_Arron_
Posted 19 February 2018 - 09:28 PM
Hi Bigfella , if your planning on upgrading or replacing your PC check out the SolidWorks site (http://www.solidwork...ardtesting.html) before spending any money as a good or expensive gaming graphics card may not be ideal for SolidWorks (sorry if you've already checked this out).
Started using AutoCadd for work in 2005 and my work switched to SolidWorks in 2008 (predominantly sheet metal parts/switchboards & weldmets)
Edited by Arron, 19 February 2018 - 09:28 PM.
Socially Distant
Posted 19 February 2018 - 11:00 PM
Cheers Arron, I've already bought two Gigabyte (NVIDIA) GTX1080's but I just went to that site you gave and they're not listed for some reason? Strange because I'd think they would be one of the most popular GPUs.
If they're not listed does that mean they're not supported somehow? I would've thought anything would do so long as it runs OpenCL?
I've been slowly buying parts to build this new PC over the last 12 months or so and I have almost everything now except the CPU (trying to save up for a 7980XE), which unfortunately costs almost four grand by itself!
In my typical fashion I jumped in and bought the GTX1080's a while ago now just before they released the GTX1080Ti for basically the same price, so I feel a little ripped off there but not much I can do about that now. I made sure to choose a MB that has Thunderbolt 3 (x2 ports) so later I can expand with external GPU enclosures really easily anyway, it's just a question of money.
_Arron_
Posted 20 February 2018 - 01:56 AM
I am no tek or PC expert , i am a sheet metal worker but i doubt you would have any problems . Quite some time ago i used to use it on my home pc and that wasn't spec'd for it , just made from parts i could afford (and more budget priced).
Then they switched to a network license instead of the single seat and i was no longer able to use it at home.
At a guess the PC's and graphics cards listed on the SolidWorks site would probably be more workstation equipment.
There has been the odd graphics glitch where most of the screen freezes and only a small square on the screen is active but it's probably been a few years since i had seen that one and when it happened it was only temporary.
I have seen other things over time where tool bars (or the icon's in them) don't display properly and there's other minor annoyances that happen even with the machines at work that running graphics card drivers downloaded from the SolidWorks site.
Can't remember the spec's on the current PC's the other draftsman and i use at work (probably 2 years old now) but the previous ones were about 5 years old at a guess (probably more) and while there was a noticeable difference wasn't a huge difference in performance unless working with large assembly or parts with complicated patterns (large patterns slow things down) although network speed can be an issue (all our work is stored on a server)
I think there was quite a difference in the rendering speed when generating images like the ones you have posted from old (old pc's were 2 core) to the new PC but we don't do a lot of that .
As a side note the old pc's had OCZ solid state drives , they ran for 8 hours a day 5 days a week (sometimes Saturday) for years and neither of the ones in those two PC's had a problem ,think they were only 120gb
Edited by Arron, 20 February 2018 - 02:01 AM.
Socially Distant
Posted 20 February 2018 - 04:58 AM
I'm not building this new PC exclusively for CAD use, it's probably more geared toward editing GoPro footage, which this current machine basically refuses to do, but having it for SolidWorks as well will be a nice little bonus. I watch YouTube videos where people have Instant3D (I think that's what it's called) enabled and that's something I can only dream about on this PC, but hopefully the new one will make that dream a reality.
My current PC has only Hard Disk Drives but I have a 1TB Samsung SSD for the system drive of the new PC which should speed things up considerably (or so I'm told), plus 8TBs of file storage on HDDs, plus a further 10TB on separate drives for backups (damn GoPro footage eats HDD space for breakfast, I have 128GB SD cards for the camera and they only hold about 2 hours of filming in HD)!
Anyhow, I'm running SW2017 on Windows 7 x64 and it freezes up all the time, especially during renderings, but I suspect it's because I have a really old CPU and graphics card and no OpenCL whatsoever.
Although I do think there is one bug in the software, but it only happens on trying to do the first edit (of any feature) on an existing part, where the whole program goes unresponsive (as in greyed-out) for 5 or 10 minutes. It never happens when creating a new part, and it only happens on certain existing parts, I reckon it may have something to do with the file being corrupted though, like SW has to stop and repair something before you can work on it? I used to use task manager to force-close SW all the time when this happened, but found it doesn't help because it just does it again once you restart the program anyway, so now I just walk away and make a cup of coffee or something and it always comes good eventually.
I've done a few things in sheet metal myself, one was a copy of an Alphacool LCD Display...
...and it's interesting to use the "Flatten" feature...
... but I've since abandoned the sheet metal route and redesigned the whole thing for a 3D printer instead so that was time well spent (not). 
I seriously doubt any one person could possibly use all the features in SW, I'd guess I would've spent thousands of hours using it so far and I still discover new features all the time, damn it's one complex little piece of software!
_Arron_
Posted 21 February 2018 - 10:17 PM
When we switched the the SSD's at work it defiantly sped up Solidworks , i switched my home PC not long afterwords and wouldn't use anything else.
Some of the things that we tried to speed things up back then were setting the page file to equal to or twice the amount to ram and dumming down the windows 7 visualization settings (currently running windows 7 on the work PC's)
I also tend to work with real view graphics and perspective as well as most of the visualization settings off.
We are on 2017 SP3 at the moment and it seems fairly stable and bug free , think we are running i7 processors 32g ram and NVIDIA Quadro Q4000 graphics cards , can't remember the spec's on the old CP's but they were only 2 core and 8 gb of ram.
From what i have had happen in the past when files become corrupt (have seen the term toxic used) they aren't reparable and any assemblies they are in can be problematic .
The sheet metal flat pattern saves us a lot of work and reduces a lot of mistakes over when we use to use Autocadd , you can generate a DXF file that can be used to program a turret punch or laser cutter (we have both where i work)
We used to have to draw the two separately with any bend allowances , quite a lot of scope for mistakes.
Have you tried using an exploded view in an assembly ? very simple to do , go to insert , exploded view then drag the parts to where you want them.
It creates a new configuration so you can toggle between them and display it in a drawing in either state.
I hear what you are saying about it having a lot of features , have been using for work for some time and mainly use the sheet metal and weldmets.
Have drawn one or two things to print on the Aldi printer and have also downloaded models from Thingaverse.
Forum Fixture
Posted 22 February 2018 - 09:09 AM
Socially Distant
Oh My, Don't you post alot
View Garage
Posted 31 May 2018 - 10:02 AM
That little gearbox is awesome. I'm guessing that the pictures you have put up over the last 12 months were on photobucket Andrew? They won't work for me.
Socially Distant
Posted 31 May 2018 - 10:19 AM
No they were on Postimage, but something happened to the postimage.org URL (I think it got reported as "unsafe" or something) and instead of fixing it they moved all their servers to postimage.cc
As a result, all the old links no longer work. The photos are all still up in my account folders, they just have different URLs now.
*IF* we were allowed to edit our own posts here I could update all the links and the photos would show again... but we can't, so I'm screwed. This is not the only thread affected either (by far), all those 'for sale' threads that I uploaded photos for (thinking they would be permanent) also need changing now.
CABIN ENGINE CONTROLS GALORE
Posted 31 May 2018 - 11:10 AM
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