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OS options and NX performance ....

OS options and NX performance ....

OS options and NX performance ....

(OP)
I'm looking to get a new workstation and this is heavily on my mind. I don't see much posted here on the topic...

Win 7 64...
Linux..
Mac...

I've always neen Win Pro but its so targeted by online bugs and with registry corruption issues... they tend to get weaker over time.


Anyone have experience to offer me?

TIA Dave

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

Go with Windows7x64.
I just ordered a new HP laptop with a Nvidia graphics card, 8GB RAM and Win7x64 Professional. While not an enginering one, it should be good.

"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

(OP)
Are the Linux & Mac OS ligit with NX or just an offering Siemens had to make for marketing reasons?

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

Mac OS is a viable option if you like Apple computers. You can get the same Intel chip and Nvidia graphics card for less running Windows.
Apple tends to integrate and control their products to a higher degreee than the Wintel machines. Plus, most Wintel laptops are made in the same chinese factory. One day HP, the next Lenova, the next Compaq. Might even be more frequent switching.
In the 60's, GM's Linden, NJ, assembly plant made made Chevroloet, Cadillac and Buicks one after the other coming down the line. It is all in the inventory control and queing of parts.
 

"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

(OP)
I know what you mean... For me it all comes down to performance. I'm tired of machines that are less than snappy.

Some of the jobs I'm working on are killing me as I approach the end. I design a lot of large stamping tools and fastening usually takes place at the end. As those features accumulate things just seem to start slowing down badly. Constantly updating links etc... It takes minutes just to make a componet the "work part"


Maybe I can manage some of that a little better but the hardware and OS needs to rock too.

Dave

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

What version of NX are you using?  If you're not yet on NX 7.5, I hope that you're using lightweight Reference Sets (in NX 7.5 there are no more 'Lightweight' Reference Sets, but rather NX uses 'Lightweight' representation of assemblies as the default behavior whether you've ever set-up lightweight Reference Sets in the past or not) and partial loading so that you are not using any more memory than is needed.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
 

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

(OP)
Yeah.. I'm on 7.5 and using partial loading.

I'm running a Dell Prec 670 with dual xeon 3.2ghz chips and 4gb of memory.

I've got the NX EV set to use two chips and the 3gb memory switch on for XP Pro.

My work is just demanding I guess.

Dave

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

And you've left the defaults in place so that lightweight models are being created when a model is saved (Save Options) and that when an assembly is opened, that it's in the 'Lightweight' mode (Load Options), correct?

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
 

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

(OP)
I see that in "Assembly load Options" "Use Lightweight Representations" was unchecked.

This was bad eh?

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

If you had any real legitimate want or need to use linux or mac, you wouldn't be here asking for other opinions.  I say stick with windows.  Creeping death comes with the territory, reinstall windows bi-anually to solve.   

NX 7.5.0.32 MoldWizard

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

John, in reference to 7.5 and Lightweight models: are the Assembly constraints active? My company is still on 6.something and is using faceted ref. sets, as they did on NX4. The constaints are kaput with Faceted sets.

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

(OP)
No ligit need. Just want to rock the work. Looks like windows is the only real option. Anything else isn't worth the heart burn.

Dave

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

@ 3dr what also could be a bottleneck is the network.  When working with Teamcenter integration it is very important that your server is placed close enough to the workstations, if you place it to far away your load and saving times will drop significant (due to latency).  So maybey invest some extra money in a decent networkcard/network and make sure that you have a dedicated server for your parts/TC.

Best regards,

Michäël.

NX4+TC9 / NX6+TC8Unified / NX7.5 native

 

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

Starting in NX 7.5 you can use Lightweight representations right from the beginning since you can now assign Assembly Constraints directly to 'faceted' components and they will be just as solid and enduring as they would have been if you had loaded the precise models instead.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
 

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

(OP)
Thankfully Mick, I dont use TC and run local on my own hard drive.

