New computer justification

I have been asked by my boss to try to gather some kind of data to
help justify the expense of upgrading our whole engineering group's
computers (approx. 18-20 seats).

Right now, we are using some real dinosaurs. They are not very much
fun to model on. They are so slow that you loose your train of
thought for having to wait so much. I'd say we spend just as much
time waiting as we do actually modeling or drawing.

The management and IS have talked about upgrading since I have been
working here (about 9 months). They even come as close as to spec a
new system from IBM (and it would have been rocket ships too). But
nothing ever happens. My guess is that nothing will happen until they
can no longer get support for these ancient systems.

Anyway, our current systems specs are all basically as follows:

Brand - Acer
P4 - 2.6GHz
2GB Ram
3Dlabs Wildcat VP880
Seagate Barracuda ST340014A - 40GB (formatted FAT32, yes you read that
correctly)
WinXP Pro SP2

These are basically office computers for today's standards. We do (or
at least attempt to do) some fairly complex parts and large assemblies
with these systems such as plastics, sheetmetal, wiring, etc. We also
run some analysis sometimes with Moldflow, Cosmos, and the built in
Geometry Compare utility. We would even like to get into doing some
Photoworks renders. But with these systems, it's near to impossible.

Does anyone know of any data, or any other means to gather/create data
that would help justify an upgrade? My boss is all for new systems.
And eventually it will have no choice but to happen. I just need to
provide him some ammunition with management and IS to help speed up
the process of getting new computers in here sooner.

Thanks,
Seth Renigar

 

Check out Anna Wood's thread at the SW disussion forum in the
"performance" section. She's creating a spreadsheet of benchmarks for
different systems. From what she's shown so far the E6600 Core 2
Duo's are pretty fast. You can also find the information on her blog
http://designsmarter.typepad.com/solidmuse/

 

a notepad beside the keyboard can be used to quickly jot down the wait
times for typical tasks. at the end of the day, this will add up.

maybe bob z. is a little dense... o.k., bob z. is A LOT dense. why
don't you (well, not *you* exactly) buy one or two computers every
month or so? this doesn't seem to or at least shouldn't hurt the
bottom line as bad as buying all at once. if a bad month comes along
and you can't buy the computers, you'll just have to wait until the
next month!
a previous employer of bob z. had approximately 20 seats of swx and
there was a process in place similar to this. they weren't buying
computers every month - it was closer to every 6 months, but it was
like a light at the end of the tunnel. everyone had hope. what is
life without hope?

bob z.
p.s. alfalfa, will you swing me before we have lunch? sure, darla.

 

There is a performance monitor that ships with every seat of Windows.
In it you can gather statistics including CPU time used by particular
executables. Once you collect a days worth of data on one or more
systems you look at the amount of time the CPU spends versus the
amount of time the person was actually sitting at the machine doing
something. If CPU time is above 10% of the time someone is using a
machine it is probably justifiable to change. Or you could just walk
around at lunch and at close of business and see how much time is
racked up in task manager (providing SW hasn't crashed).

TOP

PS CPU time is time spent waiting.

 

You have to justify it with numbers and dollars.

Use a spreadsheet, jot down hourly rates, time waiting, etc, wasted
time, crash/restarts, etc. Try to find some speeds of your machine,
video card, etc so you can compare it to the speeds of a new
machine(benchmarks). New computers are 'greener' too! Don't forget to
throw in a 22" widescreen LCD...go all out.

Now estimate a time to complete a task on the old and new, from boot
up to rebuilding an assembly. Convert the time wasted into dollars,
then multiply that by the number of seats. If you have to, rent a
computer for a couple days to compare apples to apples.

Your bosses will fall on the floor, when they realize how much the old
machines are costing them. Convert the dollars into 'Return on
Investment' time, and they will realize the longer they wait, the more
they are wasting. Compare it to driving a 20 year old vehicle. Also
tell them that computers have a life span of about 3-5 years, because
the technology has increased speeds by 4 times.

Bosses like to see the words 'Cost of ownership', and 'Return on
Investment'. Don't worry about your IS department, they are the ones
who will do the installation. Why does your IS depatment have all new
computers? I'll bet they do.

Put this into a nice report, take your bosses out to lunch, and have
them look it over.

samurai.

 

Seth,

From places I've worked, especially larger companies - the world is
controlled by accountants!
Therefore reduce it to what only they can understand = numbers.
This would be how much they are bleeding in time.
Hours numbers = dollars numbers.
I would imagine upgrades to computers will happen fairly soon after ?

 

Install Vista <g>?

 

I have published a Google Spreadsheet of the results for re-builds on
my punch holder part.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pz7wTpIkC7LA28ybEyxyTPw

Regards,

Anna Wood
http://designsmarter.typepad.com/solidmuse

 

Anna,

Been a while since I posted on this subject. Still no new computers
in site.

I showed your list to my boss and showed him where we fell in the list
(3rd from last at 348 sec). The fasted speed listed is approx. 3.5
times faster. That is a VERY significant difference.

