Quadro cards

[Cx2]

I’ve heard some very negative things about Fusion360 and Quadro cards; I gave the program a decent run this evening on my Quadro machine and have seen nothing negative.

Has Fusion360 been updated to accommodate these cards?

[Phil.E]

@Cx2

I have not heard anything. Can you share some of what you know? I'm happy to track anything down.

As usual with graphics, the latest drivers, and not overloading the GPU, etc. are always best practice. So from time to time customers find graphics crashes, but many times these are cleared up by new drivers or not overloading (such as a 512MB card trying to run two UHD monitors).

Thanks,

[TrippyLighting]

Several forum users here have reported negative experiences with Quadro cards. 

The "PRO" graphics cars such a NVIDIA quadro or the AMD Fire GL cards use the same graphics chips as the gaming cards but sometimes lag behind a generation.

The reason for that can be found in the driver software that is optimized and "hardened" for Open GL performance, which is used by most "other"CAD and DDC software packages.

Autodesk Inventor and Fusion 360 use the DirectX API and over the last 10-15 years repeatedly these Pro graphics cards, when tested have show sub par performance when using DirectX software.

In general the driver software and the more robust design (assumption on my side) yield a much higher price for the pro graphics cards compared with a gaming card with the same chip set.

However, if you've tested your set-up and already have a quadro card and everything works fine, I'd see no reason to change.

Interesting fact. On macOS Fusion 360 uses the Open GL API.

[Cx2]

Hi Phil,

I have seen a number of negative comments about the Quadro cards from time to time, nothing specific just poor graphics performance and the answers have always been that the card does not function well with Fusion360 and a small number of other CAD programs.

As Peter has stated it seems to be an openg/directx issue, Solidworks has a selection box for use opengl and although it has it, it is not recommended that people use it!

I gave the Quadro card a full test this morning and Fusion360 passed with flying colors, the program was a pleasure to work with on the Quadro card. I chose a very troublesome assembly that I put together in Solidworks about 7 months ago, as it was so long ago I redid the model in Solidworks yesterday morning so I would have a fresh benchmark, I then modeled the same assembly on the same machine this morning in Fusion360.

I would like to highlight your comment on the new drivers, I am wondering if the new drivers are the problem because when I bought the HP mini it updated to the latest Quadro driver automatically. When I loaded Solidworks up I was a little disappointed as I had expected better graphics performance from the Quadro card and was not seeing it, nothing I could put my finger on, it just did not seem as graphically tasty as it should have been.

After a little research I found that the Solidworks certified driver for the card in the machine was over a year old so I did an automatic download from the Solidworks site, after the certified driver was installed the graphics improved to a point that I initially expected them to be. The fact that Fusion360 performed flawlessly on the certified driver might mean something to Fusion360 users who are seeing issues with Quadro cards and they might try downgrading to the certified driver as I have done.

All that said, it was an extremely pleasant surprise to find that I can use Fusion360 on the Quadro card as when I bought  the machine I was thinking it would only be for the Solidworks contract.

Apart from a couple of very frustrating issues (which I am putting down to my own ignorance as this is the first assembly I have done with Fusion360 in a year) the program breezed the assembly, kudos to the Fusion360 team as the program is rock solid.

[Cx2]

Looks like I spoke too soon as I cannot launch the program in offline mode on my GTX system.

[TrippyLighting]

I would not attribute that to the use of a particular graphics card!

[TheCADWhisperer]

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Cx2 wrote: 

As Peter has stated it seems to be an openg/directx issue, Solidworks has a selection box for use opengl and although it has it, it is not recommended that people use it! 

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Can you site sources for your information?

I think there might be some confusion here.

SolidWorks uses OpenGL by default while many people are using DirectX gaming cards rather than OpenGL CAD cards.

I think the selection box you refer to is for software OpenGL, not for dedicated hardware GPU OpenGL.

[Cx2]

Yes neither would I, could not edit my post so had to downgrade my kudo physically 🙂.

