Being Civil

New Video: Understanding Performance using Civil 3D

Time for the monthly Product Support video over on the Autodesk YouTube channel.  This review of Performance covers a collection of topics including:

• RAM and Virtual Memory
• 32 bit and 64 bit Applications and Operating Systems
• Recommended Operating Systems
• Performance Tweaks

Then it ends with a few FAQs:

• When will we have a 64 bit version of Civil 3D?
• Is Windows 7 supported?
• I am upgrading my hardware, what should I buy?
• Task Manager never shows Civil 3D using all the available virtual memory, why not?

Please do have a look, comment and rate it - this is useful feedback for us, thanks.  And thanks to those who responded to the poll on video content - we are reviewing the results and seeing where we can make improvements!  I understand from the poll some of you are blocked from YouTube; I will create some posts to cover the major topics presented in the video wihin the next couple of weeks.

To see the collection of monthly videos, go to the general playlist here.

Sometimes The Answer Is Not Staring Us In The Face

Sometimes cases come in that are pretty easy to resolve – I can’t count the number of times that I’ve run around my office giddy with excitement when a FILEDIA=1 question comes through the pipes. But occasionally, answers tend to hide out a little more and it takes time to find them. In this post, I am going to walk you through the steps that I took during a particularly difficult case that finally reached a resolution. The answer was so simple, but of course it was the last thing we checked. Follow the link to find out some of the thought processes that we go through during some cases.

Civil 3D 2010 System Requirements

Today was/is supposed to be a house-work day.  As much fun as scraping and painting the living room windows sounds, I just can’t seem to break free from the computer and get started.  All the more reason to use this time to put up some more 2010 content here.

With all the buzz of the upcoming released, I have been getting this question for the last couple months: “What are the system requirements for 2010?”  While it’s now final and can be viewed on the Autodesk site, here.

Maintenance tips for your computer

I don’t really like blogging about other people’s blogs, but Adrian over at ZDnet wrote up a post on some best practices for the thing we rely on for almost everything we do – our computers! 

While at first glance these would come across as common sense, unfortunately, they often get forgotten about, or their importance underestimated.  Especially in regards to data-backup.  So take a few minutes and make sure you are following these tips to keep your computer running smooth, and your data secure.

Enjoy!

3DCONFIG – Performance Tuner failed to update

Typing 3DCONFIG at the command line will give you all sorts of settings in the Adaptive Degradation and Performance Tuning dialog box.  This is also the place where you can check for updated versions of the graphics card and driver database. 

However, if you are getting an error message when trying to update that looks like the image below, not to worry, we got a quick fix for you.

This issue seems to be a bit more common amongst the Vista users out there.  On occasion, the XML file that it is trying to write to can be set to Read-Only.   

1. Using Windows Explorer, navigate to the following file:
   Microsoft XP
   C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Autodesk\AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009\R17.2\enu\PTXML\AdskHwCertificationDatabase.xml
   
   Microsoft Vista
   C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009\R17.2\enu\PTXML\AdskHwCertificationDatabase.xml
2. Right-click the file. Click Properties.
3. In the File Properties dialog box, clear the Read-only check box.

In almost all cases, this quick change resolves the issue.

What’s the Best Video Card for Civil 3D?

Quite often, we hear the question that is posed above – what is the best video card for Civil 3D? At one point in my career, the answer was very clear-cut, but times are definitely changing. First of all, I have to set the expectations for this post – you will not read this and be able to go pick out one specific part number on newegg.com or Tiger Direct. I am not going to say which brand or particular card is better than any other. As a matter of fact, I run a card from each of the major players in the graphics card game (ATI and nVidia) and have excellent performance with both of them. I will simply compare some of the video card architectures and explain how this applies to your daily Civil 3D use.

The basics of RAM and 32/64-bit environments

With the release of Civil 3D 2009 came a new list of system requirements.  Here you can see the requirement for RAM increased from 2GB to 3GB.  As the program progresses and requested features are added, so must the requirements to run this application.  Most new machines are built with at least 2GB of RAM, and with the prices of DDR2 dropping, upgrades are becoming easier. 

While 3GB is going to meet the needs of most of you, those who are working with larger drawings and images regularly ask what advantages they can get by increasing past the required amount, or even moving to a 64-bit system.  This topic is sometimes misunderstood and there is a lot of conflicting information on the Internet (even among popular sites), so I felt this warranted a blog post.  Keep in mind, I am a CAD-guy, not an IT-guy, so I will just touch the basics. 

P4, Dual-Core, Quad-Core, Oh My!

