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Thread: Tell me why please, is a workstation really better then a PC??( and which machine do i need for 3d work in autocad)

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    Default Tell me why please, is a workstation really better then a PC??( and which machine do i need for 3d work in autocad)

    i will need a new station soon.
    im building assemblies of water systems in autocad 3d . one average file will contain 30mb of assembled blocks, i cant say im happy with the speed my PC work this times, i want it to be smooth like i draw in 2d , is it possible at all ???
    i invested large amount of money in my new machine (i7-3770 Firepro v5900 , 8gb ram and other good parts) but still its not smooth when working in 3d .
    so from your expereince (only from those who really do similar jobs with autocad), what are the advantages of a Workstation from A PC, i understand that you can get a bigger RAM or more processors , but is it really make a difference for autocad , does autocad take advantage of more processors ?
    how can i build a machine that will act as fast as 2d or at least close , and will not get stuck every minute and crash 10 times a day?

    Thanks

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    Default Re: Tell me why please, is a workstation really better then a PC??( and which machine do i need for 3d work in autocad)

    I think your current bottleneck is not the hardware, but a combination of software and meatware. AutoCAD isn't exactly built to do extensive 3D work, but you can still get a lot out of it with some project managment techniques (e.g. our largest models are ~ 5000KB in size, with extensive use of XREFS), level-of-detail control (most of our drawings use 1:30 scale so modeling individual nuts, bolts, etc. is a waste of time and file size), and common sense (operating in wireframe, using Navisworks to review shaded models).

    If you truly want extremely smooth viewing control of 3D work as you work, you will need to move to Inventor, Solidworks, or other dedicated 3D design software.

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    Default Re: Tell me why please, is a workstation really better then a PC??( and which machine do i need for 3d work in autocad)

    I believe that the only way to choose is based off preference because I've seen plenty of laptops (maybe even under $600 notebooks) handle programs like Inventor and LT just fine. Obviously, you are going to get more performance out of a workstation. What it really should come down to is money and your overall application list.

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    Default Re: Tell me why please, is a workstation really better then a PC??( and which machine do i need for 3d work in autocad)

    There is no real benefit of going to a xeon processor over a i7 / i5 except for being able to run ECC ram. ECC Ram is best suited to long running applications running computational events i.e sql databases, long running finite analysis, etc.. By long running i'm typically referring to jobs running for longer than 12+ hours or anything that is required for 24/7 up time i.e. servers.

    Being able to run more cpu's is only good if your rendering stuff on a single machine, most cad applications (AutoCAD included) are single core aware meaning they will only use 1 core regardless of how many you have in the machine. Some specific tasks can be multi-core aware (wall joins in revit) but the majority of the program is single core.

    With the ATI cards you can open the catalyst control panel and see the performance of the graphics card (Activity / GPU Activity in the below image) while operating the model and see if thats the bottleneck.
    gputest.jpg

    Also have a look at your RAM, open task manager, click on the processes tab, then click view, then select columns, tick Memory - Peak Working Set, click ok. This is basically the TOTAL amount of memory a process is using, look for the acad.exe and see how much it is using. If it's upwards of 6gb and you only have 8gb in your machine you might want to look at upgrading to more RAM.

    There is no reason why AutoCAD shouldn't manipulate a 3d model smoothly, it's just about finding the bottleneck.

    Have you also looked into things like Plant 3D and P&ID?

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    Default Re: Tell me why please, is a workstation really better then a PC??( and which machine do i need for 3d work in autocad)

    i have the latest's driver and i don't see the performance clocks at all. tried to look every where..

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