hardware improvement suggestions

And another update....

I had another conversation with our IT, and after he ran some real time tests using "performance monitor" and "process hacker" software while I was outputting some screen renders and an export to .stp, the conclusion was we just possibly saved the company several thousand dollars.

According to his tests, processer and ram results were well within operating specs, but the disk I/O was capped out and flatlining. My current hard disk is your basic old hard drive type.

So while the new machine would be faster, it wouldn't be 10 grand faster.

Since my current machine has Raid capability, we are going to test some SSD's in raid configuration, and test it again and see how things compare. I'll keep you updated.

No raid/SSD update, but in the aforementioned test of my .iam model to .stp took 15 hours to convert. I then opened that file in Inventor, on another machine, to check if it converted properly. I'd love to tell you how long that took, but 25 hours later it's still working on it....

.Stp file is 1.2 GB. The .iam file was 2 gb when file size was last calculated in a pack and go, and that was a couple months ago. A grand total of 99 occurences and 83 parts, which doesn't really mean a whole apparently.

It will be interesting to see if an ssd will increase your performance but I would reserve judgment until the ssd is installed. I would at least upgrade your ram to the fastest you could get. Compared to a new video card that is still a cheap upgrade. While you may increase the output of cap of your storage drives you can still have a bottle neck when it comes to accessing the stored information. Building a bigger highway without adding more access ramps still leads to traffic jams.

It's been documented that Windows will open quicker on a SSD than a platter drive and subsequently any program loaded on the SSD will open quicker as well. Whether this increase in productivity leads to any real gains at the end of the day only a detailed analysis of the individual's work habits would answer that question.

Test 2 SSD's in a raid configuration on our test machine, but it was still inconclusive.Hopefully some decisions are made pdq, as the project finally was signed the other day, after close to a year of contract delays.

At least I can post a pic now of the model I've been working on that has been bringing Inventor to it's knees. A lot of work to do still, but it's getting there.

Obviously we're are looking at an overview. How detailed is it exactly and what kind of file size are you dealing with? Did you construct it in sections?

Total current file size (if pack 'n go'd) is 1.2 GB. Total assembly consists of 105 parts and 142 occurences. All the parts are simplified shrinkwraps (certain components, nuts/bolts, not visible parts, etc. removed) which have their links broken, grounded in place, and all constraints deleted. There are several levels of detail created so I can work on certain areas easier when not needing to see the entire assembly.

Holy mackerel! And here I thought a 32MB file was big! Ain't got nothing on you. LoL

So you don't break that up into separate ????? (don't know what they'd be called in Inventor) and then cobble them all together for the final design? Is the word I am looking for "assemblies"?

I gotta take an Inventor course one of these days.

What's the building's purpose? Is it some sort of batching plant? Do you guys do chemical plant design?

The actual assembly file is only 357 KB, much like an Xref drawing file. Yes, they are separate files, brought into one file to make one assembly. Think of it like having a general arrangement drawing of a multi-conveyor system, but each conveyor in that drawing is an individual xref.

It's for a wood waste to energy plant, you can see more info here http://www.nexterra.ca/

Is it going to produce power by burning the wood like a coal plant or is it going to turn the wood into plasma or something?

Never mind, I just read it.

Christmas present has been ordered

New PC will be a Xeon 3.3 ghz quad core T7600, Windows 7 64 bit, 2x SSD 512GB drives in Raid, dual SLI Nvidia Quadro K5000 (that's 8 GB total), and a 128GB 1600mhz ddr3 Ram.

Christmas present has been ordered

 

New PC will be a Xeon 3.3 ghz quad core T7600, Windows 7 64 bit, 2x SSD 512GB drives in Raid, dual SLI Nvidia Quadro K5000 (that's 8 GB total), and a 128GB 1600mhz ddr3 Ram.

I got socks...

I guess an update is required. I've been using this new monster machine for about a week now.

It does some things, such as FEA analysis, large assembly shrinkwraps, rendering, etc...quite fast, but unfortunately that is a very small percentage of the work we do. In the regular day to day Inventor use, it's not a huge increase in speed from my old machine.

Even though it was dispaointing in the performance boost, we will be keeping it as we needed new hardware, and my old machine was moved to another user who needed upgrades as well.

I'm not sure why our IT department spec'd this with the dual cards, as Inventor apparently does not make use of an SLI configuration, but when we do buy another machine, we have a card for it....

So to summarize:

Get the fastest processor your budget allows (we will probably use a more cost effective i7 in any future builds)

As much RAM as you can afford, although 128 is quite overkill

SSD drives instead of "old" platter types

"gaming" video card over a workstation if your budget allows (we have yet to physically test this, but our IT is willing to try it some time in the near future)

The limiting factor for any significant speed improvements in Inventor is the software itself. Until Autodesk rewrites their code to use multi thread in all environments, and do it properly, the use of such high end machines is pretty much wasted.