help building cad machine

[SaintlyCharBoy]

first note - i'm a college kid who qualifies for 0 financial aide - nuf said

my current setup in mind:

Tyan Thunder K7 (S2462) or Tiger MP (S2460)
either running twin 2400+ athalon MPs (possibly upgrading to 2600) and around 2 gig of ram

i'm a bit stuck in the graphics department
(sean wants dual monitors)
Leadtek:
GeForce 4 Ti 42 to 4800
128 MB

ATI - looking at radeon series 7500+ in the 128 mb range

similar matrox units

i'll likely cannibalize my old machine using its POS sound card and harddrives (i've a 120gb on the way)

any suggestions/insight?
i am running mostly autodesk inventor, using Acad 2002, occasionally datacad, and hopefully Pro-e soon

i'll be buying 2k pro, and likely partitioning for linux.... just because

again, any insight will be appreciated

[Jeff240sx]

That's too much computer for CAD man.
You basically need like 1GHz of processor, 512MB ram to get places faster, and a good 3D graphics card.. like a Radeon. The HD size you need depends on how much info you need to store. Get a nice, large monitor 19" or so, with the ability to get great resolution and go.
If you "need" 5.2GHz of processor, you better be making movies for Pixar Entertainment.
If you want to game, that's a badass computer you're setting up. If you want to do CAD, see above. If you want to game, that's cool, but don't try to sell us on this CAD computer...
-Jeff

[SaintlyCharBoy]

well, through inventor, i've been animating 3pc mesh wheels with 72 accurate hex drive bolts surrounding crossdrilled rotors on constrained pushrod suspensions, around a swept tubular steel chassis.... we should be building the car next year

my PIII 650 w/512 ****s when i try to open the wheel file - hell it doesn't like windows

gaming is a ... bonus ... besides i suck at teh gaming
but rendering would be nice

basically i don't really want to replace this machine as quickly as i've "needed" to the one i have - also, the above machine looks to run around a grand to 1200 compared to the almost 1800 that my current dinosaur cost new

PS i have monitor 1, and all necessary drives through scavenged parts and selective cannibalization

[240racer]

sounds like an FSAE car to me? what school are you at?

[SaintlyCharBoy]

above - sorry, didn't want to come off as an ass, but i am *not* drawing prefab houses

i'm at a little school in Concord, NH

not an SAE car but i wish it was, we don't have the program

what we are doing is building an "alternative energy vehicle" - we are the home of suntec 1-6 and sungo, both relatively well known solar/electric vehicles

this time we want to make the car perform, we have several members in teh club working hard on making this thing a handling force

we want to run autox by the time it is together

at this point the club is bickering as to whether we should use a 120hp/192 lb/ft ansaldo motor with NIMH batts (we would like nickel hydrogen but $$ and hard to get) or run a biodiesel TDI mounted transverse behind the driver

the chassis are 95% the same, and the 5% makes all the difference :(

our old stuff can be seen here (http://nhtisev.tripod.com)

teh new car is still very hush hush as to the specifics

i have some concept sketches that i am willing to mail out, but have been ordered not to post (though i don't see the implications)

[Jeff240sx]

Me either. It just seemed that you were drawing houses or bridges or something to that effect, in which case you'd have entirely too much computer.
Now I see what you're doing... and have fun!
-Jeff

[NZO]

You dont need a gaming vid card for a CAD machine. If you can afford it get a pro card like 3DLabs Wildcat, ATI FireGL, Matrox Parhelia, PNY Quadro4/Fx, etc. All of these cards are dual-monitor capable.

[DuffMan]

CAD usually isn't very 3D graphics intensive, as apposed to say 3D modeling.

What you need to focus on is memory bandwidth, memory amount and hard drive speed. I would recommend SCSI if you can afford it.

Those two boards are good choices Tyan makes good stuff. If you arent going to use it's optional SCSI I would stay away from the thunder board, because those are usually a lot more epensive than the Tiger boards.

I wouldnt bother with the GeForce. I could be wrong about this but I don't think CAD would even use 128mb of graphic memory, so a cheaper matrox card supporting dual monitors would be fine.

[240racer]

it sounds like he will be using a solid modeling CAD program, Pro-E, which needs a good graphics card. The rendering can be quite complex. A tip to SaintlyCharBoy though, when you are making assemblies in Pro-E, remove all the little parts that don't make any difference, that speeds up the rotating and zoom times dramatically. I designed some 3-pc wheels in pro-e for our FSAE car and they used 12 bolts, but in the big assy, I skipped the bolts, because I knew they weren't going to hit anything and they just make the assy slower.

Also, if you are doing FEA on your parts the dual processor will help out, otherwise I think that might be a little overkill.

I talked to a friend who is into graphics design and uses pro-e as well, he suggested looking into ELSI brand graphic cards for faster video processing.

[SaintlyCharBoy]

cool, thanks guys, i'll check them out

yes, i am focussing on solids - not 2d cad

i am also big into graphic design, but as an ME major, i am focussing on part design rather than the artistic side - it's just a big personal interest