Solidworks CAD Workstations

Being fairly active in the Solidworks Community, one of the most common questions I get asked is “what kind of PC do I need to run Solidworks?”

It surprises me how many people are willing to invest a fair chunk of money into an expensive piece of software like Solidworks but then skimp on the hardware they run it on. To me it seems crazy, you wouldn’t buy a brand spanking new 911 Porsche Turbo and put a cheap set of re-tread tyres on it would you??? Same goes for Solidworks, if you want your software to perform, get some decent hardware to run it on!

That said, Solidworks will run reasonalby well on most modern computers for basic tasks, however, when you start working on some more complex models and assemblies, having a well spec’d workstation can make life a whole lot easier.

I’ve personally been using Solidworks since 2001 and over the years I’ve learnt a lot about what aspects of a PC have more effect on the performance of Solidworks more then others. You’d be surprised that investing in the latest and greatest multi core, multi CPU machine may not give you the performance boost you were expecting.

Different aspects of Solidworks require performance from different components of a PC. How and what you use Solidworks for can have a big influence on the type of workstation you will need. Rushing down to your local computer store to buy their top of the line “performance” model could end up being a waste of money.

Researching and specifying a workstation for Solidworks can be a time consuming and confusing process, so we have put together the following article to help you understand what parts of a computer work best for Solidworks.

With the advances in computer technology you no longer need to spend mega bucks to get a decent workstation that will run Solidworks and won’t have your design engineers cursing and swearing because it takes too long to update a fillet.

What should you buy?

Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to this question. Selecting a workstation specification for Solidworks depends heavily on how and what you plan to do with SolidWorks. This compiled with the constantly evolving PC market, makes it difficult to know what to buy. If you ask your SolidWorks sales rep they will probably direct you to the hardware requirements page on the SolidWorks website which doesn’t help that much. The reasons they do this is they cannot recommend one brand over another as that would not be fair to all suppliers. If they did recommend a particular piece of hardware or a graphics card and for some reason it didn’t worth with their setup then you’d be annoyed and on the phone complaining to them straight away. The other reason is these guys just don’t have the time to spend testing and trying all the new products in the market, their too busy selling the software and don’t spend much time, if any, using it. Thirdly, everybody uses Solidworks for a different purposes so everyone has different requirments.

Having been in the design field for many years, I’ve been using SolidWorks since 2001 on all kinds of machines. Over time I have developed a pretty good idea of what works and what’s a waste of money. What it all boils down to is 3 things;

1. CPU (Central Processor Unit)
2. Ram (Memory)
3. Storage (Hard Drive)

1. The CPU

The CPU is the core of any computer and is the component that does most of the work. The faster the processor the quicker your computer can process data. What does this mean for Solidworks? Features can be applied and will rebuilt faster, scope for bigger more complex models and general operation is smoother (faster). Due to the development of CPU’s hitting a wall in the last few years the fastest CPU’s you can get are roughly around 3.0Ghz. In response to this, CPU manufacturers went back to the drawing board, spent many hours and millions of dollars and came up with a brilliant solution of “use more cores”, That why their paid the big bucks. Nowdays a dual core CPU is pretty much standard, with quad, 8 and even 12 core chips becoming more afforable. High end workstation are even starting to use multiple CPU’s to boost the speed even further. eg 2 x 8-core CPU’s gives you 16 cores or ram processing power! grrrrr.

By using multiple cores the software developers could make use of multiple threads to share the load accross the cores. The down side of this is that programs need to be written in a particular way to work with multiple cores and the multiple cores need to be managed which is not an easy process. As a senior developer at Apple put it, “Its really hard”.

Multithreading being realtively new requires software to be written to take advantage of the additional processing power. To rewrite an application to utilise multiple cores is a big job and as such a lot of existing software does not take advantage of multithreading. Unfortnately Solidworks is one of them. However, newer parts of Solidworks are multithreaded and can take advantage of the multicore CPU’s. I have show the applications that are single and multithreaded below in a table as I hope I will be able to add more features as time goes by.

