topic Re: Workstation configuration for Inventor Stress Analysis in Inventor Forum

Workstation configuration for Inventor Stress Analysis

ebuenrostro — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 19:25:30 GMT

What resources will help reduce the computaional time of a simulation in Inventor, CPU or RAM? Other CAD programs, like ABAQUS, can also benefit from the GPU. Is that the case for Inventor as well?

Re: Workstation configuration for Inventor Stress Analysis

JonathanKruger — Sat, 25 Jun 2022 12:24:37 GMT

Are you going to be using Inventor Stress Analysis or Nastran In-Cad?

For Nastran you can look here https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/inventor-nastran/troubleshooting/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2021/ENU/NINCAD-Installation/files/GUID-D2868744-49CD-4D09-AB6C-DCB09ECAFBED-htm.html which basically says the below. I would suggest a nice 12 Gen cpu paired with a gen 4 SSD and high frequency DDR5 ram, but I guess this depends on budget

Desktop Workstation Specifications:

Minimum Workstation Budget Workstation High-End Workstation

Computer, CPU	2.5 GHz or greater	3.0 GHz or greater	3.0 GHz or greater, 8 or more cores
Memory, RAM	8 GB	16 GB	32 GB+
Graphics Card	1 GB dedicated video card, DirectX 11 compliant	2 GB dedicated video card, DirectX 11 compliant	4+ GB dedicated video card, DirectX 11 compliant
Hard Disk	40 GB free space	1 TB SSD	2 TB SSD with fast read/write speeds

Re: Workstation configuration for Inventor Stress Analysis

ebuenrostro — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 17:35:21 GMT

Jonathan,

We have a pretty generous budget because this is going to be a workstation for work. Is there 12th gen Xeons? All I find is 12th gen i9's.

Re: Workstation configuration for Inventor Stress Analysis

JonathanKruger — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 18:13:21 GMT

I dont think Intel have released them yet, I believe this is going to be the Xeon version of Alder lake (12 gen i7)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapphire_Rapids

But I believe you can used Alder lake on Intel`s new w680 "workstation" chipset.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/17308/the-intel-w680-chipset-overview-ecc-for-alder-lake-workstations

This is all the information I can offer on this as this hardware is out of my Budget 🤣

Re: Workstation configuration for Inventor Stress Analysis

swalton — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 21:37:10 GMT

You might find @Neil_Cross's Invmark benchmark site useful.

https://invmark.cadac.com/#/

Part of the benchmark score is based on FEA performance. Click on a result and select the "complete report" to see the score breakdown by category.

To the best of my knowledge, Inventor FEA wants high clock speed and lots of cores. Most of the machines at the top of the leaderboard are Core i9s, not Xeons. I don't believe that Inventor FEA or Inventor Nastran use GPU acceleration. I'd look into a 3rd party code for that feature.

Autodesk seems to be focusing their FEA development effort on the cloud tools in Fusion 360. Have you looked into the Inventor->Fusion workflows for FEA? If they work for you, you might not need to purchase a FEA workstation at all.

Re: Workstation configuration for Inventor Stress Analysis

Neil_Cross — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 21:42:17 GMT

InvMark is exclusive to Inventors integrated simulation, if you're using Nastran then I've no idea what that wants tbh.

The InvMark FEA test will test both the meshing time and solver time, along with a parametric table analysis. So the results on the leaderboard are pretty representative of what's good, and frankly the FEA scores tend to follow the same trend as everything else in Inventor... the ADL 12th Gen i9's are currently the best at everything. There's a 64 Core Threadripper on the board which you can compare against, it's scores are terrible across the board including FEA.

Re: Workstation configuration for Inventor Stress Analysis

ebuenrostro — Thu, 30 Jun 2022 20:20:18 GMT

Hi Neil,

I did check InvMark and noticed that the 12th Gen i9 is far supperior to any Xeon that has been tested. Unfortunately, the workstation configurations that Dell offers with a 12th Gen i9 are really limited. Also, you have recommended on YouTube to stick with the Xeon processor for business applications so I was leaning towards the following configuration:

Single Intel® Xeon® Gold 6256 (33 MB cache, 12 cores, 24 threads, 3.60 GHz to 4.50 GHz Turbo, 205 W)
- Sacrificing some cores for clock speed
NVIDIA® Quadro® RTX™ 5000, 16 GB GDDR6, VirtualLink, 4 DP
128 GB, 2 x 64 GB, DDR4, 2933 MHz, ECC

I know this would be crushed on InvMark but it's the best I could put together using "business" products and my budget constraints.

Re: Workstation configuration for Inventor Stress Analysis

Neil_Cross — Thu, 30 Jun 2022 22:05:03 GMT

Stay well clear of that Xeon Gold, you're not gaining anything in the way of clock speed as that's based on a really old architecture. If you bought that you'd be devastated with how it performed and it'd cost a liver and kidney.

