Slow mouse reactions on SW 2006

We have not updated SW in a while and we are now trying out SW 2006 SP 3.1
on a new system. The Engineers trying out the system are commenting on how
slow the performance is for mouse actions and I can see clearly what they
are complaining about. For instance when they use the middle scroll button
to zoom in and out it takes a good two seconds or more to move in or out
each click of the wheel. Clicking a surface to highlight it also takes a
couple of seconds when normally these things are instantanious.

Rotating the models are not too bad, but they do pause here and there when
they normally do not in the old setup. To compare new and previous system
setups:

New
============
Windows XP SP2
Athlon 64 3400+
Asus A8V main board
512 MB RAM
WD 160 GB SATA hard drive.
ATI Radeon 9800 128MB AGP 8x video card.

Old
============
SW 2001 Plus (Forget which SP)
Windows 2000 SP4
Athlon 2200+
Asus A7V8X Main Board
512 MB RAM
WD 80 GB EIDE hard drive
ATI XPert 2000 32MB AGP 2X Video card.

These models are not very big either. Our assemblies are only a few parts
that are only about a few inches.

 

Your problem is not with the mouse. It has to do with your video card.
The card you are using is weak at best. If you goto SW website, in
the graphics card area, you will find a list of cards that passes
testing. Also, another option to help performance would be to add RAM,
as much as you can afford, 1Gig or more.

Its has been my expierence that it doesn't matter how small your parts
are, its all about complexity.

 

Totally agree on the ram issue. The recommended specs for ram that SW
lists are totally insufficient. A small, not very complex part, can easily
eat up 1Gb depending on the features used and any add-ins loaded. SW
recommended ram should actually be listed as the bare minimum.

 

A couple afterthoughts. You may also want to check the video driver
that is suited for that video card which SW recommends (again on their
website) Also, check the display setting in SW under Tools-Options.
Make sure the quality is not set to the highest setting. Make sure
there are no other programs running in the background to make sure
there is not anything that could be causing a slow down. Compared to
SW 2001+, SW2006 requires a bit more power to than you may be used to.
But as I stated in my last post, it sounds to me you need a better
video card, or at very least a good driver.

 

I wouldn't call a $175.00 ATI Radeon 9800 128MB 8X AGP "weak at best"
especially since some of these really weak mobile chipsets are certified.
The only limitations noted on the SW site is that I could not have more than
a certain amount of full screen SW project windows operating at once which
is fine because I only use one or two at a time.

I know SW likes to have user of the program just use their certified cards,
but unfortunatley we have a business to run that does more than use
Solidworks. We have been using SW for over 7 years and it seems like they
keep changing the approved video cards every version.

If "get a new video card" is the answer to issues every year I guess we just
have to factor into our costs of operations for Solidworks the expense
associated with replacing video cards on all our engineering systems every
year and all the costs associated with testing all our other system's. With
our own internal testing costs, changing a $150 video card for a new one
really ends up costing us an extra $500 per switch.

 

Thanks,

The video drivers are the latest as of a week ago and I went through the
general recommendations on the FAQ that I could find like disabling Software
OpenGL, removing addins, keeping journal files on the local drives, etc and
it did not seem to provide any noticable improvement.

When I installed SW2006 I used the standard setup defaults and did not
change anything in the options until now.

 

If you have run into this multiple times, you should know better than to
still buy ATI cards in new computers that will run SW. You can get the
nVidia Quadro FX 500 for about $225. It is also considered a low end
card, but it doesn't have the limitations. nVidia (aside from the NVS
cards) has been a safe bet for several years now, and ATI has been a
poor choice for the same amount of time. Things don't change that
drastically release by release.

 

While ATI cards may be made of good components, in my experience the
problems with them for years have been related to very poor software
drivers.

Have a look in the Hardware & Graphics support section of the
SolidWorks website and you will see that the Radeon 9800 is NOT among
the cards from ATI which are considered to have passed certification.

I once had a rendering problem in PhotoWorks while running an ATI card.
Rendering an image of a single cube was slow and attempting a similar
image with only a single spherical object resulted in a crash.

Dynamic rotation of shaded parts was acceptable, but showing parts in
wireframe and moving them in that state was painfully slow.

The solution was easy and it was to get rid of the ATI hardware...

As already stated, the problem is NOT with your mouse (mice).

