Computer spec for running Autodesk Inventor 11.

[Focus2.0Zetec]

Don’t know if I’ll get much help on here but here goes.

I work as a Mechanical Design Engineer designing production machinery, I’ve been using Autodesk Inventor since January and I’m having real problems with speed, graphics and computer crashing.

I’m dealing with assembly files of approx. 5000 parts.

My computer spec is as follows:

 Pentium 4.

 3 GHz, 3GB RAM

 ATI FireGL 3100 Graphics card.


Could anyone in the know tell me the sort of machine I should be using for this application. I’m not saying money’s no option but I’m looking for a system which is more than capable and suitable for working of much more complicated assemblies in the future, at present it looks like I’ve got the minimum spec that Autodesk recommends.

[smp]

Chris,

Spec looks fine as it is - I've got it running on a 1.7 GHz processor with 1.5 GB RAM.

If you think it appears to be running slow - have you installed SP1 ?

It was only released last week and seems to solve a load of basic issues.

Also, have you enabled the general and assembly tools ?

.....SDKToolsUsersAssembly Tools
.....SDKToolsUsersGeneral Tools

Another thing to check is that you have the latest compatible graphics driver installed. It's meant to be a bit fickle if the wrong one is installed.

With 3Gb of RAM, have you enabled the 3GB switch ?

If I think of anything else, I'll add more here.


Simon

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Edited by smp on Friday 16th June 07:15

[Focus2.0Zetec]

Thanks Simon

Yes I switch over to 3 gig mode on start-up, I’ve had our Autodesk reps over today who attempted to install SP1 but the company’s version of windows installer is out of date so I need to sort that next week. I’ve persuaded our IT people to sort me out with an identical pc with a faster graphics card which will only have Autodesk stuff (Inventor/vault/autocad mechanical) and Internet Explorer installed, I’ll then use my current pc for outlook etc and use the new unit as a stand-alone design unit. I’ve just got a space traveller to try and improve zoom/rotate etc and that appears to have made a small improvement. The problems I’m having is with assemblies of a few thousand parts the pc keeps crashing and when zooming or rotating all the parts just turn into polygons until I stop moving the rotate/zoom function.
I work in assemblies of around 10,000 parts and the current system just doesn’t seem to be able to handle it, could you give me some idea of the level of performance you get from Inventor, things such as speed constraints can be made, speed of inserting parts from contents center and creating drawing views etc.

Thanks

Chris

[Zad]

I *think* the ATI FireGL 3100 is 128MB which may be limiting things.

No matter how much it is loaded though, it shouldn't crash. Can you give us any information from the debug report or blue screen? It may be a driver issue, faulty memory, or an OS problem. What OS / service pack is it, and when was the OS last installed?

[Focus2.0Zetec]

Zad

Although I’m in no way an expert, I agree with you regards the graphics card (It is 128Mb), when looking on various websites it describes it as an “an excellent ENTRY-LEVEL card”, I don’t consider a 10k + assembly an entry level requirement, I’m running windows xp service pack 2, system was new last October.

When I look in the Event viewer after the PC has crashed or locked up no relate errors are recorded.

As I say I’m more of a user than an expert when it comes to this kind of thing but I agree the graphics card is no where near up to the job.

Chris

[aldi]

I'd deffo start with installing the latest certified drivers for the FireGL and this SP1 of which you speak. Has the PC ever crashed when not running Inventor?

[Focus2.0Zetec]

I've installed the latest drivers for graphics card today and didn't notice any decent improvement, will be putting sp1 on next week. Our company has 12 engineers working on assemblies of around 25 parts and there experiencing issues they didnt have on release 10, i've always had problems but as i'm the only one working in large assemblies there's only me who has big problems. The pc is fine in all other applications and has never crashed since new.

Chris