DBL

Dear tvetter; You may reach me at borroff@home.com. I've had some printing problems with Vectorworks on my HP plotter. I bit the bullet and upgraded to a faster processor since their Tech support indicated that my system seemed to be maxing out the processor. I have approx. 800MB Ram. Dell is recommending more. Now one of my workstations will be printing and the other will be for drawing. I really wanted to do more in 3D but the rendering is so slow that it was difficult to do checks of the drawings for accuracy. I have had to reinstall the driver for my plotter 4 times now. The default settings do not work properly????? I'm not impressed with HP about that but I like the rest of the equipment features. Dan quote: Originally posted by tvetter: Switch from autocad / Landcadd to Landmark this year. Will not go back, this is a far superior progam even in its infancy. ecoPlan & Design Wenatchee, WA [This message has been edited by tvetter (edited 08-30-2001).]

Dear Tvetter; I've purchased Landmark but have been reading horror stories about inability to print and the usual technical glitches that are to be expected in a new product. I'm afraid to install until there is a downloadable patch to address those problems. I don't have Vectorworks 9 for that reason, as well. Years ago I used a CAD program that would go completely off. I still have drawings that I did with it that I can open but can't modify or correct. Hundreds of hours of work that had to be redone. So, what is your experience with Landmark? Since it comes with an embedded form of Vectorworks 9.0 does it come with the problems? From the other side of the Cascade Curtain. Dan B. quote: Originally posted by tvetter: Switch from autocad / Landcadd to Landmark this year. Will not go back, this is a far superior progam even in its infancy. ecoPlan & Design Wenatchee, WA [This message has been edited by tvetter (edited 08-30-2001).] ------------------

This is a late reply. Haven't been to this site. Waiting for Landmark to release. At this rate I might as well wait until the end of the year to order, work out a few bugs first. If you visit the XI site you can look at technical spec's for their current systems. One of the important features is the motherboard. I know zip about them but have experienced the results on my system. My last crash was over 8 weeks ago! Lotsa memory & a good motherboard. AMD's processors continue to be the best for value. The single processor Thunderbird is the fastest with a 266mb front side bus. Apple has apparently been talking to AMD about building their CPU's. DDR Ram looks to make a big difference in performance so the Motherboard would need to accept DDR. Rambus memory is more powerful but way over the top in price. The only Dual Monitor video cards that I remember hearing anything about was one made by Matrox. The best video card tested by Cadalyst for Desktop PC's recently was a Fire GL4 with 64mb DDR. I don't remember the specifics but it should be easy to find at XI's site. Try configuring a single processor AMD system. They are set up to do the same way as Dell. When you select options for hardware and software it will show all their available options. The Fire Video card is apparently almost $1000. on the street. It's much cheaper in a vendor package system. XI's price is something like $400, but don't quote me on that. The Matrox Card didn't get anywhere near the performance boost that the Fire card did but if you really want a dual Monitor system there isn't much choice. I'm happy with my IBM 20" monitor set at 1600x1280, no rulers or scroll bars. I've got good focus all the way to the edge of the screen, their strong suit. I think I saw some for sale for $300 recently! It's not 22" but I'd take good resolution and focus over size any day. Hope this helps someone. Good hardware can make a big difference. DBL

quote: Originally posted by kgoodwin: Hey DBL (or anybody else who wants to respond), I'm trying to build a new PC for VW. What do you have in your system? What processor and speed? What type of video card? What OS? What are some gotchas I should watch out for? I was considering a dual processor system, but apperently VW doesn't support it. Do you have any direct experience with that? I also wanted a dual display, do you have a recomendation on video cards? Thanks for you time. Kevin

I'm operating on a PC. After much trial and error I purchased a Workstation from XI Computer corporation. They design computers specifically for CAD. I have a video card with 32 megs Ram. The new Athlon CPU's seem to be an excellent deal. I'd get as much Ram as possible. I've got 896 megs. The difference is astounding. It seems as though the process is twice as fast as the same CPU with only 128 megs Ram. ECC Ram is a bit slower but avoiding errors speeds up the process. There are some hot new video cards that speed up the system dramatically. XI sales is very helpful at putting together estimates and there Tech support has been just great. I've trained on Macs and had more crashes than on my XI Workstation. The two systems Mac vs. PC Workstation are comparably priced so the choice is yours.

I'm operating on a PC. After much trial and error I purchased a Workstation from XI Computer corporation. They design computers specifically for CAD. I have a video card with 32 megs Ram. The new Athlon CPU's seem to be an excellent deal. I'd get as much Ram as possible. I've got 896 megs. The difference is astounding. It seems as though the process is twice as fast as the same CPU with only 128 megs Ram. ECC Ram is a bit slower but avoiding errors speeds up the process. There are some hot new video cards that speed up the system dramatically. XI sales is very helpful at putting together estimates and there Tech support has been just great. I've trained on Macs and had more crashes than on my XI Workstation. The two systems Mac vs. PC Workstation are comparably priced so the choice is yours.