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Question need for fancy graphics boards

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euphnut65

Senior Member
Question need for fancy graphics boards

As I'm waiting 15 seconds to a minute to modify a medium sized assembly, I'm wondering what good a fast graphics board would be.

I currently just have an on board graphics controller, but what do I care if it takes 3 or 8 milliseconds seconds (just numbers I made up) to pan or zoom something when the real slow parts for me seem to not be graphics related?


Let me know what you think,

Eric
 
swertel

swertel

Alibre Super User


An on board graphics card is not a effective tool for CAD modeling.

I currently run an nVidia GeForceFX 5700LE (US$80), but will upgrade that to a 6800 Ultra or better on my next workstation, assuming I buy within the year.

CAD packages tend to tax all elements of a workstation, that's right a workstation, not just a desktop PC. In order to get good performance, there needs to be a balance among disk IO, FSB speed, processor speed, total physical RAM, and graphics capability. I think you'll find that a better graphics card with built-in GPU and dedicated memory will relieve the burden on your CPU for graphics processing and free up some memory, thus improving your overall performance. Granted, it will only go so far before the next bottleneck shows up, such as processor speed or RAM.

If I were you, I'd go out and spend $100 bucks on a new video card and see what it does for you.
 
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dave2962

Senior Member
performance

I don't think the problem Eric is referring to has anything to do with graphics performance. Ever since I upgraded to 9 performance when editing a part in an assembly has been terrible. It was much better in ver 8. I wish I had not upgraded. I am about to get a large machine building contract and this is going to be a major problem. Does anyone know when a revision may be coming that will address this problem?

Dave Grady
 
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siggy

Senior Member


From personal experience I can tell you that the difference in rendering speed, panning, zooming, etc. is DRAMATIC when moving from a 32 meg video card to a 256 meg video card.

Robert
 
swertel

swertel

Alibre Super User


Mr. Grady,

If you've been reading the board, you may have come across the rumor that v10 is migrating from Java to .Net which should, in theory, improve performance. Alibre is also working on performance enhancements, of which I have no specifics, either to be implemented in v9.1 or v10. I don't know the release dates for either.

For those having slowness in their graphics, have you tried using the graphics accelerator switch? The icon is in the standard toolbar and looks like the assembly icon with "swish" marks representing speedy movement.
 
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euphnut65

Senior Member


I am quite happy with the zooming, panning, rotating performance, I haven't tried the graphics accelerator switch.

The problem I have with speed is editing parts or constraints in assemblies. The assemblies I am referring to are not complicated 500+ part assemblies, more like 20-50 simple parts with about 40-150 constraints.

It seems like adding a video card to help out with the speed problems is like taking a hammer to the back of your car when it doesn't run right. Of course you might feel better afterwards! :)

Thanks for your responses.

Eric
 
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dave2962

Senior Member
performance

I don't have any problem with the graphics speed. I can pan, zoom and rotate my assemblies with no problem. Where the speed is an issue is when I edit a part from an assembly in a separate window. In the new window I select a sketch to edit, pick a dimension and change it and hit enter, then wait, wait wait. It's really slow. This is not a large assembly and I'm not running low on memory.


Dave Grady
 
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siggy

Senior Member


I mentioned this in another post on a similar topic but the bottom line is that if I create more than one or two interdesign constraints it will bring my system to a crawl.

Look in your constraint list and count the number of interdesign constraints you have and let us know.
 
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euphnut65

Senior Member
Re:

siggy said:
Look in your constraint list and count the number of interdesign constraints you have and let us know.
Click to expand...

I don't have any that show up as interdesign constraints in the Design Explorer (usually I have to delete them), but I use quite a few holes that are referenced off another part.

Eric
 
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siggy

Senior Member


An interdesign constraint is created when you use geometry from one of the other parts in the assembly to constrain features of the part you are editing. When you look at the assembly constraints they will literally be labled as "interdesign" constraints in the constraint list of the Design Explorer.

Robert
 
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Anonymous

Guest


FireGL cards don't gain you anything with Alibre. FireGL are optimized for OpenGL and Alibre uses Direct3D. You get better performance in Alibre with a gaming card than a high end graphic design card. I had a really high end FireGL card which worked great for Pro/engineer but was worthless with Alibre. A $100 gaming card will outperform a $1000 fireGL card when it comes to Alibre. If you are running any other CAD application the FireGL is the way to go.
 
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