Hardware Guide for X3

[Doug Park]

The OpenGL support from Parallels had issues the last time I tested it. They may have fixed them in their latest release. Please contact them for support as the issues are clearly theirs. We see similar issues when running under other virtual machines as well but on the exact same hardware running natively Chief runs fine.

At this point in time we don't support running Chief on any virtual machine because of the lack of good support for hardware. The issues are mainly with OpenGL but we also see issues with mouse support.

[alobartn]

There are so many posts to this thread that my question has probably been addressed, but here goes anyway. This assumes 64 bit Windows 7, a quite fast C drive and other decent speed internal drives. Chief is in the program files folder of the C drive. Working folders reside on another internal drive. Is this best?

It seems logical, but I've been working on a 46 mb Chief file (migrated from X2) and boy are the delays frequent! Sometimes just clicking a line freezes the cursor for a second or more. It's been happening so much that I'm baffled.

[lbuttery]

Chief is in the program files folder of the C drive. Working folders reside on another internal drive. Is this best?



Adam:

this is CA's recommended way

I would contact tech support to discuss before making any changes

46 MB file is big

Lew

[Bradley Boltz]

Adam,
that's a huge drawing file. Have you tried bringing a copy onto your C-drive and working directly from it as a comparison test? Maybe your other drive is a slug. I'm no computer geek so maybe I'm way off here.-Brad

[David J. Potter]

Adam,

I guess you have a solid state "C" drive?
That is a question I have been asking myself since I plan to rebuild my PC this coming week.
What I intend is to keep all Chief related files on drive "C" and back them up on line and to a USB storage drive but the working copies I want no communication lags built into the system by having my program files and plan files on two different drives while working.
The shortest distance between two points is always best and those points should mechanically run at the same speeds IMHO.

I have observed that on the same machine X3 is slower than X2 for some actions, whereas it leaves X2 in the dust on many others (on my old PC box, R.I.P.)

DJP

[alobartn]

I don't have a SS drive. It's a 10,000 RPM SATA 1.5Gb/s or something like that. I'm told that for photos and CAD stuff it's better to keep your working files on a separate internal drive from the operating system's drive. Someone a lot smarter than I can explain why.

I've copied the files in question to the C drive per Bradley's suggestion to see if it makes a difference. None that I can see.

I then took tech support's advice and purged my CAD blocks and materials. That helped, but it's still a dog of a file.

[Doug Park]

I would try to ascertain why the file is so big. Usually it is caused by having a lot of CAD details. Sometimes it is caused by having large images imbedded in the file or having a lot of complex 3D symbols.

One other thing you can do is to clean up your temporary items folder. It may not help but I have seen cases where there were so many temporary files it slowed things down.

[alobartn]

There are a lot of CAD details. After all it is a CAD program. Is there a way to export them or do I have to open and copy each detail, then delete it from the plan?

[lbuttery]

Adam;

consider placing them in the library

or save that plan and give it name like Standard_Plan_Details

a layout can reference as many plans as needed
so your layout can be live with the project plan and also pull in the details as needed from the Standard_Plan_Details.plan also

Lew

[Larry Kumpost]

I would try to ascertain why the file is so big. Usually it is caused by having a lot of CAD details.

Or one CAD detail with a lot of detailed patterns that have been converted to CAD lines. I roughly doubled the size of one plan file by sending a top view to a CAD Detail for the roof plan with the pattern lines. The pattern was Spanish tile. Big mistake but was able to delete it and resend to CAD Detail without the pattern.

You could create new closed polylines with the patterns added in the CAD Detail if you think it is necessary but I would avoid converting detailed patterns to CAD.

It would be nice if the send view to CAD Detail offered the ability to send patterns as patterns and not convert them to CAD lines.

