Graphics Systems SolidNotes

Graphics Drivers for 2008 and Windows Vista

In conjunction with the release of SolidWorks 2008, Microsoft Windows Vista users can now download certified driver version 6.14.11.6250 (NVIDIA version 162.50) from the Hardware & Graphics Cards webpage (http://www.solidworks.com/pages/services/videocardtesting.html). This driver is certified for use with SolidWorks 2008 for the following NVIDIA cards:

Quadro FX 350
Quadro FX 550
Quadro FX 560
Quadro FX 1400
Quadro FX 1500
Quadro FX 3400
Quadro FX 3450
Quadro FX 3500
Quadro FX 4500
Quadro FX 4600
Quadro FX 5500
Quadro FX 5600

No certified Vista drivers are posted at this time for any ATI cards, laptop cards (vendors such as Dell, HP, etc.) or for SolidWorks 2007. More drivers will be made available for downloading as soon as they complete the SolidWorks certification process.

Display turned sideways?

Last night, a friend of mine called me at home, desperate for some computer help. His wife was working on her laptop for a report due the next morning, and their toddler got loose and natually banged on the keyboard. No physical damage was done, but the display on the laptop was rotated 90 degrees -- that is, the physical screen was fine but all of the dialog boxes and mouse movements were sideways!

I have to admit I was at a loss. It wasn't something that Windows would do, I thought -- maybe something specific on his laptop hardware. My fiance overheard my conversation and right away she knew what it was - hit the CTRL-ALT-Up Arrow. And it fixed it! I just had to ask her why...

It turns out that some graphics card drivers have "screen rotation" hotkeys. I'm guessing this was conceived for Tablet PCs, but apparently some drivers for regular desktops and laptops have this too. You might be able to go into the driver and disable the hotkeys -- see your documentation for your particular hardware. Anyway, if you run into this, it trying the key combinations listed below might save you some grief. This information might also be useful around April 1st ... :)

Ctrl-Alt-Up Arrow - right side up

Ctrl-Alt-Right Arrow - 90 degrees

Ctrl-Alt-Down Arrow - 180 degrees

Ctrl-Alt-Left Arrow - 270 degrees

Software OpenGL -- What Is It?

Software OpenGL is a SolidWorks setting that will tell SolidWorks to emulate OpenGL on it's own and not attempt to use the OpenGL support of the graphics card driver. In the "old days" this was used a lot on systems whose graphics drivers had no OpenGL support at all; Software OpenGL will automatically turn on when no OpenGL support is detected.

Most graphics cards these days will at least emulate OpenGL and therefore support the use of OpenGL calls from application software like SolidWorks, so that’s why SolidWorks did not automatically turn on the Software OpenGL option even if you're using an unsupported "consumer/game" graphics card.

Software OpenGL as a user-selectable option is useful for troubleshooting graphics card and driver problems, and in addition SolidWorks often performs better when you tell it to ignore the emulated OpenGL support on game and consumer-type graphics cards.

To set the Software OpenGL option in SolidWorks, you must open SolidWorks but have no parts, assemblies or drawings open. Then you can go to Tools > Options > Performance and toggle the option as needed. If you have a file open in SolidWorks when you try this, the option will be greyed out. Just close all data files but keep the SolidWorks program running and you will have access to the checkbox.

More Vista and SolidWorks

Well it's been a couple months form my last Vista post and I have had to opportunity to use Vista on a daily basis, let me take a moment to tell you what you can expect.

First my PC: I have a Dell M90 Laptop with 2 gigs of ram and a Quadro FX 2500M video card. Vista rates your PC on a performance scale they call the Windows Experience Index and gives it a base score. The base score currently ranges from 1 to 5.9 and the higher the better, my PC has a score of 4.8 and I notice no hardware problems while running Vista. I will tell you this, not even to consider upgrading to Vista unless you have a newer machine no more than a year old with a quality graphics card and a least 2 gigs of ram. Otherwise your Vista experience will be less then exciting, for example my home laptop runs vista and has a base score of 2.4 it has sound problems and runs slow, but the PC was never intended to run Vista and is a couple years old.