Per O. Hoel

 

Couldn't agree more, I would also add some extra RAM to that system of
yours.

John Layne
www.solidengineering.co.nz

 

SolidWorks file sizes have ballooned enormously since 2001+. I wouldn't try
to run with less than 1GB of RAM. Check your task manager for memory usage.
You are quite likely to find that you are using a lot more RAM than you used
to and could be hitting swap space even with fairly simple models.

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"

 

Actually, aside from Solidworks, ATI has been hands-down the most reliable
video card that I have EVER had and the most compatible for most any app
that is not specifically written for a few video cards as each version of
Solidworks seems to be. I am using ATI cards exclusively and they are all
working great in previous versions of Solidworks.

I happend to have purchased this computer prior to SW 2006 so I really could
not know what I had in store for me so the option to get a SW 2006
compatible card wasn't really something I can do. Solidworks has said in
general that "A certified OpenGL workstation graphics card and driver" would
be what I need and all the ATI cards as well as thousands of others are just
that however only a hand full seem to get "certified" for Solidworks
versions.

The problem really isn't ATI or the other quality vendors (Not Diamond,
yuk). I still have some of the first AGP ATI cards still in use in some of
my older computers (2 years or more) and they work great with every other
engineering type application like Autocad Mentor Graphics Pads Suite and a
few otheres and even with some of these new games. Infact, I still do not
had reason to update my home ATI Xpert 2000 32MB AGP card even though I have
updated my RAM and MOBO several times over the years. I can still play
quite a few of the latest titles of some games.

Yes, today I could get an Nvidia today that is on the SW list, but what
about next year and the year after that. 3DLabs GVX line was fine for
SW2004 and 2005, but not 2006 and 3dLabs is a SW Partner. Same for the
Wildcat 4000 series. Also consider that the Wildcat Realizm 500 works in 06
and 05, but not in SW04. This is not even including the fact that some are
only certified in XP OR 2000 but not both. How am I supposed to be able to
keep my systems up with certified cards other than dumb luck?

 

Listen to what everyone is telling you - stick with the nVidia cards.

We had some Radeon cards that came with some machines, and replacing them
with FX500's made quite a difference. We also had some machines with ATI
FireGL X2-256 cards, and they also ran very well. It's not ATI that's the
problem, it's the DirectX Radeon card that's the problem.

WT

 

Not to mention, the Radeon cards were never meant for workstation apps.
They were meant to run a single window with lots of fast uncomplicated
triangles for games.

Name of the game is to buy a intermediate workstation class card, then
it will last the 2-3 years that a workstation should be used for production
work.

Ken

 

You're way overexaggerating. ATI has been bad for OpenGL apps since at
least 1999. Do a search on this newsgroup for Radeon, and it is reviled
as often as it is mentioned. nVidia has been good for SW as far back as
I've dealt with them. These things don't change from release to
release, although recommended driver versions do.

The machine you spec'ed was bargain basement home internet box, maybe ok
for casual gaming. A high end graphics card (nVidia Quadro FX 4400 for
$2000+) is way more money than what you paid for an entire computer with
specs like that. For reference, if you go to the www.Xicomputer.com
website and follow the link for the Mtower 64 SLI Workstation, the
starting price is $1059. It has a better processor (3800 instead of
3400) more ram (1 Gb instead of 512 k) better video (GeForce MX4000
instead of a Radeon, PCIe insted of AGP, and SLI capable to boot). You
could trade the 15" monitor that comes with it for a little extra hard
drive (only $25 to double the 80 Gb drive). So if we're generous, let's
say you have $1000 into the hardware. It's simply inadequate to run
SolidWorks.

I wouldn't jump on you like this except that you're trying to pin this
on SolidWorks, and the responsibility for your problem is clearly not
theirs. I'm all for letting them know when there's a problem, but this
isn't one of those times. You sound like an IT person who got caught
not paying attention.

 

The bottom line is that you bought a consumer game card because it was
cheap. Now your paying the price because it no longer cuts it. Set your
sights a little higher next time and get a good mid-range workstation card
like the Nvidia Quadro series or even the ATI FireGL series. I can concur
with everyone else's recommendation though. Nvidia has had the better
product when running real engineering workstation OpenGL apps (and AutoCAD
isn't one of those).

You made the comment that your company can't afford a properly outfitted
workstation to run SolidWorks efficiently. On the contrary, your are most
likely wasting 2-3 times of what a new workstation would cost you in lost
productivity if you use SolidWorks only 50% of the time.

