What is the "Best" System to Run SW 1

Not sure anyone could identify the "best" system, but there are some features you should consider. The CPU should be the fastest Pentium you can afford. The AMD chip set can be effective and more economical, but there are some compatibility issues which they say have been fixed or patched.
Check the SW website for video cards which work well and pick the fastest with the most memory.
However much RAM you think you need, get more. For assemblies and drawings you will benefit from all the memory you can plug into the system.
We use WNT for our OS, others may suggest W2000.
Discussion with computer types leads me to believe there is no speed advantage to SCSI. The network speed is more important. You can save files on the network but keep a local working copy if it seems slow. Your network drive should probably be a RAID system.
What you may want to consider is your backup procedures. For a serious professional installation I suggest a two week cycle:
Each day backup changed files to tape. Keep a rotating two week set of these tapes.
Each Friday [last work day of the week] backup all your CAD files. It would be cheap to put these on CD.
Move alternate Friday file backups off site into permanent storage. You could mail them to your aunt in Cheyenne, or use a professional storage facility.
Cleanup finished project directories and save them on to CD just in case.
Leave as many files as possible on the network hard drive until the system manager whines really hard.
Try to get a 3D Spaceball if the money is available. I have been promised one with our next big funded project.
I have a 20" Viewsonic G810 monitor which I love. A monitor which can have multiple setups is nice since you will want to do CAD in a darkened room with low screen brightness. You will need a brighter screen when the lights are on.
Be sure to have a local battery UPS. Replace the battery every year.
Learn to mouse with your left hand. It frees your right hand to type and use the spaceball. No, really!

Hardie 'some is good, more is better, too much ought to be just about right' Johnson

The FEA is going to be the hardest on your system. Analysis of large models can take quite a bit of time. Make sure that you have a ton of RAM (1GB is what I use). This will have a significant impact on the time required to process an analysis.

As far as the CPU, Video Card and monitor, I agree with SnowCrash.

I do not agree with the idea of using a network for most of your FEA work though. If you get a local SCSI drive, use it! The time to access data over a network is significantly slower than a local SCSI drive. This will be especially true while doing FEA. You can perform your analysis then move the data files to the internet when they are finished. You may also want to have the ability to turn off any active virus software while performing an FEA analysis. I have tested this on our system and the virus software increased the time for one analyis by about 30%.

DimensionalSolutions@Core.com
While I welcome e-mail messages, please post all thread activity in these forums for the benefit of all members.

Memory is the number 1 factor when it comes to down time (waiting) between operations, as a minimum I would suggest 1gb (more if you can afford it) of the fastest memory you can get. Try to get the specs on your motherboard, you want something with a very fast FSB (front-side bus). It doesn't do you any good to have a 1.7ghz P4 & DDR memory if the MB only has a 200mhz FSB.

Stay away from Windows XP untill they get a few more updates under their belts, stick with NT or W2k.

Don't go light on the monitor either, 20" would be minimum, and to save your sight, try to get a flat display screen (different than a LCD screen). Remember, if you are like most people that post here, you spend a good portion of your day staring at your monitor.

You must also be ready to convience the Higher Ups that they will save time in the future if they spend $4-8k now on a real workstation, rather than only looking at the initial outlay of capital. After your workstation gets in-house, be prepared to also do some benchmark testing to prove ROI (return on investment). But make sure this benchmark testing is on real-world models and fuctions that your company does on a daily basis. The standard benchmarks are fine, but the raw numbers are just numbers. You will be able to show a gain if comparing apples and apples. "Happy the Hare at morning for she is ignorant to the Hunter's waking thoughts."

SnowCrash,

You swear by the space ball & I know others do too. I asked about them on this or another similar site recently and was chided for even suggesting it. I think the comment was something like, "Unless you need to simultaneously rotate the part and edit it, you don't need a space ball". I haven't tried one, but thought it would greatly increase my productivity.

What about using your left hand on the spaceball & your right on the mouse? It sounds more natural. Isn't it?

Thanks for the insight.

Charley Leonard

My experience has been that if there is more than one person using the software, or if there will ever be more than one person using the software, that files need to be on the network to maintain all the relationships between files. The assembly won't show that part if it is on a computer that is turned off. The network speed is important too, I've found. Our performance improved very noticably when our network was upgraded. The other advantage of using the network for Solidworks files is that it frees up memory for FEA. I use Nastran for Windows and like it, but memory is the most important constraint when running it. Not just RAM but hard drive space as well. It uses much more memory than Solidworks.

Finally, I have successfully used an AMD chip, but the 3D Labs Oxygen graphics card that I use does some weird things although it is on the list of good cards.

Charley et al,
I started out using the left hand for graphic manipulation on Prime Medusa and PC 286s running Autocad. This involved a lot of typing and minimal mousing. The systems had some kind of menupad and hockey puck pointer, so it was a sequence of pick a command, type some parameters, enter some numbers. The number pad is on the right, and since our typing skills were minimal, left hand mousing was better.

A few years from now we will look back and laugh at ourselves for using the stupid, inefficent, ridiculous mouse. What will we be using? I hope eventually to be selling one to you.

Whenever I teach secretaries to use a PC I do it the same way. Then I teach them the keyboard commands for word processors and spreadsheets instead of the menus. Secretaries hate the mouse since it distracts them from the keyboard. Secretaries are trained keyboard people.

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I had forgotten about storing files out on the internet. I tried that early on, but after some of the sites went away, I gave up. It is a great concept but security is a concern and you still need a physical backup media somewhere. You can however store a lot of data on a free website host.

As to storing files on the network, dsi is right about the speed issue - local can be faster on saves and loads. It depends on the system specs. sTstanley is right about the problems with lost parts on other local drives. The other thing is when you work local and save on the network, references can get screwy. Some networks have been known to go down and bring the whole department to a halt, so either way you takes your chances. . .

SnowCrash 'should have taken typing instead of shop' Johnson

Well we got our new systems, Thanks for all the suggestions. We picked up two P4 2GHz, 1 gig of ram and we were supposed to get 64mb 3D labs Wildcat, but I think they were on back order or something so we only got 32mb, but I think the other will come soon. 7200 rpm HDs, but not SCSI seem a little pricey for no proven results. So now I got to do a little test-driving and I'm actually looking forward to getting a speeding ticket.
Regards,
Mike

Remember to bench mark some real world actions that your company (more specifically you) do on a daily basis. Pick something simple, say open a large assembly (fully resolved), open a part in that assembly, rebuild it, and then rebuild the entire assembly and save it. Time this action on your old computers a few times (at least 3 time on several different comps) and then on your new system.

Since you know what you are getting paid, you can directly link the time savings. &quot;Happy the Hare at morning for she is ignorant to the Hunter's waking thoughts.&quot;

Here is a tip for those of you that are speed freaks - the American Megatrends MegaRAID card, the same SCSI RAID card that Dell (et.al.) OEM's in their high end servers. The trick is, forget about the actual RAID aspect of the card, the real speed kick comes from loading up the on-board cache (72 pin simms) with 64M of RAM and then configuring the board for read/write access. Effectively it is a writeback cache for your hard drive - the card has an Inter i960 CPU to handle reads and writes to the SCSI hard drives.

A realwork increase in performance of 25% in anything hard drive accesses affect would not surprise me, I have seen database queries run 3x as fast.

Frank

PS - I have one ready to build my next high end system around, but it is not for sale. The trick is getting one that can be configured read/write cache, the Adaptec Raid card will not do this ( I love Adaptec, but in this case it doesn't do what I need )