[TF1216]

Hey all,

I am an electrical engineer using Ansoft's HFSS for strictlly modeling purposes.

http://www.ansoft.com/products/hf/hfss/

As the program progresses on, the designs are getting quite cumbersome for the computers here.  In the past, Pro-E was used but it also started having rendering problems.  There is nothing too fancy about what I am designing, hence why HFSS's modeling tool suffices.  The models do require a lot of duplications and subtractions though.  I have tried using a computer with 64 GB of RAM but I still had the same rendering issues. 

Can anyone suggest a forum or place where I can do more research?  Any ideas of better software I could use, ie. video gaming creation software?  Is it the video card causing the problem?

Thanks,
Tyler

[bpape]

Can you describe what you have now for a computer?  Realistically, with RAM prices today, I wouldn't think of having any computer without at least 1GB of RAM and a minimum of 256MB (512 is better) on the video board.  For modelling like this, those minimums are even more important.

Also, if using a low memory machine, it is critical to have a lot of hard disk space for it to use as virtual RAM.

Bryan

[ecramer]

Have you contactacted ansoft about this they would know the most about how to speed up the rendering.

Hey all,

I am an electrical engineer using Ansoft's HFSS for strictlly modeling purposes.

http://www.ansoft.com/products/hf/hfss/

As the program progresses on, the designs are getting quite cumbersome for the computers here.  In the past, Pro-E was used but it also started having rendering problems.  There is nothing too fancy about what I am designing, hence why HFSS's modeling tool suffices.  The models do require a lot of duplications and subtractions though.  I have tried using a computer with 64 GB of RAM but I still had the same rendering issues. 

Can anyone suggest a forum or place where I can do more research?  Any ideas of better software I could use, ie. video gaming creation software?  Is it the video card causing the problem?

Thanks,
Tyler

[TF1216]

bpape,

My laptop here at work has a 1.83 GHz processor, 2 GB of RAM, and 30 GB of free hard drive space.  I am not sure how much memory is on the video board.  Do you think a better video card would make a large difference in rendering?

I have contacted Ansoft and I am in the midst of talking with their supplier for the modeling package.  I am doing everthing I can to learn about this stuff.

[bpape]

2GB is plenty of memory.  My suspicion is that in your laptop, the memory is 'shared' for the video from the main system RAM - most are.    The clock speed on the processor is a bit slow - do you know what it is?  Intel?  AMD?  Model? 

30GB of free disk space should be plenty.  Go in and look and see how much can be allocated as virtual memory.

As for the video board, I'll know more when I know what your CPU is as that will give me an idea as to the age, relative speed, etc.  Most likely, it's just a cheap onboard chipset as opposed to a dedicated card - again, most laptops are this way.

Bryan

[JoshK]

My guess is the video is the bottleneck.  If you were using a desktop with a modern mid-to-high-end graphics card, I think the problem wouldn't be. 

[TF1216]

Bryan,

There is an Intel processor in my laptop.  Can you please supply me with a few steps on how to adjust the amount of allocated video memory?

I considered my laptop to be a relatively nice one seeing how I work for an extremely large defense company and my laptop is primarily used to solve electromagnetic problems.

I am not sure what video card is in the machine with 64 GB of RAM but I know the computer was 10's of thousands of dollars.  It should have a decent video card, no?  I apologize for my lack of computer savviness. 

[bpape]

64MB for the video is almost certainly shared and on a chipset.  1.83 GHz is either very old or one of the new dual core CPU's. 

Changing VRAM is not for the video card (though you MAY have a utility specifically for that purpose that's specific to your machine.)  I'd check in your programs and see if there is a set of utilities by your video chipset manufacturer.  It's likely ATI.

Changing VRAM is to allow paging in and out of memory to the hard disk.  To do this:

Right click on My Computer
Select System Properties Tab
Hit the Settings button in the Performance area
Go to the Advanced Tab.

At the bottom, you'll see a section for Virtual Memory.

Bryan

[mcullinan]

For cad or 3d rendering you should be using a computer with its own sep
perate video card. It takes a lot of graphical power to move around those models. Get a 512mb card ati or nvidia. Then the more processors you have the better. Id use at minimum two dual cores 4 processors. Most 3d apps have multiprocessing support and a rendering image would be split into four simultaneous renders. That cuts the time a lot. Also the more ram the better.
mike Your intel computer cost 10K??? All our tax dollars being blown out the window. Yr system sounds far from cutting edge.
mike

[jqp]

Bryan,

There is an Intel processor in my laptop.  Can you please supply me with a few steps on how to adjust the amount of allocated video memory?

I considered my laptop to be a relatively nice one seeing how I work for an extremely large defense company and my laptop is primarily used to solve electromagnetic problems.

I am not sure what video card is in the machine with 64 GB of RAM but I know the computer was 10's of thousands of dollars.  It should have a decent video card, no?  I apologize for my lack of computer savviness. 

64GB of RAM is a lot of RAM. Sounds like a server or a high-end workstation. If a workstation then it should have a capable videocard if it is for CAD.

Can the software take advantage of that much RAM? Programs like Photoshop or Premiere are written to take advantage of more RAM and multiple processors, and so are CAD programs. Don't know about Ansoft's HFSS.

I am wondering if it is something more like a setting in the software that needs to be tweaked?

[bpape]

Doh!     Missed that - I was reading 64MB.  I'm not sure I've ever seen a laptop that would hold 64GB of RAM. 

Bryan