If your not using Simulation or Photoview then it would make sence to buy the fastest single core you can afford, however in normal operation of Solidworks you never really stress the CPU to its limits so your not really going to notice massive performance increases between a 2.6Ghz and a 3.0Ghz CPU. As the price of CPUs goes up exponentially as they get faster your better off going mid range and use the extra money else where (like a a faster hard drive). However iIf you’re right into FEA Simulations or you do a lot of photo realistic rendering with Photoview 360 then a multicore CPU is going to slash your simulation and rendering times dramatically and is a much better choice the a stupidly quick single core CPU.

2. Memory

Memory is a little more straight forward then CPU ‘s but there a few things which can catch you out. You’ll get the most benefit from more memory in Solidworks if you work with really complex parts of really big assemblies. Every time you open a part of an assembly, all your files are loaded into memory so you can work on them. If your working on a massive new tractor design with 10,000 parts you’ll need a fair bit of ram to handle. There are no fixed rules on how much memory you need for ‘X’ amount of parts as the complexity of parts can vary so greatly. A bunch of plain flat washers will take up next to no memory compared to a fully detailed plastic injection molded housing. However, if you notice your system slowing down when working on really big assemblies or parts, extra memory would be the first thing to try to improve performance.

How much memory do I need?

If you’re running a 32Bit OS (operating system), (most installs of windows are) then there is a physical limit of 4Gb of RAM. Its a mathermatical limit of 32Bit architecture and has nothing to do with Windows or Solidworks. If you are running Windows 32Bit you may want to look into tweaking the 4Gb switch as by default Windows will only use 3Gb or RAM. A google search should tell you how its done.

The only way around this 4Gb limit is to move to a 64Bit operating system. 64Bit operating systems can take advantage of more memory. How much more? Lots more, infact its only limited by how much RAM you can fit on the mother board. Most workstations these days are running 64Bit OS as they can use more RAM.

In a nutshell if your system is running slow and complaining about not having enough memory… its time to increase the RAM of move to a 64Bit OS. How much memory you run is totally up to your budget but I would say 4Gb is a minimum these days.

Not all RAM is created equally. There are many different types of RAM with different speeds. DDR1, DDR2, DDR3, 800Mhz, 1333,Mhz 1600Mhz. You are usually confined to a single type of RAM by your motherboard (DDR1 RAM sticks will not fit DDR3 sockets) which makes things easy but they speed of each type can vary. Ram speed can offer a performance increase but you need to make sure your motherboard can handle the faster RAM or your just wasting money.

Keep in mind that you are limited to how much RAM you can install but the amount of available slots. If you motherboard has 4 slots you could put in 4 x 1Gb sticks for a total of 4Gb of RAM or you could put in 2 x 2Gb sticks which gives you 4Gb as well but you still have 2 spare slots for future expansion.

I’d suggest a minimum of 4Gb of RAM for Solidworks use. You’ll only benefit from more if you are working on big data sets but RAM is pretty cheap these days so it depends on your budget.

3. Storage (Hard Drives)

Storage is where things have become interesting lately. In the early days when computers weren’t that fast, transferring data to and from the hard disk drive (HDD) was not much of a problem as the computer could rarely process data any faster then it could read/write to the hard drive. However with the increase of processor speeds, read/write speeds of hard drives have become the limiting factor for real world performance. Standard SATA hard drives spin at 5,600 – 7,200 RPM, with some drives hitting the 10 and 15,000 mark. Moving from a 5,600 or 7,200 drive to a 10,000 rpm drive will give you a noticeable speed difference to computer boot up times, program start times and read/write times (ie: opening and saving files). Also fairly new on the scene are Solid State Drives (SSD). These puppies are fast, quiet and run cool… but they ain’t cheap. A 120GB SSD drive will cost around 2-5 times that of a conventional 500GB HDD, however if you want fast secure performance, these things are worth their weight in gold. SSD are useful in laptops and mobile devices where they are more likely to experience shock as they’re mobile devices. At their current price they aren’t great value for desktop workstations unless you’re worried about earthquakes corrupting your hard drive. One thing to keep in mind though is SSD drives can read very quickly but they write very slowly. At this point in time a 15,000 rpm server grade drive is probably your best choice.