Ken

 

Video drivers shouldn't necessarily be the latest for best operation
with SolidWorks. I have run into many a configuration where the latest
Video Driver was exactly the problem with performance. You need to
look up the tested video driver on the SolidWorks Website.
the listed dirver for your card is 8.121-050322a if you aren't using
this driver download it and use it. Also make sure the open GL
settings are set to the SolidWorks Default that comes with the driver.
On the open GL properties page there should be a dropdown for selecting
this. Also once you have done all this make sure that in your
SolidWorks options Use Software OpenGL is turned off. If this doesn't
work by an nVidia that is listed with no limitations.

 

"The machine you spec'ed was bargain basement home internet box"

I don't mean to make this some sort of back and forth debate, but the fact
is those machine specs were the same if not BETTER that what Dell and HP set
for some of their "workstation class" computers and even some of their
eServers at the time. When SW came out to our site to demo there was a
salesman and person from Tech Support who performed the demo. I personally
asked what they required for hardware and the person who was from Tech
Support said "I am using a 1.2 GHz laptop with about 256MB of RAM for these
models". "These models" are generally the same models of our products that
they created for us to demo and the same products that we are working on
today with slightly different charactoristics. I doubt that Dell laptop had
anything better than an integrated 8-16MB video card..

Again, the problem isn't ATI who has been and remains totally reliable for
every other purpose and every other application that I have had for over the
past 8 years since I started using them (including previous SW versions).
Everyone here seems to confirm my suspicions that the problem really is that
the specs SW gives out at sales time are totally bogus and there is very
little effort to allow companies to effectively control their hardware
investments from version to version because they continually abandon
compatibility with some hardware to chase compatibility with the flavor of
the day.

One of the things that was in SW's favor when we decided to go with them is
that their cost and maintainance was within our budget. We pay about
$1200-$1500 per seat for maintainance each year and we assumed that our
natural hardware upgrade path would be accomidated, but from posts in this
forum it seems like hidden costs are more than double, if not triple. I am
being told that I need a $1000 video card now plus probably an extra GB of
RAM not to mention that my 6 month old system that runs number crunching
design simlulators like Ansys very well is now considered nothing more than
a "bargain basement internet box"?????

Just for my own future reference so I can accuratley budget my true costs
for Solidworks tell me if these numbers are correct for my yearly or
bi-yearly costs:

Maintenance per seat - ~ $1400
Brand New "workstation" - ~ $3000 every two years
Video card for "workstation" ~ $ 1000 every two years or year
IT Cost of implementing SW and new hardware ~ $750 every two

So with this numbers the best I should do is update SW every two years and
pay $2800 in maintenance and about $4000-$5000 for a new computer and setup.
That is about $3400 - $3900 per year on average to have SW. Unfortunately,
I still can't see a way around not knowing for sure if my video card will be
dropped next year or if my video card will be dropped just because of the
new version or SP for Windows.

 

Try this - call your VAR and have them bring over a video card other than a
Radeon, even an FX500 - a low end card, and see if it makes any difference.
Mostly what people on this group have said for years is avoid Radeon. What
do you have to lose from doing a free test?

WT

 

I wouldn't class hardware costs as "hidden". Nor would I take the
minimum requirement or what it "can" run on as being the target for what
you should buy. Nor would I take the word of a sales guy at a product
sales demonstration as gospel. ;o)

I'm an independent consultant. I don't do large assemblies, but I do
complex parts. I bought a $4000 Boxx workstation, 3 Gb ram, Quadro FX
3450, AMD 64 FX57 processor. If I had been smarter, I would have saved
$600 or more by going to Xi. I count on this machine lasting me 3
years, and after that it will still have some value, just not as my
primary CAD box, maybe a backup for renderings.

If I were in your situation running SW and Ansys, I would probably get
something like an AMD 64 X2 4400+, Quadro FX 1400 or 540 min, 2 Gb ram
(high for the small assemblies, but probably adequate for Ansys), and a
small 10k rpm hard drive. A machine like this at Xi is around $2000,
and that includes the graphics card. It's completely adequate for
simple to medium work, and infinitely better than the other.

Anyway, good luck.

 

I think I will try that. Maybe they might get a head up on what is or is
not going to get dropped from future versions.