It looks like my answer for now is going to be installing Win 7 64 on my current box. I'm running a Dell Prec 670 thats as hot as these boxes were ever configured. In addition to normal registry slow down this thing was once scared by a virus and never really the same after.

I wanna see what this yeilds. If it's dissapointing I'll get another and hand this one down. lol

Dave

 

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

(OP)
John,
Now that I changed that setting solid bodies display pretty course. It's not the end of the world but sometimes it's hard to see finer relationships in edge contours.

Is there a setting to adjust that?

Dave

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

Dave,

if youre planning to do a clean install of Win7 x64, and running all your files localy, maybey a faster harddisk could serve your needs, i'm thinking of a SSD, or 15k RPM harddisk if the SSD is to expensive.

Best regards,

Michäël.

NX4+TC9 / NX6+TC8Unified / NX7.5 native

 

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

(OP)
Mick,
That would probably be the next step. How much of a factor is the hard disk after bumping memory to 8G and above?

You think it would be well spent $?

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

I think so. Because NX need to load the parts from your hard disk, the faster the I/O read is the faster all the parts of your assies are loaded.
8GB RAM, will be commited as 3GB or more for the system and the rest to the programs, but your parts won't be loaded in the memory but directly from and to your HD. Thus the faster the HD the quicker loading/saving times. Once loaded then the amount of RAM will kick in.
 

Best regards,

Michäël.

NX4+TC9 / NX6+TC8Unified / NX7.5 native

 

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

(OP)
Ok... and that load is a progressive thing within your assy right?

Partial loads take place at the initial open... then finish as you work with the parts.

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

You can always display the model using the 'Exact' option, but it will require more memory and display changes will take longer to update.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
 

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

@John : If you had enough processor/ram/HD/graphic card - power which settings would you apply to have NX getting the most out of your hardware configuration?
Thanks.

Best regards,

Michäël.

NX4+TC9 / NX6+TC8Unified / NX7.5 native

 

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

Like virtually ALL of the settings in NX, our recommendation is to leave them in their out-of-the-box settings until it's been demonstrated that you can't use the software as it is.  And one of the best examples is the Lightweight Representation mode.  While it may be true that the appearance of the edges of your model, when in the Modeling module, may appear to be less 'precise' than you're used to, that will NOT be a factor when it comes to your ability to perform any modeling task while working in the context of an Assembly, which is the only time that Lightweight Representations are in play anyway.  This is NOT Like in the past when if you had opted for using the Lightweight Reference Set you had to manually return to the Model Reference Set whenever you needed to perform operations like creating/editing Assembly Constraints, interpart modeling, creating a Drawing of the Assembly, etc.  Now with NX 7.5, IF the operation that you're attempting can NOT use the faceted model the system will AUTOMATICALLY load whatever additional data is needed, even if the appearance of the Components don't change, so that the operation can be completed.

So again, our position is, until you encounter something which you can NOT do as the system came out-of-the-box, there is NO real reason to change any of those settings.  Granted, you may have to adjust your expectations with respect to the something like the precise, or in this case, the less than precise appearance of Components in an Assembly, but when you consider the improvement in performance and throughput, it will be something which should become a non-issue in a very short period of time.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
 

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

(OP)
Ok... Win 7 pro 64 bit install complete.

Still very early but I can't say it feels all that solid. In fact it feels a little flakey. Don't think I would want to use it.

Looking for performance tweeks now... video, drivers etc...

Dell Precision 670
Xeon 3.6 ghz X 2
Quadro FX 3400
4 gig ram
500 gig SATA HD

If anyones done it on an older station like this and has some wisdom... feel free to share.

TIA
Dave

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

(OP)
Performance issues rectified. Quadro FX 3400 not stable or supported in Win 7 x 64.
Installed shelved (but supported) FX1700 and it fixed all the sytem instability.

Thanks to all for the input!

Dave

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

(OP)
For John,
The LW reps do take some getting used to but the performance gains appear to be worth it.