Video example of the effect of SSD on program boot up speeds! I know its a Mac but you get the idea.

Considering everything you create with Solidworks needs to be saved somewhere, storage is one area you don’t want to skimp on. Hard drives have improved considerably over the last few years however they are not bullet proof so you must remember to back up your data. If your paranoid about hard drive failure you have a few options. SSD drives are safer then conventioned HDD but their still in they infancy and pretty expensive. Another option is to run two HDD’s side by side in a mirror configuration (know as RAID 1). You will only get the storage size of one drive (as they are mirrored) but if one drive dies, your data will be safe on the second drive. Simple replace the fault drive and the data will be mirrored accross to it so you again have some redundancy.

Another way to improve preformance if your running Vista or Windows 7 is ReadyBoost. This will only increase the speed of Windows and your Programs when they start up, you will not get any increase in opening or saving files or using Solidworks.

Graphics Cards?

In my experience high end big dollar graphics cards do not contribute that much to the performance of Solidworks… as long as your using a workstation CAD card that has been certified by Solidworks then you shouldn’t have any problems. Most entry/mid level CAD graphics cards will do the job for the average user. High end graphics cards will give you better performance on-screen performance for things like realview and rotating very complex geometry but they wont increase the speed of normal Solidworks use or when rendering with Photoview of Photoworks.

Solidworks have a long list of certified cards but what is comes down to is Quadro FX, and ATI FirePro. Other manufacturers produce graphics cards with these chipset and in most cases they are as good as the original.

Nearly all graphics card these days support dual monitors which I highly recommend as it enables you to be viewing a PDF or DXF on one screen while modelling in Solidworks on the other. So instead of spending $1,500 dollars on a high eng graphics card why not put the money towards a good set of 24″ monitors and watch your productivity increase. But! what ever graphics card you get, make sure it has the right outputs to suit your monitor/s. VGA connectors are now a thing of the past and DVI is slowly being replaced by DisplayPort. HDMI has been used quiet a bit on gaming monitors but its limited to a resolution of 2560×1600 (HDMI 1.3) so DisplayPort was introduced to support bigger resolutions (max 3840 x 2160) for larger monitors…

Brand name or custom built?

Brand name computers like Dell, HP and Lenovo have some pretty good workstation offerings but they can be limited in component selection. Some manufacturers use cheap parts for power supplies, memory etc and others may only use one brand of video card, which is annoying if you want a particular brand.

The advantage with Brand name workstation is they offer good after sales support and warranties but all this is factored into the price so you’ll pay more for the equivalent custom built system. Going for a custom built system could save you a few hundred dollars but if your buying multiple machines that can start to add up.

On the other hand building a custom workstation allows you to specify exactly what components you want to use and in most cases provides you with a much more powerful machine at a lower costs. You don’t get the aftersales support and warranty that the brand name PC companies offer but every component is usually covered by the manufacturers warranty and if you have a good IT guy on hand you shouldn’t have any problems that can’t be fixed.

Conclusion

Specifing and researching each and every component to fit within your budget can be a very time consuming and painful process but if done well you’ll end up with a much better system allowing you to get the most out of your investment in Solidworks.

Whether you go Brand name or custom built its a matter of personal preference and price but either way having a workstation that is tuned for Solidworks can make a massive difference to performance which is at the end of the day is what counts.

If your located in Victoria and looking at building your own system these companies have great prices on PC equipment

MSY

CPL

Also check out www.staticice.com.au for price comparisons.