

I am trying to figure out a good graphics card that my company will be willing to spend the money on, as well as bump up to 16GB RAM.

Message 5 of 16
LT.Rusty
in reply to: schnautza

Anything from ATI that's x450 is pretty much crap.  Just doing spreadsheets will tax it. 

 

When you look at ATI model numbers, the first digit defines generation, the second defines overall market position, and the final two the hierarchy within the market segment.  So, a 6450 is 6th generation, very low (but not quite bottom) market segment, and very low (but not quite bottom) of the hierarchy within that market segment.  The generation is almost - but not quite - irrelevant.  It matters for things like architecture or DirectX compatibility, or PCIe 3.0 / 2.1 / 2.0 / whatever compatibility, but just because it starts with a 6 doesn't mean it's better than one that starts with a 4.

 

x7xx is the minimum you should be looking at for gaming, or for Inventor for that matter, and x8xx is better.  ***EDIT: Just realized that this might be confusing, because ATI did make the X800 and X700 and such for a while, many many years ago.  No, I don't mean that you should run out and buy a Radeon X800 Pro from 2004.  That would be really dumb.***

 

Good news is, you can get a 7790 for ~$130 or so.  Pretty much any ATI card from $115 on up will do just fine.  Heck, at home I'm still running a pair of 5-year-old 4870's, and they still scream with Inventor, even with biggish assemblies.  (Of course, I've got an i7-4770k and 16GB ... )

Rusty

EESignature

Message 6 of 16
SeanFarr
in reply to: enigma

I had a workstation similar to what you have and experienced the same issues, it should be kicking Inventors *ss, but lagged a lot, my boss bought it when he purchased PDSU. (ripped off)

 

You left out one key point of your post, is your company locking you into purchasing through Dell or HP?? (cause your screwed if you are) a decent workstation will run over $4000 from any of these suppliers.

 

I was lucky, my boss let me build one.

 

As mentioned earlier,

 

  1. Any high end i7 CPU, (cores don't matter, it the GHz that needs to be around 3.5 or higher because Inventor use of a single core)
  2. 240GB SSD will be one of the most dramatic increases in performance all around (add a second HDD for data, cheaper than buying a large 500+GB SSD)
  3. RAM is cheap, get yourself 32GB
  4. Motherboard, make sure it supports CPU and GPU
  5. GPU, save yourself 75% here and get a gaming card, any high end GTX 600-700 series will do
  6. CASE and Cooling, one of the most overlooked items here, I see tons of workstations, with little to no ventilation, get a case with lots of exhaust and pick up an aftermarket CPU cooler($30) well worth it!! There are some gaming cases that still provide that "professional" look by your desk!
  7. power supply unit, don't chince out here, get a good name brand with a good rating (600W or so)

This computer cost with taxes in, just under $2000, you can't buy anything that will compare from DELL or HP (avoid re-sellers and there BS) haha

 

if you get one built from a local computer shop, they typically offer a good warranty or replacement plan, so don't buy into that DELL or HP service crap...

 

Good Luck

Sean Farr
Product Designer at TESInc.ca

Inventor Professional 2014-Update 2 - AutoCAD Electrical 2014
Win7-x64 | ASUS P8Z77-V | i7 3770 -3.4 GHz | 32GB RAM |
240GB SSD | nVidia GTX 670 4GB - 320.49
Message 7 of 16
enigma
in reply to: enigma

I'll keep this updated, but it looks like the powers that be do not want to move away from Dell, and we will be testing a Nvidia Quadro K5000 on my machine.

Message 8 of 16
enigma
in reply to: enigma

I sent our IT some food for thought based on this article:

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-workstation-graphics-card,3493.html

 

Just have to wait and hear his thoughts as I've given as much input as I can for the time being.

Message 9 of 16
alh-telesis
in reply to: enigma

Mind if I ask about the Adept PDM ?

We are looking at Vault Pro, DDM, Pro.File and Adept.

How do you like using the interface in Inventor?

How do you like using the Adept interface?

Do you have multiple sites and multiple servers sharing the data?

How many more questions can I ask before it becomes annoying? Smiley Wink

Message 10 of 16
enigma
in reply to: alh-telesis

We are liking Adept very much, the interface is very easy to use. Tasks such as renamining files is much much much easier for example.
There was a multitude of reasons why we chose Adept over Vault that I can't recall now, but it's a great tool.
Only one site/server currently, but that will be changing in the new year.
Message 11 of 16
enigma
in reply to: enigma

And as an update to the original post; Never really got a chance to do any "shoot out" stype of tests and comparisons on cards because of various hardware conflicts, we did test some SSD drives in a RAID configuration, but long story short....new supercomputer on order (from Dell).

Ultimately it's the software code that restricts the performance of large models, as current 3D software does not take advantage of multi core processors, but until then it's throw as much Ram/GPU/Disk I/O as you can at it seemed to be the "work around".

 

New PC will be a Xeon 3.3 ghz quad core T7600, Windows 7 64 bit, 2x SSD 512GB drives in Raid, dual SLI Nvidia Quadro K5000, and a 128GB 1600mhz ddr3 Ram.

 

Should be good for awhile 🙂

Message 12 of 16
alh-telesis
in reply to: enigma

Do you use any of the workflow features?

Do you have any crashing or strange work arounds with Adept?

Does anyone outside of the Inventor users use the Adept Client?

Would you be willing to attach a screen grab of the renaming in Adept?

Message 13 of 16
enigma
in reply to: enigma

Yes we use the workflows, that was one of the many selling points for us. There is the odd crash now and then, but nothing that different from any other software in my experience. If there is something really odd, their customer support is nothing short of stellar. I can't think of any work arounds for any issues we might have, everything works pretty much as planned.

We have several departments using Adept that our outside of our engineering/inventor group. Customer service, Procurement, and R&D departments are the current users. The ongoing plan is to get it used company wide as we phase the other departments in.

Message 14 of 16
enigma
in reply to: enigma

rename.jpgScreen shot as you asked for. It's pretty simple; search for the files you want to rename (I searched for "children" of this particular assembly), then just hilight the files you want to rename, and then fill in the options you want to use in the "file rename options" area. It's just that easy.

Message 15 of 16
alh-telesis
in reply to: enigma

That does look alittle smoother than the Vault Basic we are currently using.

I also see there are Content Center parts listed on your image.

Does the Adept Server also host the Contenet Center like Basic Vault does?

 

I truly appreciate your time and answers. Thank you.

 

Message 16 of 16
enigma
in reply to: enigma

Yes it does. Again, makes renaming content center files to company standards extremely easy.

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