Anybody running on 64bit?....issues

[HellBent]

Due to our large mold assembly file sizes we were forced to make the jump to 64bit a little early. A typical assembly is in the neighborhood of 600meg and our larger tools are around 1gig. The memory limitations of 32bit were killing us. The jump to 64 helped considerably but not without some downsides. Since UG doesn't officially support 64bit yet, you're pretty much on your own. Since you're still running a 32bit version of UG, you're limited to 4gig of memory...but that's better than the 3gig limit of the 32bit machines.
Graphics has proven to be a big problem. Even the top dog Nvidia Quadro FX4400 doesn't have what it takes to stay alive. Drivers are the issue here. The bigger the file...the more often it blue screens. Drivers are also the issue with printers. Not many printers have 64bit drivers. Everyone was definitely NOT ready for 64bit and they're all scrambling now to catch up. Make sure you look into the compatibility of your other software as well. Not all of them will install on 64bit machines...even as a 32bit app. Image viewers, translators, etc. We've run into a lot of that stuff.
We didn't really have a choice...we couldn't even open some of our jobs anymore on 32bit. But...if you don't HAVE to make the jump yet....wait until everything is certified and UG has an official 64bit release. I miss my old unix boxes....lol

Take care...

 

[HellBent]

Just an update...

UG submitted one of our assemblies to Nvidia to fix their driver...hopefully. I also let UG know the other day how the IGES, STEP, and DXF translators don't work right under 64 bit. You can't export data from outside the file that the data is a part of.....i.e. trying to export multiple components from their parent assembly. A bit of a pain in the ass....lol You have to export your multiple components to a dummy part file first..then open that file and do your translation. Which is exactly what UG's translators are supposed to do but something about creating the temporary part file takes a dump on 64bit and you end up with an empty IGES file. They're working on it...

 

[Azrael]

Have you considered buying a sunblade, we have one sunblade per department just for thoose cases.

 

[HellBent]

lol....this is a tool shop.....won't happen. Not enough profit for that these days. It was pulling teeth to get them to spend the $6k on these 64bit machines. It was only after 6 months of blue screen that they finally did.

 

[Azrael]

A used Sunblade 2000 goes for 1200-2000$ at ebay. I think you can get a dual 1.2Ghz with 4G ram around 2000$ The only thing then to do is to upgrade the graphics