[Cx2]

Correct on both accounts, I am in a state of perpetual confusion and software opengl is correct, back to front but not surprising as I have been using 4 different cards/machines to run Solidworks.

When I purchased the HP mini I found a list of CAD vendors that stated their software was good to run on the Quadro machines.

 I can’t seem to find the list again but I do remember that Fusion360 was not on it, when I bought the machine I thought it would not run Fusion360 well because of that list and previous complains I had seen on forums such as this and other places.

"Different cad programs run differently on different hardware. In most cases though your cad will work fine on a gaming card but most games won't work well on a workstation card. Some software, like fusion 360 for example doesn't work at all on workstation cards because fusion uses direct x instead of open gl."

https://www.reddit.com/r/cad/comments/58fsly/graphics_card_for_cad_and_gaming/

[TrippyLighting]

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@Cx2 wrote:

"....Some software, like fusion 360 for example doesn't work at all on workstation cards because fusion uses direct x instead of open gl."

https://www.reddit.com/r/cad/comments/58fsly/graphics_card_for_cad_and_gaming/

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That is absolute and utter nonsense! Of course Fusion 360 runs on a pro card.

All Graphics cards are delivered with DirectX as well as OpenGL drivers. You cannot run Windows without running DirectX, so you can also run games on Quadro, or Fire GL cards, because they also are delivered with these drivers. However, the drivers that receive most attention in terms of 3D performance and stability on the PRO cards are the openGL drivers, because most other CAD and DCC software run Open GL.

Gaming cards also come with OpenGL drivers, simply because there are also game engines that run OpenGL, for example the idtech game engine that run the first person shooter Doom. These drivers often don't receive the level of attention they should because stability is not as much of a concern in the gaming world as it is in the content creation industries.

I've had a subscription to a German computer magazine for over 20 years now and they regularly test Pro Graphics cards and that usually includes test how these perform in Games. They are always outperformed by the gamin cards, which is not much of a surprise, but they do work.

Gaming cards also are often designed for max performance with clear comnromises in terms of stability and frequencies and timing setting for the GPU, chip sets and memory chips are set to borderline values to get the most out of these cards.

[chaycorp.bo]

Hi.

I would like to comment that i'm running fusion 360 on a MSI workstation with an core i7,  nvidia quadro p3200, 32GB RAM and fusion gets very slow when i have a sketch with about 50+ splines. rendering is very fast, but my problem is when editing sketches, it can get very very slow any recommendations?, by the way already have fusion 360 graphics options on it minimum settings

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@chaycorp.bo wrote:

.... when i have a sketch with about 50+splines.  

....it can get very very slow any recommendations?

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Uhmm, no single sketches of 50+ splines. 

Not in any parametric CAD program on any hardware.

Break your complicated sketch into many sketches.

File>Export and then Attach your *.f3d file here for additional recommendations.

[TrippyLighting]

@chaycorp.bo the "issue" you are reporting is completely unrelated from your graphics card. Rendering performance  is also completely unrelated as rendering in Fusion 360 is not done on the graphics card.

[gibsoa6]

I'm having trouble working with Fusion 360 with my Quadro card although no troubles with ReCap Photo. I'm getting an error message that says that I need to update my driver but my driver is up to date.

What's up with Fusion 360 and Quadro Cards?

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@gibsoa6 wrote:

I'm having trouble working with Fusion 360 with my Quadro card....

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Can you File>Export your *.f3d file that exhibits "troubled behavior" to your local drive and then Attach it here to a Reply?

[g-andresen]

Hi,

1. What action makes your system slow?

2. Update the Direct X driver

3. Please share the file.

File > export > save as f3d locally  > attach it to the next post.

günther

[gibsoa6]

I've not been able to even use the program so I'll try and replicate my experience and post the f3d file...over lunch.

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@gibsoa6 wrote:

...and post the f3d file...over lunch.

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Are you done eating lunch yet?

Our labs have Quadro cards and I have not noticed any difference compared to my "gaming card" laptop.

And at the moment I do not recall any verifiable issue from any source.  Can you cite a source?