Sourcing workstations for Version 11 Inventor

I need to source new workstations that will work better with our old-version 11 Inventor. It takes quite a long time to render with the current Pentium 4 32 bit workstations we're using now. I don't know much about hardware so I was wondering if anyone knows if the newer computers are compatable with version 11, What are the most criticle components I should be looking for etc.

Since you currently have 32-bit computers then I guess it is safe to assume Inventor 11 is 32-bit as well. Why not upgrade to 64-bit computers? You could still run WinXP Pro in a virtual machine or use an add-on software solution like Longbow.

Have you considered a dedicated system just for handling your renders? Something like this...http://www.boxxtech.com/

According to THIS you need XP for Inventor 11. You might have luck running in compatibilty mode, my old program success has varied on Windows 7, though some work very well.

Might be cheaper just to go the dedicated render system suggested by ReMark.

Why not upgrade Inventor as well? Why would you want to stick with a piece of 32-bit software?

Why not upgrade Inventor as well? Why would you want to stick with a piece of 32-bit software?

Because it's probably a lot less expensive to upgrade a few computers than it is to buy a few licenses for a new version of Inventor. When my company upgraded my workstation last month, they spent ~$4000 on hardware ... and far, far more than that on the software.

I would upgrade at least one copy of Inventor to the latest version and put that on the new computer. Both should be 64-bit.

I would upgrade at least one copy of Inventor to the latest version and put that on the new computer. Both should be 64-bit.

Accountants do not think in such simple terms. To them there is no difference in Inventor 2011 and Inventor 11, just Inventor 2011 will cost money and they already have Inventor 11.

Accountants do not think in such simple terms. To them there is no difference in Inventor 2011 and Inventor 11, just Inventor 2011 will cost money and they already have Inventor 11.

never let an accountant do your laundry .....

I would upgrade at least one copy of Inventor to the latest version and put that on the new computer. Both should be 64-bit.

If you do that, you won't have compatibility between the different versions. If you create something with 11, then do some work on it in 2011, it'll migrate to the new version and you won't be able to work on it in the old version anymore unless you jump through hoops with IGS or STEP, and there's some serious disadvantages to that. You'll slowly wind up with a lot of your assets usable only on one workstation, so then you've got a lot of useless computers and software licenses.

Yeah, I've been down that road with accountants before. In this particular instance it could be shown that the cost of producing renderings using old software and old computers could be recouped if one of the new computers (specially set up to handle renderings, i.e. - has the "muscle") were upgraded with the most recent version of Inventor.