• Spring 2024 meetup in Calgary - tentative date Saturday, April 20/2024. Other regions are also discussing meet ups. If you want one in your area get going on organizing it! discussion
  • We are having email/registration problems again. Diagnosis is underway. New users sorry if you are having trouble getting registered. We are exploring different options to get registered. Contact the forum via another member or on facebook if you're stuck. Update -> we think it is fixed. Let us know if not.
  • Spring meet up in Ontario, April 6/2024. NEW LOCATION See Post #31 Discussion NEW LOCATION

CAD Forum intro

PeterT

Ultra Member
Premium Member
I am curious why you figure a "high end gamer card" wouldn't be good for fusion 360

I phrased that wrong. A high end gamer card may well be perfectly acceptable for graphics intensive apps: 3D cad, rendering, photo imaging. Like if you already have a good card & gaming is your primary thing, will it work ? Yes. For simpler models & low assembly count you wont see any difference, which I would guess is 99% of the people on this forum. Gaming is refresh intensive but (relatively) smaller facet processing count vs graphics intensive apps like 3D cad, rendering, photo-realism etc. even though those apps are more 'static'. So the GC architecture is orientated to graphics command process grinding. Even companies like NVidea offer cards in every price range & PC format, but they still kind of segregate them by primary task. The uber expensive GC cards are for uber intensive applications like medical imaging. Like I was saying, RAM is also important, they kind of compliment one another for 'typical' tasks. Slicing a section through a 500 part assembly is different processing than rendering fur, which is different again from calculating lighting/shading/reflection. Generally the more RAM the better because its cheap these days. For Cad state of the art fast processor can only go so far, which is more a function of how the math problem must be solved internally vs accessing multi core.

The other thing is kind of practical but important. The software itself is usually orientated around 'likely' graphics cards suited for the task whether we like it or realize it. Many will actually suggest specific cards and/or driver release numbers. Probably the number one problem is graphic issues resulting from cards & drivers that are fighting the software in some way ranging from just a bit slower to not working at all.

I'm no expert at this stuff, its way above my pay grade, but there is lots of info out there if you want to delve into it. There is always going to be a dude that says I'm running laptop X with integrated motherboard GC & no issues. And that's fine, it obviously meets his needs. Until it doesn't. A better metric is just run a standardized, documented benchmark test & record the time. If its 40 seconds instead of 5 then we are comparing apples to apples. If he is OK with 40 seconds then that's fine too. If the smoke came out, well good time for an upgrade the new stuff is always better LOL

this link kind of lays out the principles
https://www.graitec.co.uk/hardware/cad-workstation-guide/workstation-vs-gaming-graphics

there are tons of real world tests like this
https://www.solidworks.com/sw/support/shareyourscore.htm
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...-Comparison-What-Is-the-Meaning-of-This-1112/

core processing
https://www.cadtek.com/solidworks-use-multiple-cores/
 
Last edited:

Alexander

Ultra Member
Administrator
Cool I read through thesourcecad.com guide. There was one interesting takeaway there. It said Autodesk cad software is heavily CPU dependent. Also clock speed is more important than multi core performance. I wasn't expecting that because Autodesk lists there recommended CPU as being 3 GHz or greater, 6 or more cores. I would describe the Autodesk recommended specs as having low clock speed but having many cores.
 

PeterT

Ultra Member
Premium Member
Re laptops - times may have changed but I suspect the only reason you would buy a laptop for Cad is necessary portability, job, student etc. Because it generally costs more money to stuff power into a small box all other things equal. There are probably better links but I like the ones that elaborate on the specific software being considered & the intended modelling requirements - part count, complexity, rendering vs not, simulation vs not. That way you can move the dollar slider up or down to match budget to need. No sense having a kick butt workstation if you are modelling a few simple parts at any one time. And you wont be happy with an entry level PC manipulating a 1000 part assembly. https://laptopstudy.com/best-solidworks-laptop/

That's really the nub of it. If you have relatively simple needs, you actually don't need much these days. And technically, one should not really lump 2D cad with 3D cad even though they are 'drawing' packages. 3D makes bigger & different demands to hardware. And different software vendors make different processing decisions based on their intended customer base. I haven't run 2D apps in many years but I would imagine even the most basic PCs should run 2D at blistering speed. I mean nothing has fundamentally changed since AutoCad of the 90's as best I can tell.
 

Swharfin'

Out to pasture Red Seal Millwright
well in a nutshell a laptop suits me for portability reasons. If it works with F360 that's great I'll enjoy the pursuit of knowledge and a new challenge.
I'll find out in a day or two.
If I get jammed up & probably will I'm glad helps near at hand.
Thanks for all the info & links guys.
 

