AutoCAD Architecture 2016 Performance

[Anonymous]

Hello,

last month we bought 3 new computers with following specs:

Intel Xeon E3-1245v5 - 4x 3,5 GHz

16 GB RAM

M.2 SSD

NVIDIA Quadro K620

Now we are a littlebit disappointed, because of a very small performance gain.

When our construction employees want to plot some very big projects (~ 80MB dwg files), they have to wait around 10-20 minutes when AutoCAD is in mode "hiding lines" (German: Linien verdecken), i don't know the exact term in english AutoCAD.

We also found out, that the hardware (CPU, SSD, ..) only run at 50% (Task Manager).

I hope you have some tips for us.

[dgorsman]

There's diminishing returns on investment in hardware - its not a linear gain.  Good data and drawing management will have more and more impact as the scale of work increases.  I would *never* consider using an 80 MB DWG file - there's no hardware that can compensate for that.  15- 20 MB is around the upper practical limit, most of our 3D DWG files are under 10 MB.

I wouldn't use one of the rendered visual styles for working - even with advanced hardware performance is a little slow even with simple models.  Use them for viewports (keep them turned off until printing) and use Navisworks Simulate (or the NWNavigator plugin) for real-time visualization.

AutoCAD and its verticals are for the most part single-threaded; in otherwords they'll only throw one processor at a task at any given time.  If you only show one overall graph in the Task Manager it could well top out at 25% for a quad-core processor (~ 16% for a hex-core).  Change the view to "one graph per CPU" for a better view of whats going on at the processor level.

[pendean]

Xeon was a waste of money: AutoCAD does not use more than a single core. Higher clock speed and double your ram would show you slightly more gain in speed, but as noted above, it's not a linear gain.

and if you only draft in 2D, video card may not make much of an impact: but with 3D (not all functions, like hiding lines) you should be using an Autodesk driver ideally with hardware aceleration turned on http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/syscert?id=18844534&siteID=123112

80MB Files are huge: and SSD drives only show benefit if those files are on your PC: if they are on a network and you access it only through a 10/100MB NIC card and Cat5e cable to a 10/100 port in your 10/100/1000 Switch to a file server, you just put the brakes on speed there too. And if your file server is an "appliance" or a "cloud", the speed drops down even more with that cat5e cable hookup.

[Anonymous]

it looks like the system is bottle necked, you are only allocating 4 gigs per core, and the cpu is actually mutlithreaded (more ram the better) the quadro that was selected is pretty small and regen. time has alot to do with the vid. card, i would go with the max your operating system can take, or at least 32-64 gig,

win. 7 pro can take 128 gig, so look into this before you buy, i would also go with something like a quadro k2200 "if" your machine allows for the upgrade, agin you have to check on all of this i dont know your exact mother board config. and the office tech. should look into it, or call hp back for an acceptable upgrade, also theres a reason autodesk switched to BIM, it reduces the file size of mostly everything you are working on (except when you go to the 3d model which has almost everything in it), i still work for people that send me a file with everything from the architecture to the framing plans in it, talk about massive layer control and large files-, autodesk has recieved complaints about the softwares, both revit and ACA not being able to handle large files and started the process in the internal math to allow the program to handle how slow it is with large files (at least with revit) i dont  know if ACA has been modified yet, we'll see with 2017.

Also remember what they said below too, if on server, the problem could be there, a conversation with boxx technologies can open one's eyes to how a correct server config. and change your life, but it will always cost $$$.

good luck and hope you work it out!,

tvisgood