Autocad and google sketchup and other computer build help

[jd254]

I would like to concentrate my career toward drafting or design engineering. I'm already working for a site planning / civil engineering office doing this work. I'm doing autocad 2d and google sketchup for 3d, but I would like to learn how to do everything else too (mainly 3d in autocad and any other software else you guys think I should learn for this field) For the life of me, I'm not understanding what autocad needs from a computer in terms of hardware.

I understand that it's mainly single threaded... so a highly clocked CPU is better over lower clocked multicore (doesn't matter, I'm getting a high clocked quad if anything)

I got 8gb of ram so that's more than enough...

1. What GPU do I look for? How do I know what I need? I understand video games GPU doesn't do much for these softwares. OpenGL is what it prefers. How do I go about looking for a card that supports this?

2. I'm assumming SSD is perferred over HDD. Is the HDD a bottleneck?

I'm not asking what is the best of the best, but I would like to know how to put together a PC that won't lag and jitter when I'm scrolling around a 3d sketchup of a warehouse with 50 trees surrounding it, trees that have 200 leaves on it. (I know... I could simply turn off that layer... not the point)

thx guys

I'm building a PC soon for my boss, and I can put together a $300 PC (amd quad core, free mobo, 4gb of ram, and 500gb HDD) what graphic card should I get on top of that?

 

[KGB]

Click ME!

 

[jd254]

Click ME!

I've seen this and it doesn't do much for me. just because it's "supported" and "recommended" doesn't mean anything. Windows recommend 2gb of RAM and that's definitely not enough to run windows. I would like some wisdom, not facts.

is it worth it to buy a quadro4 to replace my GTX 460?
I'm doubting that OC'ed Q8200 is bottlenecking my system, but will an i7 give me what I need?

wisdom... maybe I should go to an autocad forum...

 

[Farmer]

TBH, if all you're doing is Sketchup and 2D Autocad, I'm sure any graphics card currently in production will do you fine. Focus money on RAM, CPU and SSD.

If you actually do a lot of solid modelling/solid rendering or 3D graphics, then maybe a Quadro is a worthwhile investment.

 

[jd254]

TBH, if all you're doing is Sketchup and 2D Autocad, I'm sure any graphics card currently in production will do you fine. Focus money on RAM, CPU and SSD.

If you actually do a lot of solid modelling/solid rendering or 3D graphics, then maybe a Quadro is a worthwhile investment.

I would like to start learning "solid modelling/solid rendering or 3D graphics" and a jittery computer will just deter me.

I'm looking at the Nvidia website, and I see the Quadro 600 (entry level) is under $200.

my understanding of "entry level" is that it sucks. Am I naively mistaken? I'm still looking into as we speak, but I would like to hear what ppl think about hardware for these types of software.

 

[Farmer]

But your current system I think is also up to the task. I use SolidWorks from time to time, it ran fine on my HD4870, it runs fine on my new GTX560Ti, and it even runs fine on my 2 year old laptop (has a mobile Quadro).

The Quadro has a benefit when/if you render scenes frequently, like out of Maya or 3DS Max or something like that, but that is mostly art/computer graphics. I use SolidWorks mostly for design, and while it has a rendering feature to make presentation-grade graphics, I rarely use it. Otherwise, for the real-time rendering that occurs when you are using something like SolidWorks or AutoCad, most graphics cards are fine. Sure, Quadro probably makes it run faster, but I'm sure your GTX460 comes to 99% of that performance.

It depends on what you are designing? Is it artistic design for the purpose of creating computer graphics, or is it engineering design, where you make a part in SolidWorks and do stuff like finite element analysis for heat, stress, fluids, etc? The former is GPU intensive, the latter is CPU intensive (at least for a majority of implementations).

 

[jd254]

But your current system I think is also up to the task. I use SolidWorks from time to time, it ran fine on my HD4870, it runs fine on my new GTX560Ti, and it even runs fine on my 2 year old laptop (has a mobile Quadro).

The Quadro has a benefit when/if you render scenes frequently, like out of Maya or 3DS Max or something like that, but that is mostly art/computer graphics. I use SolidWorks mostly for design, and while it has a rendering feature to make presentation-grade graphics, I rarely use it. Otherwise, for the real-time rendering that occurs when you are using something like SolidWorks or AutoCad, most graphics cards are fine. Sure, Quadro probably makes it run faster, but I'm sure your GTX460 comes to 99% of that performance.

