Workstation for CAD CAM

[JCBiggs]

Ever had that problem where you type a detail post and you hit the backspace button and instead of deleting a charcter it goes back a web page and deletes everything    K

So here is the cliff notes of everything I just typed.

 

Need to build  a workstation for my tooling department to use.  Primary software used is Solidworks for CAD and Mastercam for CAM.  We acutally use  a Mastercam plugin for solidworks. (I hate it, changing to edgecam next year)

Solidworks: Frequency based mostly single core app.  Will probably become more multithreaded in the future but for now, core speed is what counts. FEA and photorendering still use mutlticore. I have never seen SW max out either my cpu or ram, unless doing FEA or rendering.  For normal day to day use, it could almost run on a Pentium 4.

 

Mastercam: is becoming more and more multithread with every iteration. We do tons of what is called “rest mill” toolpaths. This is a surfacing operation that compares the desired shape with the amount of material a given sized tool can remove (a ½ inch tool can’t clear out a complete 90 degree corner for instance) Rest mill  computes the remainder of the material - clearing it out with smaller and smaller tools.  I have seen it max out 8 cores and 8gb of ram and do computes that can take up to an hour.  This is on my precision m6800 with a 4810 i7 and amd m5100.

 

I need to build a workstation but I am trying to figure out how far I really need to go. Is 8 cores enough, or should I go with a new  16 core (or 2) mastercam is multithreaded, but who knows if it will use  32 cores.… how about ram, 16gb or 128? Or Run the software from a ramdisk to eliminate the virtual memory being constantly written to the SSD?   I don’t really know anyone with an 18 core machine to try this on.

 

So, seeing as how I don’t really know how far to go I’m thinking of just building a single high performance server workstation.   I mean complete overkill and something that pretty robust and upgradeable.  Then maybe run Virtual machines on it. Right now I only need 2 work stations, but those two could share the compute resources (like a thin client….sort of.)  I don’t really know if this will work,  and I’m almost positive its unsupported, but isn’t the point of software like VMware to make the client not know it’s being virtualized?  I guess I can cross the licensing bridge later. I figure one 1 $10,000 dollar machine will probably outperform (for longer)  2 $5,000 ones. even with the resource sharing.

 

What would you folks suggest I do from this point? Maybe we can get linus to run some benchmarks haha.  (the engineering crowd needs some love too)

 

[The Official Czex]

Ever had that problem where you type a detail post and you hit the backspace button and instead of deleting a charcter it goes back a web page and deletes everything    K

So here is the cliff notes of everything I just typed.

 

Need to build  a workstation for my tooling department to use.  Primary software used is Solidworks for CAD and Mastercam for CAM.  We acutally use  a Mastercam plugin for solidworks. (I hate it, changing to edgecam next year)

Solidworks: Frequency based mostly single core app.  Will probably become more multithreaded in the future but for now, core speed is what counts. FEA and photorendering still use mutlticore. I have never seen SW max out either my cpu or ram, unless doing FEA or rendering.  For normal day to day use, it could almost run on a Pentium 4.

 

Mastercam: is becoming more and more multithread with every iteration. We do tons of what is called “rest mill” toolpaths. This is a surfacing operation that compares the desired shape with the amount of material a given sized tool can remove (a ½ inch tool can’t clear out a complete 90 degree corner for instance) Rest mill  computes the remainder of the material - clearing it out with smaller and smaller tools.  I have seen it max out 8 cores and 8gb of ram and do computes that can take up to an hour.  This is on my precision m6800 with a 4810 i7 and amd m5100.

 

I need to build a workstation but I am trying to figure out how far I really need to go. Is 8 cores enough, or should I go with a new  16 core (or 2) mastercam is multithreaded, but who knows if it will use  32 cores.… how about ram, 16gb or 128? Or Run the software from a ramdisk to eliminate the virtual memory being constantly written to the SSD?   I don’t really know anyone with an 18 core machine to try this on.

 

So, seeing as how I don’t really know how far to go I’m thinking of just building a single high performance server workstation.   I mean complete overkill and something that pretty robust and upgradeable.  Then maybe run Virtual machines on it. Right now I only need 2 work stations, but those two could share the compute resources (like a thin client….sort of.)  I don’t really know if this will work,  and I’m almost positive its unsupported, but isn’t the point of software like VMware to make the client not know it’s being virtualized?  I guess I can cross the licensing bridge later. I figure one 1 $10,000 dollar machine will probably outperform (for longer)  2 $5,000 ones. even with the resource sharing.

 

What would you folks suggest I do from this point? Maybe we can get linus to run some benchmarks haha.  (the engineering crowd needs some love too)

 

RAM write, Xeon E5-2699 dual socket, ASUS WS dual socket MOBO, 128-512 GB RAM, at least 8 TB of storage if you don't have a NAS or work server. 

[JCBiggs]

We do have server storage. (and a it guy thats pretty sharp to.)   I will have to look into the specs you just posted. I can build whatever, just wouldnt want to build something so overkill its completely wasteful. 

 

just at first glance, it looks like the clock on those would be to slow to run SW effectively. You can tell a huge difference between 2.5 and 3.5ghz in the day to day use of solidworks. 

[JCBiggs]

i did a test run on nvidia grid last night.  it wasnt very promising. I dont know if it was because it was based all the way in san fran, but when i told SW to run some FEA it wouldnt utilize all the resource.  it didnt to anything to behonest.  Modeling was difficult, not smooth, but again this may of been because it was PCoIP from 3000 miles away. 

[JCBiggs]

Mods can you move this to the appropriate forum to discuss virtualization.

 

JC