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PC specification for Mechanica

SimonWhite
1-Newbie

PC specification for Mechanica

Dear all,



We are intending to replace a number of 'desk-top' PC's in the near future
and would like to ensure that the new machines offer good performance with
Pro/Mechanica within the basic constraint that we need to stick with 32 bit
technology. Really intensive processing will be carried out on a separate
64 bit server, with these desktop machines intended for model development,
small to medium sized analyses (up to the 3GB memory limit) and results
review. In order to help us specify the machines, I would be grateful for
any recommendations that can be provided with respect to the following:



- RAM provision

- Processor

- Graphics card (I believe we might run dual screens on some machines so the
card should be able to cater for a dual screen set-up)



Thanks in advance for any advice that you can offer.



Simon White.


This thread is inactive and closed by the PTC Community Management Team. If you would like to provide a reply and re-open this thread, please notify the moderator and reference the thread. You may also use "Start a topic" button to ask a new question. Please be sure to include what version of the PTC product you are using so another community member knowledgeable about your version may be able to assist.
7 REPLIES 7

I think you should strongly question what is limiting you to 32-bit
technology. 64-bit has been around long enough to become mainstream and is
a significant improvement over 32-bit. There is a transition you need to go
through to update 'some, not all' old software but it is worth it. I know
of some people who have dual boot systems or keep their old machine to run
old apps that will not run under 64-bit. The biggest problem I had going to
64-bit several years ago was hardware compatibility but that is not a
problem today with new hardware.



Get the most RAM (4GB minimum and more is better) and the fastest drive and
quad core processor you can swing. The graphics card is not as big an issue
with Mechanica.



Good Luck.Jim


Simon,

I fully agree with Jim - 64 bit workstations are also the same cost as
32 bit, excluding the extra RAM you can put in! Having this extra RAM
really does make a big difference, not just for solving Mechanica
models, but for handling large assemblies as well. Unless your products
have only a handful of components in the top level assemblies, you'll
want the capability of more than 3GB of RAM. I've been using an x64
system on my desk for almost 4 years without any issue. You'll just
need to make sure your printers have the proper drivers for x64. I run
MS Office and most every app an engineer would need on their "daily"
computer. My recommendation is:

x64 OS
Quad processor
8 GB RAM (more if you have very large FEA/CFD problems to solve)
two fast hard drives (consider the second drive as a "solid-state" hard
drive for "temp" file usage in Mechanica)
nvidia 512 MB, or larger, card (look for a "Cuda" enabled card for
current and near-term engineering application use)

If you're really stuck with 32 bit systems, stay away from Vista as it
seems to chew-up twice the RAM over Windows XP just to run the OS.

I hope this helps,

Chris
Chris3
20-Turquoise
(To:SimonWhite)

I talked to PTC the other day and supporting multiple cores is not on
the drawing board at this point. At the earliest it is going to be
Wildfire 7 before multiple cores are supported but I wouldn't hold your
breath.

Chris

Even though Pro/Engineer does not support parrallel processing, the Pro/Mechanica engine *does* support multiple cpu's (and has done since version 2001). The config.pro option MEC_NUM_THREADS is used to indicate the number of cpu's, or set it to -1 for automatic detection.

Patrick Asselman

---- "Rees schreef:
> I talked to PTC the other day and supporting multiple cores is not on
> the drawing board at this point. At the earliest it is going to be
> Wildfire 7 before multiple cores are supported but I wouldn't hold your
> breath.
>
> Chris
>

A slight correction - its an environment variable, not a config.pro
option. As far as I can recall, Mechanica has been 8-way multi-threaded
since about 1993 on HP, IBM and SGI, and 8-way on Windows x-64 since the
beta release of that OS.

Regards,

Rod


Rod Giles
Senior Design Engineer
Polaris Industries

There is a config.pro option called "sim_run_num_threads" that is used
to set the number of CPUs for Mechanica. Rod is correct about older
versions requiring the environment variable to be set as he has
detailed. My history is fuzzy, so I'm not sure when this was added to
config.pro. I believe the environment variable will still work if you
have it set - double check this one.

Cheers,

Chris

Christopher Kaswer
Principal Engineer
Jacobs Vehicle Systems

Dear all,



Many thanks to all those who responded. It is clearly apparent that 64 bit
technology would be preferable to 32 bit, and I have passed this on to those
responsible for the final specification of the machines, together with the
various recommendations received with respect to RAM, processor and graphics
cards.



Best regards,



Simon.



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