Swharfin'

Out to pasture Red Seal Millwright
It seems my F360 education is on hold indefinitely the reqd. upgrade $'s concerning my laptop aren't a high priority. I went to the Autodesk site and searched for system requirements Ha! the resent driver upgrade was the only acceptable requirement on the list.
 

Dabbler

ersatz engineer
One interesting thing I have found about recommendations for PCs for CAD, is that some i5 models outperform their i7 counterparts in a CAD situation. I would have expected the larger cache to be helpful, but apparently the programs are much larger than the cache.

I am currently upgrading my desktop in order to run FreeCAD better, and have followed this discussion with great interest.
 

PeterT

Ultra Member
Premium Member
I haven't looked at this stuff for so long my brain is rusty. But this is another good link.
https://www.cgdirector.com/best-pc-for-cad-autocad-solidworks/
Kind of breaks down the tasks & hardware impact. Of course hardware its ever evolving, todays cheap cards likely better than yesterdays high end. RAM & SSD used to be relatively expensive, now its cheap. I don't do any gaming so my decision process was pretty easy primarily driven by cad / photo type applications & staying within a budget. I do very little rendering although I thought one day I might dabble into some animation type apps like Maya or Blender.... but no time.

somewhat similar hardware discussion on Maya
https://www.workstationspecialist.c... GPU is best for,Pro series of graphics cards.
 

Dabbler

ersatz engineer
I had seen the first one already: it was the source for the I5 comment.

My budget is 600 - 700$. The monitor will be of course, extra.
 

kevin.decelles

Jack of all trades -- Master of none
Premium Member
Well, just unboxed my new 'desktop' this aftenroon. Went with a Lenovo m75q Gen 2 (small form factor), running AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 4750GE w/onboard Radeon Graphics. My ONLY graphical requirement here is Fusion, and a little railroad tycoon from 1990 when I get bored.

16GB ram, 512GB solid state drive, (dedicated 512MB ram allocated to memory card). 8 core, 16thread blah blah blah.

I bought a Ryzen 5 model (gen I) for the shop to drive the CNC mill. Great form factor, runs CNCLinux over ethernet with reasonable latency score -- so figured time for another one to replace an 10 year old Mac Mini. Fusion threw an error saying support for my OS was finished after April 1 (reached max OS version back in 2018). That sealed the deal for a new machine.

Fired it up, installed fusion, was logged in for 2 minutes, and got a graphic performance warning message.... You can run Help->Support and Diagnostics->Graphic Diagnostics to get the data on your setup. There is a link there to update drivers. Took me straight to the correct AMD page (no browsing), downloaded the updated drivers, reinstalled, message when away.

Not sure how best to stress test this. Looked at the solid works links, looks like you need solidworks.

Unit w/mouse+keyboard+windows 10 pro 64bit was $875

I don't shop around computers much anymore. I use it 9 hours a day for work but that is development tools + office suite etc. If I can buy it online at memory express i do -- they didn't have this line anymore so I went straight from Lenovo (lots of coupon codes etc. drive the price down.). If you have time and patience, some guys were in the 680 range for a similar machine by doing a bunch of shenanigans and using ebates/rakuten to get cash-back etc. I can't be bothered but did use the base coupon codes.
 

PeterT

Ultra Member
Premium Member
The benchmark tests I've seen presume you have the app installed. You select/download a standard model, 'run it' & generally record a time or extract some useful processing metrics. Then compare that score to others cataloged or posted by other testers who usually list their hardware. I've seen different model flavors like part complexity, rendering, large part assemblies, mate/motion evaluation... because people do different kinds of work, its not 1-stop shopping. Cad engines run differently, that's their secret sauce & they all claim they are more efficient & faster than the competition. There are plenty of generic PC bench marking tools but that's not really the same apples-apples comparison, hence the standard cad models using that specific software.

So... does Fusion have such a tool? One would think.... And you guys already have the app installed.

SW
https://help.solidworks.com/2019/English/SolidWorks/sldworks/t_benchmarking_hardware.htm

OnShape
https://cad.onshape.com/help/Content/webgl.htm

I thought Alibre had a similar tool too, but don't see it albeit I haven't followed them in a while. Just generic recs
https://www.alibreforum.com/forum/i...new-pc-alibre-hardware-recommendations.21446/
https://www.alibre.com/alibre-design-software-requirements/
https://www.alibreforum.com/forum/i...ter-for-alibre-some-thoughts-questions.21892/
 
Last edited:

YYCHM

(Craig)
Premium Member
1613019570688.png

Takes a long time to load 360 but once your in it's not so bad. Maybe more disk bound than anything?
 

Alexander

Ultra Member
Administrator
I watch a little bit of Linus tech tips on youtube. He recommended Cinibench R15 for 3D creative aps. I also use userbenchmark.com @kevin.decelles what ever you decide to try post your results. Ill run the same benchmark and do the same. I discovered i could get a 13% boost in performance by adjusting settings.
 
Top