Hello,
I am IT for a manufacturing company, that employs 12 dedicatedmechanical engineers. I need some solid feedback on hardware andperformance, most of my engineers complain of perpetualinstability, slow performance, etc.. We have been using SolidWorkssince 2001Plus, currently on 2009 SP2.0.
All of our engineering files are kept on the network. I have adedicated file server that has two gigabit NICs bound together(with Intel's utility), and the server is connected to an external7 hard disk RAID-5 array via fiber (love my Apple XServe RAID!).The engineers and the server are connected to a gigabit switch withCAT-6 wiring.
The individual engineers are identically configured (onlydifference is 3 systems have a different motherboard):
Intel Core 2 Duo 3.0Ghz
4gb RAM
PNY Quadro FX1700
Raptor 15k RPM hard drives
XP 32-bit (except the lead engineer, we're experimenting with himon XP 64)
Approved nVidia drivers from SW website
They were custom built by me, to lower the cost from purchasing aDell or HP highend workstation.
Most tech support calls go through the usual BS, virtual file sizechecks, driver version checks, etc and usually don't find problems.
I've considered going quad core, but its my understanding thatSolidWorks really only utilizes a single core, occasionally goingto a second if that function allows (like Cosmos analysis, which wedon't do). What about Xeon? Or Core i7?
The engineering manager would like to try a "SolidWorks Approved"sort of workstation from HP or Dell or whomever. Do they reallyprovide some sort of hardware optimization or SolidWorks-optimizedOS image? Or is it all marketing hooey?
I'm at a loss as to how to improve the overall experience for myusers. Is there some gaping hole I am missing? My users complain ofmultiple crashes in a day (everything from 'out of memory' errorsto generic application crashes), slow file and render operations,lags, etc.SolidworksAdministration
I am IT for a manufacturing company, that employs 12 dedicatedmechanical engineers. I need some solid feedback on hardware andperformance, most of my engineers complain of perpetualinstability, slow performance, etc.. We have been using SolidWorkssince 2001Plus, currently on 2009 SP2.0.
All of our engineering files are kept on the network. I have adedicated file server that has two gigabit NICs bound together(with Intel's utility), and the server is connected to an external7 hard disk RAID-5 array via fiber (love my Apple XServe RAID!).The engineers and the server are connected to a gigabit switch withCAT-6 wiring.
The individual engineers are identically configured (onlydifference is 3 systems have a different motherboard):
Intel Core 2 Duo 3.0Ghz
4gb RAM
PNY Quadro FX1700
Raptor 15k RPM hard drives
XP 32-bit (except the lead engineer, we're experimenting with himon XP 64)
Approved nVidia drivers from SW website
They were custom built by me, to lower the cost from purchasing aDell or HP highend workstation.
Most tech support calls go through the usual BS, virtual file sizechecks, driver version checks, etc and usually don't find problems.
I've considered going quad core, but its my understanding thatSolidWorks really only utilizes a single core, occasionally goingto a second if that function allows (like Cosmos analysis, which wedon't do). What about Xeon? Or Core i7?
The engineering manager would like to try a "SolidWorks Approved"sort of workstation from HP or Dell or whomever. Do they reallyprovide some sort of hardware optimization or SolidWorks-optimizedOS image? Or is it all marketing hooey?
I'm at a loss as to how to improve the overall experience for myusers. Is there some gaping hole I am missing? My users complain ofmultiple crashes in a day (everything from 'out of memory' errorsto generic application crashes), slow file and render operations,lags, etc.SolidworksAdministration
