Continue to Site

Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

Register Log in
  • Congratulations MintJulep on being selected by the Eng-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Supercomputer 1

Status
Not open for further replies.
Standing

Standing

Mechanical
Jan 14, 2002
1,578
I keep telling my boss that my PC is slow. We run a dedicated Compaq workstation 1.7 Gig with 1 Gig memory and an ATI Fire GL2 card with 64 meg of memory. I have done everything that I have read on Eng-Tips, except check memory chips to make this box run faster.
We did not build our SolidWorks assemblies correct when we started the job. Total number of components is 4037 in one assembly, top level mates is 546 (Our VAR says 300 max is best).
The question my boss now has and I think he can pull it off. What would be the fastest computer that would make SolidWorks run the fastest? I suppose this would be less than a Cray Supercomputer. My guess is that he is willing to spend about $7,000 to $10,000.


Bradley
 
Replies continue below

Recommended for you

Sort by date Sort by votes
I think you have nice computer. Upgrading your memory to 2mb and getting a newer/faster/larger graphics card will make a huge difference. Of course then you bottle neck would become the FSB speed on the mother board.

Check out this forums FAQs forum559 , there are a few items of interest there.

Ray Reynolds
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I think if you went out and spent 7-10 K on a computer you would only be disappointed in it's performance. Just an opinion!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
MadMango,
Just got a call back from our VAR. He said exactly what you are saying in your FAQ.
2.8 Gig CPU Workstation, Ram 2 Gig and NVIDIA Quadro card. Cannot do much better than that for the money.


Bradley
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Maybe you can restructue your assembly. It is not dificult for SW to create subassemblies "on the fly".

Also, perhaps you can lose some mates. If parts are just static or are models of purchased components, fix them in space and suppress or delete mates.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Follow TheTick's advice on the use of subassemblies. Component and subassembly patterns also help to make top-level assemblies not only faster to regenerate but faster to construct in the first place. I've seen way too many engineers brute it out by mating everything in a large flat assembly.

Some good rules of thumb:
1. Assemble the parts in the file as you would in real life (this is obvious, I know, yet you'd be amazed at the folks that don't do this).
2. LOOK for opportunities to create and use subassemblies, even if your final requirements (such as as ours) call for a totally flat BOM. Fist things first - quickly and accurately build your assy, then you can flatten it with the handy dandy SWX functions.
3. A subassembly is still good to use, even if it is only used once in your final assembly (see #1).

- - -Dennyd
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I like the idea about losing the mates. I am going to give that a go.
Thanks


Bradley
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Meanwhile, check out the new AMD 64-bit chips for a new system. Xi Computer makes some good configurations for SolidWorks efficiency. I double-checked Xi's prices as compared with me getting the individual components myself and I would have saved only about $200 (not including the lost time in returning bad components and the time required to assemble everything, install the OS, etc.).

AMD's chip architecture kills lots of bottlenecks previously found in the Intel structure. Much of this efficiency comes through the mother boards now and all the caching and bus speeds to your RAM and graphics card.

Get a fast chip and a great graphics card. RAM can always be added as needed, but you cannot merely add juice to your chips.

Fast hard drive, XP Professional.

Read reviews, search this forum for specific performance gains with the 64-bit stuff, get to know what's available. $7,000 is far too much to pay for a very fast system--get two systems instead.

I like ViewSonic CRT monitors--19" - 21" with a fine dot pitch and high refresh rate (at least 85 Hz to keep from killing the eyes). Color is more true w/CRTs, and resolutions are more flexible. (I like 1024 x 1280 on both monitor sizes.)

Have fun--good project to have available to you.




Jeff Mowry
Industrial Designhaus, LLC
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
don't forget about the connection speed to the network...
just an idea but maybe your company's network needs to be updated to something faster.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
My suggestion is to insure that the machine is running as fast as it could run in the first place. Spyware, trojans, virus, background processes, network issues ... all of these can bog down a system pretty bad.

If your boss is willing to spend $7k-$10k, see if he is willing to :

Let you dedicate the computer you have just to SolidWorks.
Reinstall the machine from scratch. Reinstall a clean copy of Win2000 or WinXP, your hardware drivers, and SolidWorks (plus associated tools.)
Defrag the hard drive using DiskKeeper after that.
Work on the files locally, not over the network. You can store released versions on your server or in your document management package, but working on local copies is much faster.
Reorganize the assembly into appropriate levels of sub-assemblies, as described above.

When running and with the assembly loaded, right click on your task bar and bring up Task Manager. Look at the Performance tab, specifically the box that says Physical Memory (K). The middle entry is 'Available' - if this is less than 100000 (meaning you have less than 100M available RAM, and that the system is swapping things out to the swap file pretty agressively) add more memory.

Nothing is slower than a system that is swapping in and out of the swap file. Except maybe a computer that had spyware loaded on it.

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing I love more than to hand specify a new CAD workstation for maximum performance - and if you are interested I would love to do that (for free!) - but lets make sure that you are addressing the real problems and that you actually need it first. A well tuned 1.7GHz machine will run circles around a 3.2GHz machine clogged up by spyware, trojans, an overloaded network link somewhere between the workstation and the server, or insufficient physical memory.

Disclaimer - back your system up before you start any of the above. And back up your work files (.SLDPRT/.SLDASM/.SLDDRW) twice, on CD or DVD and then verify the backups.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I am currently running a dedicated workstation. That was a big help several years ago. Lotus Notes and SolidWorks do not play fair together.
One thing that has help a lot is doing a defragment on the hard drive. I was defragmenting every night. At our local computer club they said to defrag in safe mode. On Friday it was taking 2-1/2 minutes per mate. After doing defrag in safe mode, mating is now down to 20 seconds per mate. I talked to our computer wiz kid (47 years old) he says defragging in safe mode would make no difference. I want to test this on another machine that has not been defragged in safe mode.


Bradley
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Have your 47 Year old IT person check this out.

15. System Maintenance

Regularly scheduled system maintenance can help keep your system performing well and prevent issues from occurring.

[ul][li]Disk defragmenter[/li]

A) Note: The standard Windows defragmenter does not defragment the virtual RAM. To defragment the virtual memory, a third-party application must be used.

[li]Clear temp and backup files[/li]
[li]Best practices[/li]

A) Installation (virus scan, uninstalling applications and Windows registry, administrative installs)
B) System setup (virtual memory, service packs, etc.)
C) Use a recommended operating system
D) Software deployment[/ul]

This can be found at -
Regards,


Scott Baugh, CSWP [bdaycandle] to me

If your in the SW Forum Check out the FAQs Forum559

To make the Best of Eng-Tips Forums FAQ731-376
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Scott,
He (the IT) person was saying that "It should make no difference where I defrag the normal way or if I defrag in safe mode". He does agree defragging is required.


Bradley
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Ahhh! I see I thought you were saying that he thought Defrag didn't do anything for you.

In that case he's right it doesn't matter.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP [bdaycandle] to me

If your in the SW Forum Check out the FAQs Forum559

To make the Best of Eng-Tips Forums FAQ731-376
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Still I do not understand. Friday every mate command took 2-1/2 minutes. I run defrag in safe mode Friday night. (Remember I run defrag 4 times a week in non-safe mode) Monday when I come in every mate is at 20 seconds.

Bradley
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top Bottom