Running Autocad on Windows server

[Anonymous]

We want to run autocad on a supercomputer since we are calculating view factors for radiation exchange between the surfaces of our models and we need more computing power than what a regular workstation can offer.

Does autocad run on windows server?

[DarrenP · Accepted solution]

it can but its not a supported OS

Autocad is still a single-threaded application so installing this on a server for this purpose you probably will not see much of a performance increase

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

>> Does autocad run on windows server?

These are the system requirements of AutoCAD 2020 >>>click<<<

There you can find the operating systems it's supported on.

Just take case, AutoCAD is a single threaded application, besides of some few display handling functions AutoCAD can only utilize one core of your processor. If you think that your "supercomputer" has 64 cores or so and that might help ... sorry no.

- alfred -

[pendean]

Totally pointless exercise, AutoCAD will not be any faster in processing than a nicely equipped workstation class PC you can purchase on Amazon.

[Anonymous]

We use an extension of Autocad that is called Thermal Desktop for thermal analysis. When we calculate the radiation conductors, the RadCAD package computes radiation exchange factors and view factors using an oct-tree accelerated Monte-Carlo ray tracing algorithm. That process utilizes all the threads available on the machine.  There is a taper in terms of splitting the tasks for RadCAD, ie RadCAD will use as many cores as available, but there is an overhead to creating the thread teams and bringing them back together so there will be a point where adding cores doesn't help unless you are shooting a very large number of rays.

[pendean]

So why the post then if your variant is not limited to single cores somehow like AutoCAD and most things built on it are?

[Anonymous]

Thermal Desktop and RadCAD run within Autocad.  If I am to use a cluster to do my RadCAD runs, i need to be able to run Autocad on windows server since windows pro for work stations can only handle up to 64 cores. Therefore my question: does autocad run on windows server? It looks like it does but it is not a supported OS. I guess that means we would not get support from autodesk if we run into any problems.

[pendean]

WinServer is not a supported OS: its up to you to find out since it works for some and doesn't for others.

And you guessed correctly.

[Anonymous]

Thank you Darren!

So technically we should be able to run Autocad on windows server but we won't get the support from Autodesk. I will try to see if my internal support can help me out instead.

[jjohnstonEYR26]

I thought AutoCAD was a single core/threaded application but could also utilize Multiple 'Physical CPU cores' as well. Depending on the workstation. They used to go from 1 physical CPU to 2 then 4 then stopped. Then the single CPU multi-core came out and just grew from there. Now only servers use 'multi physical CPU core sockets' not workstations.

For example:

Workstation #1:
(1) physical CPU on (1) socket of the motherboard no matter the cores it can only use 1 thread/core.

But if you had a workstation like the old days with Xeon CPUs say

Workstation #2:
(4) CPU physical cores on (4) sockets on the motherboard and each of the (4) CPU cores being a quad core. So, 16 core 32 thread total. AutoCAD could use 4 cores/threads at the same time in this Sicario.

Is that not still the case? I know it was in the 90’s early 2000’s.

I ask because I am thinking same thing but buying an 8-16 physical core server but with newer more modern CPUs to see if I can finally after 30 years have cad system that I don’t have to wait on to do day to day operations. I don’t even do renderings I just run AutoCAD electrical. 

[jthomas5BW6T]

Sorry for posting on such an old thread but I was wondering if you ever got this running? I recently started doing the same (running AutoCAD on Windows Server 2019 for ThermalDesktop use on a compute cluster) but there's an issue with AutoCAD requiring "Run as Administrator" to work and "Drawing Launcher" not working at all.

Simple but annoying workarounds are setting AutoCAD to always run as Administrator and not opening drawings by double-clicking them, but wondering if anybody else found a better implementation.

[pendean]

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@jthomas5BW6T wrote:

Sorry for posting on such an old thread but I was wondering if you ever got this running? I recently started doing the same (running AutoCAD on Windows Server 2019 for ThermalDesktop use on a compute cluster) but there's an issue with AutoCAD requiring "Run as Administrator" to work and "Drawing Launcher" not working at all.

Simple but annoying workarounds are setting AutoCAD to always run as Administrator and not opening drawings by double-clicking them, but wondering if anybody else found a better implementation.

---

AutoCAD system requirements do not include WinServer as an OS, never have, still do not. That's your primary issue.

You are welcome to ask Autodesk to change that in future versions (1,2, 50, 10, 20versions from now if they are even willing to do it) here where they look for user feedback https://www.autodesk.com/company/contact-us/product-feedback 

Best of luck.

[jjohnston2FBYC]

At every consulting engagement, I encounter a common security practice: companies want to implement user restrictions, a policy I fully support for security reasons. However, when it comes to AutoCAD, I often need to liaise with IT personnel, and sometimes even management, to emphasize that an AutoCAD user should, at a minimum, have PowerUser privileges, just one step below full admin rights. After explaining the necessity, they typically understand and comply. It's puzzling to me why Autodesk requires this, but I can confidently say that within the first few hours of using AutoCAD without adequate privileges, I can cause it to crash, sometimes repeatedly. This is especially true when I'm running lisp and scripts, which are integral to my workflow. AutoCAD tends to lock up until the user settings are adjusted to at least PowerUser level.

I must acknowledge that this issue might be specific to AutoCAD Electrical, so those using different Autodesk products might not encounter it.

Regarding the operating system being Windows Server rather than a standard Windows OS, I haven't personally tested it yet. I assume AutoCAD would run on it. If not, I wonder if it's possible to purchase a server and install Windows Pro on it. That way, you'd have the advantage of multiple CPU cores while running on a Windows platform.

As for compute clusters, I'm genuinely interested in learning more about how you implement them and what software you use. I've heard anecdotes from the 90s about tech enthusiasts setting up clusters at various companies. Additionally, I've heard about AutoCAD professionals using clusters to connect multiple networked computers to simulate a single computer with numerous physical cores, along with substantial RAM and GPU power. However, it's often the case that the person who set it up is no longer with the company, and there's a lack of documentation on how to replicate it.

[jthomas5BW6T]

I appreciate the response! Oddly the account I'm using on the Windows Server instance is a local administrator account but still has permissions issues unless I specifically select "Run as Administrator" (either on launch or in compatibility mode settings) for AutoCAD.

W.r.t. implementation: this use of AutoCAD is strictly as a GUI for ThermalDesktop analysis suite. We're using Amazon Web Services capabilities to launch on-demand Windows instances for large radiation cases or smaller Windows instances with fast processors for timestep-limited fluid networks. AWS back-end handles the configuration so from our and the instance OS's point of view whatever hardware we request acts like a single machine (sometimes it is, sometimes it's not depending on the instance type selected).

[jthomas5BW6T]

Thank you for the response. Yes, it's abundantly clear that Windows Server isn't an officially supported OS and there are going to be limitations. I fully understand and appreciate that, just wondering if any other users had figured out a good implementation.

As for requesting that as a feature, I'd much rather encourage Ansys to drop AutoCAD as the GUI for this software so I don't have to keep fiddling with it 🙂