Buying the right workstation for Inventor - AU 2018 Class

[Neil_Cross]

I'll put this in the other thread about Inventor performance, but this is a re-recording of my Autodesk University 2018 class discussing everything you need to know about buying the right PC for Inventor.  It's a 90 minute class and it covers everything from graphics cards through to CPU requirements.  If you haven't subscribed to the Youtube channel yet, now's a good time, there's a back catalogue of nearly 400 Inventor videos 

I've also tried to attach the accompanying handout which is a 40+ page report on everything you need to know about everything.  It might be too big to attach so I may need to edit that and make it a Dropbox link or something.

Feel free to refer anyone to this video who has a question on graphics cards or anything hardware related for Inventor, this is the end result of 4+ years of extensive testing and I'm going to pull back from repeating the same forum posts over and over again now, this is my contribution and I'll leave it there with this.

Cheers.

[Lewis.Young]

Wow...i must say the detail you go into is really great!

Outstanding effort on your behalf, well done!

Lewis Young
Windows 7 x64 - 32GB Ram
Intel Xeon E5-1620 v2 @ 3.70GHz
nVidia Quadro M2000 - 4GB
Inventor Professional 2017.3
Vault Basic 2017
3ds Max 2018

[leowarren34]

@Neil_Cross Thaks for the contribution the Inventor benchmark forum, as said keep it up, your youtube channel is one of the best for CAD and my favourite for Inventor, the quality and professional work is phenomenal, keep it up!!!

[Neil_Cross]

Cheers Leo.  The sad fact of the matter though is that this won't get seen by many people, whilst the videos containing awful advice from the bigger tech channels will continue to be found and taken as gospel.  

As I've always said, YouTube is nothing more than a high school popularity contest, and the popular kids are the ones who get the most attention.  Never mind, it is how it is!

[Lewis.Young]

Hopefully one of the admins can pin this thread to the top of the forum... definitely warrants it in my opinion.

It would probably reduce the amount of time spent solving problems regarding performance/hardware as users can see all the information in one place, instead of having to navigate through many scattered threads (which i've done way too many times...)

Lewis Young
Windows 7 x64 - 32GB Ram
Intel Xeon E5-1620 v2 @ 3.70GHz
nVidia Quadro M2000 - 4GB
Inventor Professional 2017.3
Vault Basic 2017
3ds Max 2018

[Anonymous]

Keep those great video's comming Neil. I am a fan 🙂

[Neil_Cross]

Why thank you Jay Dee Gee Zero Seventy Two  

[leowarren34]

As Neil said, Youtube is a popularity contest but we can get this pinned if it gets enough attention, @Discussion_Admin can we get this pinned as it contains some rather crucial infomation that applies to all inventor users and what they should consider their future WS.

[SBix26]

@leowarren34 It was pinned yesterday morning already.  Thanks to DA for quick response on that request.

---

Sam B
Inventor Pro 2019.2 | Windows 7 SP1
LinkedIn

[leowarren34]

Yeah, noticed 5 mins after I posted... *facepalm*

[Anonymous]

Hi Neil,

This is an interesting presentation an video thank you.

Seeing how much the single thread CPU performance scales the framerate was quite surprising. I knew the GPU was typically idling and had assumed this was something to to with poor Direct 3D implementation bt didn't think CPU frequency would help so much. Hopefully Autodesk can improve the rendering pipeline and framerates in the future to start using these expensive GPU's we are all buying!

Display Options

Do you have a recommendation on the how to best configure inventors graphics options while keeping the quality and frame rates high? 

I have been configuring our workstations defaults with:

• ambient shadows on
• edges off
• display quality high (smoother)
• display style realistic
• A custom lighting style with 4 lights to give more contrast with edges off

I feel this gives high quality rendering with decent performance on large assemblies but have not tested this in enough detail to gauge the framerate differences between different options and optimise it properly.  It is not always ideal as there are situations where turning on shaded edges looks clearer, especially in part modelling.

Also have you ever seen any results statistics from the inventor bench marking tool?

https://www.mgfx.co.za/cad-software/autodesk-inventor/tools-for-inventor/

Here is an idea I submitted on a similar performance topic of  GPU ray-tracing

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-ideas/gpu-ray-tracing/idi-p/8285924

[tchristman]

@Neil_Cross I really enjoyed the class at AU, very informative! I was wondering if you could do a follow-up on how to convince your IT people that you actually need a robust system and not just one that's on sale!

[Neil_Cross]

Maybe that class should be "Why the directors should fire the IT staff and finding the IT guys for your business!"

[leowarren34]

@Neil_Cross Maybe that should be a companion video for your class on TFI...

[david]

Neil i need help on build a new work station to run Inventor and not crash

[leowarren34]

@david  I'm not Neil but I can give my ideas but it depends on your budget...

CPU: Is king, atleast a quad core (six is best), as higher clocker speen as possible.

RAM: Minimum 8gb if really small assemblies, Recommended 16gb, Easily upgradable just go with biggest capacity DIMM to start with that you want

GPU: Atleast 4gb VRAM - IV doesnt care about GPU except VRAM, however 8GB is recommended

Primary Storage: SSD, as large as you can afford, M.2 is faster,

Secondary Storage: Any reliable HDD.

Everything else is a matter of budget but has minimum effect on performance, just ensure motherboard has enough RAM slots,

I think thats everything...

[david]

Money, is not the issue here. I need something that is just plain awesome.
Thanks, David M. Hofer.



David M. Hofer

(Welding Shop Manager)



Cedar Grove Colony

36926 266th Street

Platte SD 57369



Direct Line : (605)-337-2382 Option 2 & Option 3

Cell : (605)-680-9813

Fax : (605)-337-9712

[leowarren34]

Then I would go:

I assume professional if not go CORE eqivalent

CPU Xeon E-2176G (6 Cores, 3.7/4.7 gHz)

RAM; Atleast 32 GB

Storage: 512GB or 1TB if necessary, add a hdd for documents if needed

GPU: Quadro P2000

Everything else doesnt really matter

Can't take credit, all @Neil_Cross hard work...

Might as well go buy a HP Z2 Tower, G4 WS about $2000

[blair]

I'm leaning towards the i9-9900K 8-core 3.6GHz - 5.0GHz. I can overclock to 4.5 without any problems and the GeForce GTCX2070 card. It has ample VRam on the graphics card.

[leowarren34]

The 9900K would also be an excellent chip as it is the Xeons cousin however Xeons are more strictly tested for higher quality and uptime, reliability etc.

When in a consumer environment that would be fine but professionally you want maximum uptime, as Neil said no one can blame you for putting a professional chip into a profession use WS but they can blame you for putting a 'gaming' cpu in.

RTX 2070, my daily driver, also a great card, cheaper than a quadro but vary much more, a quadro has higher standards and built by NVidia so definitely consistent, and designed for 24 hour operation, also has drivers that can benefit CAD and professional software...

At the end of the day, they're the same but different but which ever you buy performance will be similar just reliabilty may differ...