"What does Autodesk recommend for a CPU?" This is a question we see quite a bit.  While I can't recommend specific brands or models, I want to shed some light on this topic, in hopes of helping those of you looking to purchase or upgrade your systems.

The most important thing to start with is the minimum system requirements  for the product.  This is 2009, and your old computer that you used to run AutoCAD LT 97 may not be up to par. These requirements for Civil 3D 2009 state: 

"Intel® Pentium® 4 (3 GHz or higher); AMD Athlon™; multiple processors supported, dual-core supported"

This is your starting point, but it leaves the door wide open for what will work with Civil 3D.  OK, but what is the best CPU for you?  Well, that is an answer that is going to vary from person to person, and from firm to firm.  I like these wishy-washy answers as much as you, but that answer really is true.  What may be a necessity for one user will be an overkill for the next.  

For the most part, a "middle of the road" dual-core processor is going to meet the needs of the average user.  In the past couple of years these have become the norm and are usually the base for most systems.  However, with prices going down, quad-core processors are becoming much more common.  Is this worth the upgrade? 

An important thing to keep in mind is that, on the application level, only a handful of applications out there today that can take full advantage of 4 cores.  And this is true for AutoCAD and its vertical Civil 3D, which only uses multiple cores for a limited number of functions.  The WHIPTHREAD variable was introduced back at the dawn of multi-core processors and will push some of the REGEN work over to a second processor.  However, while this was a big help back then, in today’s environments you will see a much smaller improvement.  And even then, you may only notice this when working with really large drawings. 

However, on a system-level, having multiple cores (2 or 4) this will allow applications to be split up to separate cores, allowing more processing power for each.  Rather than all of your applications fighting for one or two processors, you can spread your workload out over  two or four cores.  So, you may notice overall system performance improvements if you are a cpu-intensive multi-tasker. In other words,  if you enjoy running Outlook, Photoshop, Media Player, and AutoCAD at the same time, all while doing some video editing...well, then the quad-core might be for you!

Now comes the fun part.  The area that I saw the most measurable improvement with a quad-core was in the area of rendering. 

Being a tech-junkie means looking for excuses to (unnecessarily) upgrade your equipment.  This blog post was a perfect excuse to upgrade my dual-core processor to the new quad-core I had been drooling over.  Much to my surprise, my wife bought into my idea (scheme) and a new Intel Q6700 was delivered a few days later.

For those of you who purchased "Mastering Civil 3D 2008", I used the drawing from Chapter 22 called "visualization corridor and trees finished.dwg"  I performed a render using the "out of the box" Medium settings with a resolution of 640x480.  The plan was to find the total time to render the same drawing using different processors.  Feel free to play along at home and post your results in the comments.

Here are my total times for several different CPUs.

• Intel E6700 (dual-core) @ 2.67ghz: 30:25 mins
• Intel Xeon 5130 x 2 (dual core) @ 2.0ghz 17:13 mins  (this machine has 2 dual core processors.  All 4 cores were utilized during rendering)
• Intel Q6700 (quad-core) @ 2.67ghz: 14:41 mins
• Intel Q6700 (quad-core) @ 3.40ghz (overclocked): 11:26 mins

Compare the E6700 to the Q6700.  These are basically the same processor, except the Q6700 is a quad core.  You can see that the quad-core reduced the rendering time in half!  That is huge. Additionally, you will see that the change in processor speed is very closely related to the render times.  Wanting to see how quick I could get that render complete, I overclocked the CPU up to 3.4ghz.  This showed that a 27% increase in processor speed yielded a 21% decrease in render time.  Not too shabby.

Still not sure which way to go?  Well, if you are the type of person that does not plan on upgrading again for years to come, then look into a quad-core.  There is plenty of horsepower, and will give you some leg room as software changes in the future.  A quad-core would also be recommended for multi-taskers running many applications at once.  It’s like a muscle car with a V8.  Sure, those extra cylinders are really needed for everyday driving, but it sure it sure is fun when the “system” is being pushed!  

Short on cash?  Have no need to create renderings?  Or perhaps you are the type of user that has nothing other than AutoCAD running at any given time.  You can pick up a dual-core with a faster processor speed for less money than a quad-core.  This higher processor speed will pay off in single thread commands/applications where it will typically perform faster. 

The bottom line is that you really can’t go wrong with either one.  Almost all of the new processors coming out are going to meet the needs of the vast majority of you out there.  Additionally, unless you are really pushing things, you are not going to notice much of a difference between a 2.4ghz or a 2.8ghz  So don’t loose any sleep trying to decide between the two.  

A much more critical piece of hardware, in regards to overall performance, is memory.  Stay tuned for an upcoming discussion on 32-bit vs. 64-bit environments and RAM.

I hope that helps!