Widnows 7 64-bit workstation and TeamCenter & NX6

[cadmantools]

Look at a new Workstation and wanted any helpful advice to run TeamCenter 8.01 and NX6 64-bit with Windows 7 OS.

HP Z800 with (2) processors.
Wanted to know if NX will utilize both processors and does dual or quad cores make much of a difference.

Also want a nVidia FX 4800 video card for each processor (1.5G) and 8G of RAM.

Disc storage – 10,000 RPM or would the 15,000 be best?


NX6.0.4.3 mp02, Windows XP 32-bit
Running cad straight out of the box is OK but, a system tuned with application software is the best way to increase productivity.

 

[cowski]

NX will utilize multiple cores/processors, but only for certain operations (like booleans) and only if a certain environment variable is set (it may be set by default in newer versions, I'm not sure). If you search the forum you will find lots of info on recommended hardware for NX, there was a thread a while back that listed the merits of dual processor vs dual core vs quad core - the results of which may surprise you.

A video card for each processor? Just offhand (not knowing your demands) that sounds like overkill. I'm not even sure quadro cards will run in "SLI" mode and if so if NX will be able to take advantage of it.

 

[rghay]

I was recently creating surfaces linked to a solid body. Due to the time this was taking (days-- not hours or minutes), I contacted GTAC.

GTAC informed me that NX7 would only use one of the cores in my dual core computer. They further stated that if the CPU was running 100% (in this case 50% because only one of the two cores was being used), the only other thing that would help would be a faster processor.

By the way, if anyone is interested, the last time I did this operation the 2810 surfaces from a single body took 29 hours to complete! The longer it runs, the slower it completes surfaces.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Why are you creating "surfaces linked to a solid body" in the first place? When you say "linked", are these WAVE links, between part files, or merely Extracted faces inside the same part file?

As for the issue of NX 7.0 and dual processors, this is the first that I've ever heard this. There is nothing that I'm aware of concerning any differences with respect to the Parasolid kernel, which is where virtually all of the multi-threaded code resides inside of NX, that would cause NX 7.0 to not utilize SMP any more than any past release.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Getting back to the issue of NX 7.0 and support for multi-core processors, it appears to be news to all of us here, meaning that the people responsible for the software says it just ain't so. Could you please tell us when and from whom at GTAC did you hear this from?

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[hudson888]

This seems like as good a place as any to have a whine! Please consider implementing a kernel killer into the software. Pretty please!

In this case I was stuck trimming some particularly nasty sheet bodies that wrapped around on themselves to which end the trim sheet function would hang for hours if you'd let it. Not using much memory but placing one in a situation where the only sane action was to kill ugraf and start again. Now it the software had the sense to either time out or allow you to abort I would have gotten some sleep last night. So now I need to blame somebody grumpy and sleepless as I am!

Best Regards

Hudson

www.jamb.com.au

Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum

 

[JohnRBaker]

Before we incorporated the Parasolid kernel into UG/NX, we used to have a general-purpose 'abort' command (Ctrl-Shift-L) which would work about 95% of the time (only if you were actually writing something to the disk would this be disabled). Unfortunately, when you're dealing with passing something to and from a 'black-box' subprogram (i.e., a 'kernel), like Parasolid, your options become very limited. The calling application, in this case NX, has no control over the internal data being manipulated by Parasolid and can only use strictly defined calls to pass data to, initiate an operation, and receive data back from the kernel. That's just the way it is. The risk of halting the kernel is such that it's generally safer to simply kill the session altogether.

Note that we've replaced the 'Ctrl-Shift-L' scheme with the on-screen 'Work in Progress . . . Press Stop to interrupt this operation' mini-dialog . If you see this, it's safe to select the 'Stop' button and abort the NX operation underway. Unfortunately, there is a very limited number of places where you will ever see this option being presented.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[cowski]

Perhaps GTAC meant that for the particular operations that were being performed, only 1 core could be used.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Perhaps, but that would be no different than any previous release.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.