[jpremodeler]

I am looking to improve my raytrace performance

I currently have:
i7 q720 1.6 ghz
500 gb 7200 rpm
6 gb ram
ati video 1024 mb
win 7 pro

Proposed pc:
i7 950 3.06ghz overclocked
250 gb solid state HD
12 gb ram
nvidia gtx550 1.5 gb
win 7 pro

will this make a big difference? are there diminishing returns on the system and raytrace speed? It seems like raytracing anything with lights takes forever.

thanks for your help!
jpremodeler

[Barton Brown]

I am looking to improve my raytrace performance

I currently have:
i7 q720 1.6 ghz

Proposed pc:
i7 950 3.06ghz overclocked

will this make a big difference? are there diminishing returns on the system and raytrace speed? It seems like raytracing anything with lights takes forever.

thanks for your help!
jpremodeler

With X3, the extra RAM won't make a difference (32bit app so the ray trace engine is limited to 2 GB), the higher end video card isn't used for ray tracing. The SS HD might make a slight difference during the initial parsing of the model depending upon the size of the model.

Bottomline - I would expect to see about a 2x reduction in the ray trace time because your CPU's are running twice as fast. The rest of the items will have little effect on the ray tracing. Both CPUs are quad-core so the number of cpu's available for ray tracing will be the same.

If you want to compare CPUs, check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...icroprocessors

[jpremodeler]

With X3, the extra RAM won't make a difference (32bit app so the ray trace engine is limited to 2 GB), the higher end video card isn't used for ray tracing. The SS HD might make a slight difference during the initial parsing of the model depending upon the size of the model.

Bottomline - I would expect to see about a 2x reduction in the ray trace time because your CPU's are running twice as fast. The rest of the items will have little effect on the ray tracing. Both CPUs are quad-core so the number of cpu's available for ray tracing will be the same.

If you want to compare CPUs, check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...icroprocessors

Thanks Barton, so really what you are saying is the processor is the main factor, and that is where my money should go. I will probably stick with 7600 or 10,000 rpm hdd and spend more on the processor.

are 3-4 hours typical for a raytrace?

thanks again.

[Doug Park]

It's not quite that simple.

More memory means that the system can use it for a variety of things including disk caching. However, somewhere around 6-8GB more memory probably won't make any difference if you are primarily running Chief. Future versions of Chief will move to 64 bit, but if your models aren't any bigger more memory still won't make a difference.

The cpu cache is an important factor as well as memory speed. If you can't get the data to the cpu as fast as it can consume it a faster cpu won't help.

5 minutes to 1 day is a typical range for the time it takes to do a ray trace depending on the size, number of lights, and other settings like photons, with a minor contribution due to model size.

Do a very small ray trace to see how the lighting is and then if you like what you see fire off the higher resolution one.

Ray tracing is a class of problem that is extremely expensive. 2 decades ago it was pretty much relegated to the super computer realm. A decade ago ray tracing became feasible in hours or days on desktop computers and today we see it down to minutes and hours. A decade from now it will probably be in the range to be in the range of interactive graphics for many cases.

[jpremodeler]

It's not quite that simple.

More memory means that the system can use it for a variety of things including disk caching. However, somewhere around 6-8GB more memory probably won't make any difference if you are primarily running Chief. Future versions of Chief will move to 64 bit, but if your models aren't any bigger more memory still won't make a difference.

The cpu cache is an important factor as well as memory speed. If you can't get the data to the cpu as fast as it can consume it a faster cpu won't help.

5 minutes to 1 day is a typical range for the time it takes to do a ray trace depending on the size, number of lights, and other settings like photons, with a minor contribution due to model size.

Do a very small ray trace to see how the lighting is and then if you like what you see fire off the higher resolution one.

Ray tracing is a class of problem that is extremely expensive. 2 decades ago it was pretty much relegated to the super computer realm. A decade ago ray tracing became feasible in hours or days on desktop computers and today we see it down to minutes and hours. A decade from now it will probably be in the range to be in the range of interactive graphics for many cases.

Thanks Doug, I am a self taught Chief guy, but plan on taking some of the training classes to help improve my abilities (and hopefully speed. My sales dynamic requires me to put out conceptual views for clients in short turnaround, and i want to put the best images out in the time I have.

I am looking to have a pc primarily dedicated to x3 for now, so I can use my laptop to perform other tasks and let the program run.

I also want to make sure it will make sense to keep it when Chief goes 64bit.

I got the gist--cpu speed and cache are top, hard drive at 10,000 should be fine.

thanks!