It depends on what you are designing? Is it artistic design for the purpose of creating computer graphics, or is it engineering design, where you make a part in SolidWorks and do stuff like finite element analysis for heat, stress, fluids, etc? The former is GPU intensive, the latter is CPU intensive (at least for a majority of implementations).

exactly what I needed to hear. my work is more engineering. I'll load Google Sketchup again with my new GTX 460 and see how it performs. If it's still jittery when I load the trees, I'll look into an SSD (that's what you would recommend, correct?)

 

[BoomerD]

FWIW, when I was in school, (a couple of years ago) I ran AutoCad 2005 on my Sony laptop with a Pentium M 740 (1.73 GHz) processor and nVidia 128 Mb video.

It was a bit slow, but I managed to do everything I needed to do with it. My BIGGEST complaint was that lines didn't LOOK straight, (jagged) but they printed just fine, plus, the 15/4" screen on the laptop made it a bit awkward to work...but with a bit of panning and scrolling, I got everything done.

It's far from any "recommended" hardware, but for me, it worked. I suspect that any GOOD current video card will handle things just fine. I also ran Sketch-Up on the laptop w/o any significant problems.

 

[jd254]

FWIW, when I was in school, (a couple of years ago) I ran AutoCad 2005 on my Sony laptop with a Pentium M 740 (1.73 GHz) processor and nVidia 128 Mb video.

It was a bit slow, but I managed to do everything I needed to do with it. My BIGGEST complaint was that lines didn't LOOK straight, (jagged) but they printed just fine, plus, the 15/4" screen on the laptop made it a bit awkward to work...but with a bit of panning and scrolling, I got everything done.

It's far from any "recommended" hardware, but for me, it worked. I suspect that any GOOD current video card will handle things just fine. I also ran Sketch-Up on the laptop w/o any significant problems.

I have a P4 (the old one without hyper threading) with integrated video chipset at work, and I'm doing autocad 05 and 10 on it. I know they "work" and I can manage with these hardware, I just want it to work well when I throw a lot of things at it. I cant have the jagged lines, cuz in google sketchup, those jagged lines gets printed as is, jagged. I turned up AA in google sketchup but 2x was the best my dell m11x could do.

thank you for your input though

 

[BoomerD]

The "jagged line issue" was only in AutoCad, and never printed. Sketch-Up was fine. A bit slow, but otherwise worked like it should.

I'm NOT recommending ancient hardware, merely relating personal experience and showing that the "professional-grade" video solutions aren't always needed. Supported? yes. Needed? No.

My version of AutoCad isn't compatible with Vista, so I can't tell you how well it works with my nVidia GTX460 1 Gb card, but I suspect it would rock AutoCad.

 

[mfenn]

I've seen this and it doesn't do much for me. just because it's "supported" and "recommended" doesn't mean anything. Windows recommend 2gb of RAM and that's definitely not enough to run windows. I would like some wisdom, not facts.

The wise answer is "it depends".

The certified pro-level cards are absolutely guaranteed to work 100% when used with similarly certified drivers. This is obviously important for production use, when troubleshooting an issue could cost thousands of dollars per hour of lost productivity. Not so much for casual experimentation. Your GTX 460 will probably work just fine, but Autodesk isn't willing to bet money on it.

 

[Concillian]

Been a while since I was doing solid modeling, but the way it used to work between the "consumer cards" and the "professional cards" was that they were the same exact thing, except for the little man inside them.

If you try to run Catia or Pro/E or some other program that will only be used by professionals:
- on a "consumer level" card, the little man says "lolwut? no comprende, dude."
- on the Quadro card, the little man says "but, of course!" (complete with French accent).

There also used to be softmods for defeating this restriction of consumer level cards.

If the programs you're using do not have such restrictions, then it's very likely the consumer level card will be a significantly better value.

 

[jd254]

Been a while since I was doing solid modeling, but the way it used to work between the "consumer cards" and the "professional cards" was that they were the same exact thing, except for the little man inside them.

If you try to run Catia or Pro/E or some other program that will only be used by professionals:
- on a "consumer level" card, the little man says "lolwut? no comprende, dude."
- on the Quadro card, the little man says "but, of course!" (complete with French accent).

There also used to be softmods for defeating this restriction of consumer level cards.

