Hi there.
We use VW2017 to add electrical engineering features to architect issued plans. In a rather big project we get multiple 500 MB - 1 GB plans from the architect that we have to import and save as VW documents to be able to work on them. This happens a few times a week and it surely adds up time before we can work with those plans. As of now we are using the biggest baddest iMacs and VW2017 for the planing and even they slightly buckle when importing those plans. Trying out different MacPro and Mac minis we determined, that during the import process it's the clockspeed and the usage of real CPU cores that truly makes the difference. For example a MacPro 2009, 4-Core 2.66 GHz XEON on 8 GB RAM, SATA2 SSD with 10.11.6 and VW2017 will have around 2min 30sec to import a 10 MB .ifc file. We tested it with the standart GT120 (512 MB VRAM) and a GTX760 4GB and there practically no difference between them. GPU seems to make no direct impact at that point. Also it shows only the real cores under pressure, so no hyperthreading during import.
So there are a few questions that need confirmation:
Is the observation correct, that it is the clockspeed and the physical cores that really count during import?
Can VW2017 actually use more than 4 Cores? How is it in WIndows 10 64bit?
Will 32 GB RAM bring a significant boost against 16 GB RAM?
Would a RAM disk containing the file to be converted bring a significant difference?
We threw round a few suggestions and thats what we would go, if the before mentioned points can be confirmed:
AMD Black Edition FX 9590 4.7 GHz 8-Core on a FX990 Chipset board, AMD RX480 (8GB VRAM), SSD, 16 GB RAM (or 32 if it really makes a difference)
In the end we are aiming for the setup that will allow us to max out on the import process (within reason of course).
Thanks for your input, your tips are really appreciated!
Best Regards
Thomas Alt