Since this time is based on rebuild times, my boss asked me how much
time that would save us a day. I told him that I was not sure,
because it depended on how much time was spent rebuilding in a day.
He asked how many times we typically did a rebuild in a days time, so
I guessed at a number here. He asked me to start keeping a tic-mark
count of how many times I rebuild in a day.

I started doing this today and realized that it wasn't really going to
tell me what I needed to know, in order to help justify new
computers. What I truely need to know is not how many times I
rebuild, but how much time is spent rebuilding.

Does anyone know if there is some way to track how much time is spent
doing a rebuild during a day? Surely there has got to be some utility
or macro that turns on a timer or something when a rebuild begins, and
turns it off when the rebuild is finished. If not there should be.
If I could get an average time spent rebuilding in a day, based on the
comparisons in Anna's list, I could easily determine how much time
could be saved just doing rebuilds. This alone would definately be
enough to justify new systems. Not to mention other non-rebuild
related time savings.

Thanks for any help.

Seth

 

"Seth Renigar" <> a écrit dans le message de ...
Write the proc. time dedicated to SW on the task manager.

 

Seth, this sounds to me like another valuable tool that should be in
the SolidWorks toolset to allow the users to be able to quantify how
they spend their time, so they can evaluate efficiency compared to
other users and other machines.

This is the sort of down and dirty tool that is long overdue. And I
can see for users who do large assemblies, it could be a life/
frustration saver in getting FACTS in front of decision makers.

Bo

 

I don't follow what you are saying here. If you are talking about the
CPU column on the Processes tab, that is always fluctuating. It
doesn't add up the processing time.

Or is there something I am missing?

Seth

 

Bo,

Yeah I agree. It seems like someone would have already created some
sort of tool like this already. That's why I'm asking if anyone knows
of one.

I'm sure there are many of us that fight the battle with management
about computer upgrades. A tool like this would definately help a lot
of people that are frustrated using their turd computers, like me.
Though there would still be some in management that would not be
swayed by the numbers, it would still help the the majority.

Seth

 

if you go to the task manager and go to the process tab then go to

how much processor time each application is using.

You may be able to make a corellation to processor time used and processor
speed.


Steve R

I don't follow what you are saying here. If you are talking about the
CPU column on the Processes tab, that is always fluctuating. It
doesn't add up the processing time.

Or is there something I am missing?

Seth

 

This will show only the time for the current session, and SW pegs to core
when rotating the view no matter the processor. So, this will not givea
measure of time spent on rebuilds.

What is needed is an add-in that watches for rebuild events and times them,
writing a log that spans sessions. Beyond my abilities, unfortunately.
Something similar could also monitor load and save times, if I'm not
mistaken.

 

Dale,

I didn't know you could do this in the task manager. This is close to
what is needed.

But I agree with you. The important thing is that it needs to track
rebuild events only. Not everything that SW does. Even most of the
slower processors can handle the medial SW tasks without any
significant slowdown. There is no benefit to track CPU time for those
chores. I even saw the task manager tracking CPU time just by mousing
over faces.

However, this same add-in/utility/macro could also have added features
to help with justifying other hardware areas, such as what you
mentioned, load and save times. This might be useful to help justify
a new hard drive. But this would simply be a bonus, not necessary

Programming is like WAY over my head as well. Is anyone up to the
"task" of creating something like this?

Seth

 

You could create a performance log/alert and track all the values you're
looking for. It will take some setting up, but you get exact data. But no,
you can not track specific actions within the program, just what the system
resources are doing.

My best justification for a new computer is to set up an assembly that
requires a rebuild, bring in your boss to show him something or ask his
input, then tell him to hold on I this has to rebuild. Why he's there
staring at the Windows hourglass with you, he usually tells you to look into
getting a new computer. It takes only 1 time for them to realize how much
time you waste a day to justify new computers.

--Scott

 

There is a utility in windows called performance monitor. Go to >start>run
and type in perfmon this will bring up a utlity that will track
processor usage.

Go here:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/Windows2000Pro/reskit/part6/proch29.mspx?mfr=true


for a tutorial on using the app.


Have not used it myself but this came up by doing a google search using
"performance counters" as a search string.


Steve R

 

Swizzle,

I have done this many times. My boss is well aware of the need. But
he is kindof in the same boat. He has to give hard data to be able to
justify requesting $70,000 to replace all of our engineering
computers. He actually gave me the task of gathering this data.
Hence my need for an app to track rebuild times.

I'm open to any other sources or ideas to help gather the data needed
though....

Seth

 

There's really no polite way to put this...

Every minute your boss spends stroking his...err...ego...and
preventing your engineers from getting decent computers to work on is
costing your company money. LOTS of money.

It's not just rebuilds that will be faster with new systems -
everything will be 3x faster.

Let's say it saves on average 1 hour per designer/engineer per day.
At $50 per hour (I'm certain the burdened cost is far higher) x 18
users. Your boss's knuckle-dragging is costing your company $900 per
day or $216,000 per year!

An HP xw4400 2.6GHz C2D system with 2GB RAM and FX1500 is selling for
$2150 right now. You could probably get it for less from Dell and
other vendors.

Invest $38,700 or waste $216,000.

The choice is your boss's.