Per-Arne Almeflo Posted December 2, 2004 Share Posted December 2, 2004 Chris, did they put any serious work on the rendering engine for the 7.0, or not? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Velez Posted December 2, 2004 Share Posted December 2, 2004 Chris, did they put any serious work on the rendering engine for the 7.0, or not? 8561[/snapback] Seeing as how Chris is not here to answer you I will. And that is a touchy subject... seeing how I did put some serious effort in to IC7 rendering in an attempt to speed it up..... but alas the gains acheived will be visible with or without an ultra-spiffy graphics card. Or to put it another way.... an NVIDIA Quadro Super Slick 25000000 will perform much the same as an NVIDIA GeForce2 or some ATI gaming card. Especially since we do not currently utilize any of the special effects provided by todays cards (Like realtime shadows, reflections, alpha-blended transparency etc. etc.) To put it more technically, if you are inclined to this sort of information, IronCAD's rendering is currently Processer Limited... and will require a substantial re-architecture of the draw code.... which is something we are all itching to get in.. but many things take priority over this. Sorry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest bkline Posted December 3, 2004 Share Posted December 3, 2004 IronCAD's rendering is currently Processer Limited... and will require a substantial re-architecture of the draw code.... which is something we are all itching to get in.. but many things take priority over this. Sorry. 8570[/snapback] Please put this at the top of the priority list. The rendering engine needs work in the speed (and quality, features) department. Its not very useful if a screen (test) resolution rendering takes 1 hour to render in raytracing with reflections and transparency. In fact, its much faster for me to export the model(s), reapply textures, redo lighting, and render in another app (Cinema). Cinema (or Lightwave, 3dStudioMax, etc.) will render the same size image with much better AA, shadows, and lighting in 1/10 the time of Ironcad. Its really time to improve this highly important piece of Ironcad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Velez Posted December 6, 2004 Share Posted December 6, 2004 Oh Geeze, you're talking about realistic rendering? Graphics cards in no way what so ever do now and probably ever will affect the speed of a realistic (offline) rendering.. (well, I can temper that comment, but the reasons get technical and are not really worth persuing). Unfortunatley when I said that rendering was a low priority, I really meant real-time rendering (what you get while you work on the model). And while that is low priority... it is really not that low seeing as how we want to get large assembly performance up and that would be part of it.... but realistic rendering performance is way down there.... I might be stepping on Cary's toes (as he is the one that manages allocating resources to meet certain product goals), but there is an internal desire to integrate a third party realistic renderer. This could give better results, but again, it is a when-you-have-time project. We hear the community's call for better real-time rendering, but it is hard to spend time on something that is not really central to CAD functionality when we lag behind in so many other core areas. The cold truth is that outstanding rendering, for most people doing CAD design, is a Nice-To-Have.... and we need to deal with the Must-Haves. Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Per-Arne Almeflo Posted December 9, 2004 Share Posted December 9, 2004 Seeing as how Chris is not here snip... 8570[/snapback] Is Chris getting back, eventually, or not at all? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Velez Posted December 9, 2004 Share Posted December 9, 2004 Is Chris getting back, eventually, or not at all? 8641[/snapback] Alas, Chris has left the building.... permanantly. He had personal reasons to move back to his home state. Don't think it's anything you guys did or said Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Per-Arne Almeflo Posted December 10, 2004 Share Posted December 10, 2004 I just did a simple little unscientifical test yesterday, using quite a large machine model that we have. I loaded the 30 day IC 6.0 on my new home computer, an AMD 64-3000+ 500 MB with a simple Nvidia FX5200-128, and turned it around a little in the scene. It was quite obvious that it did not turn as smoothly at all, as with the ATI Fire GL 8800 that we have at the office, on the Pentium4 2.4MHz 1 GB machines here. This is in contradiction with the "graphical cards doesn't matter any more" and "processors matters more" messages we have got lately. The update all drawing views took 9 minutes on the AMD 64 with IC 6.0. It used to take over 20 minutes on the P4 with IC 6.0, but the 7.0 has improved that to 4 minutes. (And we have larger models still). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Velez Posted December 10, 2004 Share Posted December 10, 2004 HRm.. interesting result, but too many variables. If you want to see for sure, you really should use the same computer. Will your company freak if you pop-open the chasis to your work computer? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Per-Arne Almeflo Posted December 13, 2004 Share Posted December 13, 2004 HRm.. interesting result, but too many variables. If you want to see for sure, you really should use the same computer. 8657[/snapback] I'll try to reduce the variables as soon as I have the opportunity. But maybe it's a IC6 vs IC 7 thing. At second attempt I noticed that the AMD 64 with IC6.0 keeps the rendering almost all the time when turning the model, while the 7.0 system goes into wireframe mode much sooner, which may well account for the smoother turning. Is this rendering/wireframe turnover graphic driver related, or is it IronCAD driven? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Per-Arne Almeflo Posted December 14, 2004 Share Posted December 14, 2004 I now have installed IronCAD 7.0 into my AMD 64-3000+ and now things are beginning to make some sense. My $50 FX5200 together with the AMD 64 now gives better screen performance in scenes than the $500 Fire GL 8800 on the job computer. The update all drawing views on the assembly drawing now is ready on merely 2 minutes and 15 secs vs 4 minutes on the P4-2.4GHz. Still not an exact comparison between the two cards alone, but your recommendation of processor power over graphic card power seems to be verified anyway. No need to stop there although. 2 minutes delay is still much too long for any command, and the complexity of machines and production lines are increasing every day. And the turning of these big models on the screen may be manageble, but are certainly not swift or smooth. The Professional Open GL card trix are certainly needed. We need at least tenfold better performance soon enough. Computers will make up for part of that, (the AMD 3000+ is really a budget model) and software must continue to provide its share of performance improvements in the future too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Velez Posted December 14, 2004 Share Posted December 14, 2004 Hrm, yeah IC6 vs IC7 is definately a factor... I missed that peice of incformation the first time. And no, I 'm not particularly happy with the rendering performance now either. We're trying to decide what can be done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Per-Arne Almeflo Posted February 8, 2005 Share Posted February 8, 2005 Recent tests by our VAR has shown that using Nvidia 6800 with AMD64 makes wonders with zooming and panning of even the largest models in the scene. No matter how fast one try to spin it around, it never goes into wire frame mode or begins to jerk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Per-Arne Almeflo Posted August 9, 2005 Share Posted August 9, 2005 Seeing as how Chris is not here to answer you I will. And that is a touchy subject... seeing how I did put some serious effort in to IC7 rendering in an attempt to speed it up..... but alas the gains acheived will be visible with or without an ultra-spiffy graphics card. Or to put it another way.... an NVIDIA Quadro Super Slick 25000000 will perform much the same as an NVIDIA GeForce2 or some ATI gaming card. Especially since we do not currently utilize any of the special effects provided by todays cards (Like realtime shadows, reflections, alpha-blended transparency etc. etc.) To put it more technically, if you are inclined to this sort of information, IronCAD's rendering is currently Processer Limited... and will require a substantial re-architecture of the draw code.... which is something we are all itching to get in.. but many things take priority over this. Sorry. 8570[/snapback] Steven, What's the latest word about this for IC8? It's time for new computers, should I go with some new great gaming cards, or is there any real value for IC8 in the Quadro line at present? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tlehnhaeuser Posted August 10, 2005 Share Posted August 10, 2005 Some NEws that may effect everyone's decisions on graphic cards. http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/blog/200..._doesnt_li.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Twining Posted August 10, 2005 Share Posted August 10, 2005 Just another reason I vote for IronCAD for linux! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Per-Arne Almeflo Posted August 15, 2005 Share Posted August 15, 2005 Ok, if Chris and Steven ain't there no more, who is? Kevin? Anybody? Who could answer the question: Does IC 8.0 take advantage of any extended OpenGL functions in pro cards like the Nvidia Quadro series? We learned from Steven Velez that IC up to 7.0 did not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest IronKevin Posted August 15, 2005 Share Posted August 15, 2005 To the best of my knowledge 8.0 has the same graphics system as 7.0. IK Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.