If the programs you're using do not have such restrictions, then it's very likely the consumer level card will be a significantly better value.

any way i can find out which program has what restrictions to what cards or am I going to have to do some serious googling?

 

[IcePickFreak]

FWIW my 8800gts had no problems when I would do some Autodesk Inventor work at home on my machine. It was easily on-par with the Quadro cards (new at the time, although I forget which model) we had at work, at least for the assemblies were mainly worked with that averaged around 5000 parts. As was said earlier, unless you're doing a ton of rendering (and even then only in certain cases) will you really see a benefit of a way more expensive Quadro card.

 

[mfenn]

any way i can find out which program has what restrictions to what cards or am I going to have to do some serious googling?

The system requirements will probably only list the "certified" cards, so you'll probably have to rely on forum anecdotes I'm afraid. 🙁

 

[Modelworks]

I would like to start learning "solid modelling/solid rendering or 3D graphics" and a jittery computer will just deter me.

I'm looking at the Nvidia website, and I see the Quadro 600 (entry level) is under $200.

my understanding of "entry level" is that it sucks. Am I naively mistaken? I'm still looking into as we speak, but I would like to hear what ppl think about hardware for these types of software.

Don't get a Quadro unless you can afford to really spend the money for a mid to high end card. You will not be happy.

Autodesk is realizing that more and more professionals are starting to use gamer cards for work and they are adapting accordingly. In the past they didn't even test the gamer cards, now they are actually including some of them in beta testing for new products.

Autodesk for the most part has changed the rendering engine on the 2012 products . The new rendering engine favors cuda based hardware which means you should look at Nvidia cards.

Get a GTX260 or better with at least 512MB ram and you will be fine. I still use a 8800GTS 640MB card for one of my workstations and it works fine.


A quote from autdoesk to beta testers

A word of warning, as with any new viewport system that works a lot of magic, don't be surprised if there are glitches on your favorite GPU. Since the majority of you use game cards - which aren't technically supported (because there are about 500 variations of game boards out there) we cannot completely predict how things will work on every variation. We had a fairly large range of cards in our beta program, and they are all working, so we're hoping that the rest of you won't find anything too strange. If you do, please report it!

NVIDIA CUDA-enabled GPU hardware will significantly accelerate the rendering process.

 

[wwswimming]

CPU AMD Phenom II X4 925 $125
CPU Cooler AMD boxed heatsink/fan $0
Motherboard ASRock M3A770DE $60
RAM G.Skill 4 GB (2 x 2 GB) DDR3-1333 (PC3 10600) Model F3-10666CL9D-4GBNS $40
Graphics Sapphire 100315L Radeon HD 6850 1 GB $170
Hard Drive Samsung Spinpoint F4 HD322GJ/U 320 GB SATA 3Gb/s $43
Case Xigmatek Asgard II B/O CPC-T45UE-U01 $30
Power Antec EarthWatts Green EA380D 380 W $40
Optical Lite-On 24x DVD Burner SATA iHAS 124-04 $19
Total Price
$527

hope this formatting works.

OK, it's kind of Dali-esque.

anyway, that's the parts list for the most recent $500 "System Builder Marathon, March 2011: $500 Gaming PC"

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/budget-gaming-pc-phenom-ii-radeon-hd-6850,2903.html

it's WAY more than sufficient.

the one caveat is the drivers for the video card, video card stability with your aps, etc. for that i'd suggest an older, more time-tested & proven video card.

and, a few more Gigs of RAM wouldn't hurt.

 

[mfenn]

CPU AMD Phenom II X4 925 $125
CPU Cooler AMD boxed heatsink/fan $0
Motherboard ASRock M3A770DE $60
RAM G.Skill 4 GB (2 x 2 GB) DDR3-1333 (PC3 10600) Model F3-10666CL9D-4GBNS $40
Graphics Sapphire 100315L Radeon HD 6850 1 GB $170
Hard Drive Samsung Spinpoint F4 HD322GJ/U 320 GB SATA 3Gb/s $43
Case Xigmatek Asgard II B/O CPC-T45UE-U01 $30
Power Antec EarthWatts Green EA380D 380 W $40
Optical Lite-On 24x DVD Burner SATA iHAS 124-04 $19
Total Price
$527

I'd probably drop the GPU down to something on the level of a 5770 and use the $85 AR savings to get a MSI H67MA-E35 and an i5 2300 for about $30 more total expenditure. You could even keep the budget the same if you went with an H61 board.