The new Xeon platforms should be hitting the market soon but if you can't wait, I'd suggest either:

- Go for a mobile workstation with Core HX in

- Opt for the 11th Gen based Xeon workstations if you can find any

- Or spec in a 12900K, I don't know how good or bad Dell will cool that in the Precision towers... I'd suggest going for a tower on the larger size as I've seen (and heard) some horrific examples of OEMs trying to wedge high end i9's into mini towers, and the result is intolerable amounts of noise as they can't put a reasonable cooling solution in them.

The Core HX mobile workstations will hopefully be in the configurators and available for order within weeks, and they're outstanding. But obviously if you need a tower then you need a tower. But definitely absolutely stay clear of Xeons with Gold/Silver/Bronze in the name, they're just not suitable for Autodesk products.

Re: Workstation configuration for Inventor Stress Analysis

ebuenrostro — Thu, 07 Jul 2022 21:20:29 GMT

Neil,

Thank you for your reply and warning me about the Xeon Gold because that was the directing we were heading in. It does perform poorly on InvMark.

Regarding your other remarks:

Can we wait?
- Yes, we can wait a month or two to see what becomes available.
Do I NEED a tower?
- Yes, the cooling on my mobile workstation is not suffient for large assemblies and FEA simulations. I usually have it on a cooling pad but that's not always possible.

In the meantime, Lenovo finally started offering 12th Gen i9's so we are considering this configuration:

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/workstations/thinkstation-p-series/thinkstation-p360-tower/30fm002fus

The i9-12900 paired with the RTX A4500 has not been tested on InvMark so it's kind of a shot in the dark.

Re: Workstation configuration for Inventor Stress Analysis

Neil_Cross — Thu, 07 Jul 2022 22:46:28 GMT

Other than ray tracing, Inventor shouldn't really ever cause a CPU to reach anywhere near the TJunction max temperature regardless of the dataset size. Generally it's sustained multi-threaded operations that cause this and ray tracing is the only sustained CPU load case that Inventor has. The proof is on the InvMark board, 12th gen mobile workstations are as good as 12th gen desktops (stock). If your current laptop is having thermal issues then I would suspect this isn't a software issue, I've tested Inventor enough times with thousands of different datasets and throttling is never an issue, in fact quite the opposite, there's generally always performance headroom not being utilised.

That Lenovo does look impressive on paper and in marketting, but the points I raised earlier apply to this, potential noise etc I'm going to try and pull some strings and see if I can get my hands on one.

Re: Workstation configuration for Inventor Stress Analysis

Frederick_Law — Fri, 08 Jul 2022 12:41:48 GMT

The only thing Xeon workstation provide is ECC RAM.

It'll help if you're running FEA that take days.

How long does your FEA take on current computer?

Re: Workstation configuration for Inventor Stress Analysis

ebuenrostro — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 15:51:28 GMT

Neil,

Thank you for all of your feedback. Just as you mentioned at the start of this thread, the i9-HX processors were released and we decided to go with this workstation by Lenovo:

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadp/thinkpad-p16-(16-inch-intel)/21d6004yus?orgRef=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.google.com%252F

I'm curious to see how it compares to the MIS Titan GT77 that you benchmared on InvMark.

The Lenovo does have some negative reviews from current 17" workstation users. They're not happy with the new form factor but I'm going to have this on a thunderbolt dock at work and at home with the lid closed anyway.

Re: Workstation configuration for Inventor Stress Analysis

Alberto_Pérez_Parra — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 04:12:17 GMT

@Neil_Cross have you tried DDR5 RAM memory performance?

Re: Workstation configuration for Inventor Stress Analysis

ebuenrostro — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 04:20:20 GMT

There's a good amount of benchmarks using DDR5. Note that some machines are not running with the maximum frequencies.

Mine for example came with 128 GB DDR5 4800MHz but runs at 3600MHz. When I remove two sticks and only leave the ones installed on the motherboard it runs at 65 GB 4000 MHz.

Re: Workstation configuration for Inventor Stress Analysis

Alberto_Pérez_Parra — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 05:02:04 GMT

Which is your laptop/desktop motherboard model?

Re: Workstation configuration for Inventor Stress Analysis

Neil_Cross — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 07:07:54 GMT

Difference between DDR4 DDR5 for CAD

Re: Workstation configuration for Inventor Stress Analysis

ebuenrostro — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 15:03:51 GMT

@Alberto_Pérez_Parra

Motherboard Manufacturer
LENOVO

Product

21D6S01H00

SerialNumber

L1HF27M0009

Version

SDK0T76528

Product Spec Sheet: https://psref.lenovo.com/Product/ThinkPad_P16_Gen_1?tab=spec

Re: Workstation configuration for Inventor Stress Analysis

Alberto_Pérez_Parra — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 05:25:57 GMT

Excellent, thank you very much.