Too Early to Evaluate WinXP 64 w/SolidWorks?

Hey All:

I work at a company manufacturing large semiconductor equipment.
Currently, we are using XP32 and 3 - 4 GB RAM on our Dell 450/460
systems, with Quadro video from 700 to 3400. Because of the size of
our tools, we are unable currently to create complete assemblies. We
are using the 3GB switch.

So, I know that there has been some talk here about 64 bit & SWX. Is
it too early to begin evaluating this?

I'm going to ask our IT group to get some quotes on 64 bit machines.
We tend to favor Dell, and I doubt I'll be able to sway them, but what
are your recommendations?

Those of you doing intense large assy work, how much RAM are you using?
6GB? 8GB? More?

Help me out here, my bosses bosses boss wants to know what can be done
to eliminate some of our productivity bottlenecks, and I have a goal of
doing module assemblies in the next few months and hopefully *complete*
simplified machine assemblies by End of summer.

Please share with me your findings.

Thanks,

Todd

 

I'd get one evaluation machine and show your bosses what it can do.
I've seen some pretty awesomely large assemblies opened in sw x64. I
think they had 100,000+ components and sw application was using around
6gb of ram and still had an additional 2gb for the OS. In my opinion
it would save you a lot of time (= money) if you could fully manipulate
your assemblies without memory limitations. Remember to use solidworks
x64 so that you don't hit any memory limitations. I'd get an 8gb
memory machine even though it will cost you an arm and a leg. Dell has
them.

 

It is for us. We've got a 64bit AMD machine and have run it on 64 bit
Windows and 64 bit Beta SW code. Nothing very interesting to report yet. We
haven't really had time to push it much.

Our IT group also favors Dell, but has been willing to work with the
mechanical engineers for a few special home-built machines. (That's how we
got the 64 bit AMD machine.) The guy who built the 64 bit machine says that
Intel is coming out in the next month or so with a really fast processor
(Conroe) that smokes the AMD boxes. It's almost 4X as fast as our 64bit AMD
calculating pi.


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