I've got to sometimes draft my work... do I need to change the load ops for that ir will LW be ok???

Dave

 

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

If your models were created in NX 7.5 or the parts have been updated using the 'refile' utility, then when you create your master model Drawing the system will automatically adjust the representation of the model as needed for the Drawing (you need to do nothing and there will be NOT impact on the original Assembly file either).  Granted, the Drawing requires that the system replace the lightweight with an exact model, but you don't have to take any action yourself.

Long term, we're working on being able to better draft lightweight models which will improve the performance of Drafting as well as reduce the memory required when creating Drawings of large complex Assemblies.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
 

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

We have a pile of Dell 670's here that were over $5,000 new circa 2007.... they are JUNK.  The problem is with the hard drive controllers, throughput around 40MBps or after some tweaking, 55MBps.  Any old computer with the same 7200rpm drive gets 70-75MBps (or with a SSD 150-200MBps).  The motherboard SATA controller is better than the software based RAID controller, if your rebuilding with windows 7 make the switch (move the sata cables over, reconfigure in BIOS).  I tried an add-on adaptec controller but had driver conflicts with our backup software.

Those Dell machines are DOGS compared to almost anything else and I never could help them out much.  Windows 7-64 seems to improve them slightly, though we no longer use NX on them.  For $2200 I replaced each with custom white-box Corei7 machines that benchmark 33% faster.  

NX is VERY hard drive intensive.  You can download ATTO (freeware) to benchmark hard drives, but be careful because the more important metrics are the first few lines showing very small reads and writes, rather than the larger files that expose the maximum performance.  

If you have a gigabit network and a decent fileserver, try working from the network since it may be faster than your local disk!  Gigabit networks can top out around 120MBps if the server is capable (a big if).   

NX 7.5.0.32 MoldWizard

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

I misspoke, the 670's are older machines and were fairly decent in thier day.  The next generation were 690 and T7400 which are nearly identical, these are the silver case workstations with the horrendous drive controllers.   

NX 7.5.0.32 MoldWizard

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

(OP)
@ NX mold... good thing I didnt get one of those models... and I was looking at them. I'm on the Main board SATA controller and this thing runs pretty well now. It was upgraded at some point before I got it and seems to be a really well config'd system.

I'll be doing the SSD drive soon. Looknig forward to what kind of difference it may make.

Thanks for all the info!

Dave

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

(OP)
For John,

I've arrived at deseigning in assembly context and found issues that hurt me with the lightweight.

1. Can't select control points or faces to place the coordinate system on.
2. Can't lay down basic curves in the assembly due to no control point access.

I could maybe adjust some of my design methods with the basic curves but not being able to place the work coordinate system at will in the assembly is a killer.

Looks like I may need to go back to exact models but I'll be able to use LW to my advantage in some circumstances.

Looking forward to more enhancments cause the performance gains are significant.

Dave

RE: OS options and NX performance ....

Note that I'm running NX 7.5.2.5 (not yet released, but it will be soon) and my load options are set to use Lightweight Representations and Partial Loading.


Quote (3dr):

1. Can't select control points or faces to place the coordinate system on.
I have no problems selecting Points (Control-, Mid-, End-, Arc Center-, Quadrant-, etc.) or Faces (Planar) when Orienting the WCS.  Or slecting points when specifying the Origin of the WCS.  Check that the Snap Point options are  enabled for the types of point that you're attempting to select as well as making sure that the Selection Scope option on the Selection Bar is set 'Entire Assembly'.


Quote (3dr):

2. Can't lay down basic curves in the assembly due to no control point access.
If you use the curve options on the newer 'Lines and Arcs Toolbar', everything works as expected.  However, the old 'Basic Curves' function is all but obsolete and officially we consider them as having been replaced by the newer 'Lines and Arcs'.  I suggest that learn to use the new tools as there are NO plans to make any changes to the 'Basic Curves' dialog and/or functionality.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
 

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