For the most part I like Vista a lot and when I switch back to my XP machine I miss it. The general feel of Vista should be familiar to you; the layouts are very similar and for the most part functions the same. It will take you a week or two to get comfortable with the new interface and to find where they moved some setting and commands. There is one thing I turned off right away -- and I mean right away! User account control or UAC, Microsoft's way of protecting you from well yourself. You will want to disable this for your user account in the user account area.

You will find a lot of nice features in the new Vista. Too many to talk about in this blog; the best thing is to jump in and try it for yourself. If you are going to run SolidWorks, just wait for 2008 to come out (2007 has a Pre-Release 2 Vista version); I wouldn't bother with 2007 at this point. I have been using 2008 Beta 4 in Vista and it works great (you're going to love the new 2008). Soon we will be able to talk about 2008 and it will be out later this summer. Until then, if you're the cutting edge type get ready to switch to Vista, so far its great and more and more programs and drivers become available every day.

Benchmark your SolidWorks hardware

Did you ever wonder how your computer hardware stacks up against other hardware when it comes to SolidWorks performance? Not sure how much better Brand X Newest Edition graphics card would be compared to what you already have? What you're looking for is a hardware benchmark.

There is no perfect benchmark, but there is at least one SolidWorks-specific benchmark test which can be run on SolidWorks 2007. It's from Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation, better known as SPEC. Go to their website at www.spec.org and check it out. You can compare your numbers against some very modern machines, such as the Dell Precision 390 and 490 series workstations.

When looking at this benchmark, keep in mind the datasets being used. If you have much larger assemblies than their test assembly, then any differences in file i/o will be magnified becuase you're doing more of that operation. It's not perfect but it's better than a "gut feel".

Quad-Core is it faster?

Quad core processors are no longer the future. Earlier this year Intel released the new Core 2 Extreme Quad Core processor, with all of this quadie goodness SolidWorks is sure to fly right? Well maybe, before you rush off and ask purchasing to get you one of these bad boys for the ultra low cost of around $1500 lets take a look at how they work.

For a program to take advantage of more then one processor it has to be "multithreaded". If you're like most people this may not mean a lot to you. Basically when an application is multithreaded it can do more then one thing at a time. Most PC programs (SolidWorks included) are not multithreaded; they approach tasks in a linear fashion (1 then 2 then 3 and so on). If an application is multithreaded it can take advantage of extra processors by doing things in parallel (1 and 2 at the same time). As you can guess this will increase your performance. If you would like a more in depth explanation about multithreading take a look here, but make sure you come back.

Now that we have a basic understanding of multithreading lets see how we can take advantage of this in SolidWorks. Currently SolidWorks only has one area of its program that is multithreaded: hidden line calculations. If you have a multiprocessor system SolidWorks will spin off a new process to run the hidden line calculations (you can see this in the task manager). There are a few other areas where SolidWorks will use the other processor but this is done internally without creating a new process. These areas are in opening files, doing mass properties calculations, and multi-body operations. What does this really mean for us in "real" numbers? About a 20-30% increase in performance compared to a single processor. Currently SolidWorks will only use two processes at maximum. Therefore a dual core will have the same performance benefit as a quad core at a significant cost savings.

Quad core technology is cutting edge, it's just too soon to recommend. As software works to keep up with technology we will see a benefit to having four processors. For now all the "Quadie goodness" can wait, spend the money on a Dual core with extra RAM or a better video card.

Graphics cards: more money doesn't equal proportionately more performance in Solidworks

A lot of people ask me what graphics cards they should use with Solidworks. While I am partial to the nVidia Quadro FX line, not all of the cards in that line are equally suitable for Solidworks. It's not simply a matter of video memory or dollars spent, but a matter of performance.

One of the reasons I like nVidia is because they are close to the Solidworks community, and they publish Solidworks benchmark numbers. This is invaluable when making a decision about which graphics card to purchase for your next Solidworks workstation. Go to www.nvidia.com, navigate to Products > Workstation. On the sidebar menu, there is a "Comparison Chart" which tells the story. Take a look at the sw-01 benchmark numbers to get a fairly accurate comparison between cards. Notice that, for example, the FX 4500 card rates just a teensy-tiny bit better than the FX 3500; but there is a $500 difference in price between the two! Is the FX 1500 really $300 better than the FX 560? Caveat emptor.