AEC Magazine March / April 2020

Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology for Architecture, Engineering and Construction

Customer value or corporate cash cow?

Point clouds in the cloud

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Twinmotion 2020

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Take control of your licences March / April 2020 >> Vol.107 p01_AEC_MARCHAPRIL20_Cover.indd 1

January / February 2020 >> Vol.106 02/04/2020 12:00

Transition to Named User Subscription vs. Network Licensing BricsCAD® is available in single, volume and network licenses, as a subscription or as a perpetual (permanent) license.

Autodesk®: Transition to Named Users Starting May 7th, 2020, Network license users can trade-in one network license for two named user subscriptions on their next renewal Named user licenses are linked to a single, “named” user; e.g. “john.smith@xzycorp.com” Named user licensing means that companies will need to purchase Subscriptions for every user who uses the software - even for casual use

Bricsys®: Flexible Licensing Benefits Bricsys offers single, volume and network licenses.

You can buy them (perpetual) or rent them (subscription) BricsCAD licenses are linked to the company that owns them, not to an individual user BricsCAD network licenses can float across a corporate network, covering both dedicated and casual users

Administering named user plans puts an additional load on CAD Managers and IT staff

There is no additional administration required to manage BricsCAD licenses

If you support more than two (2) users with a current network license, you will need to purchase additional subscriptions, at an increased price over last year

Bricsys offers an optional low-cost Maintenance program to keep your perpetual software licenses up-to-date. We offer real choice in CAD software licensing

What’s the smart choice?

Switch to BricsCAD, and you’ll control your license choices BricsCAD is available as single, volume and network licenses – subscription or perpetual – the choice is yours

Bricsys builds BricsCAD for people who build things. For the last two decades, our singular focus has been making cost-effective, mission-critical CAD, BIM and CDE products. Now a part of the global technology giant Hexagon AB, we are reinforcing our commitment to help our customers achieve more, in less time, for less money.

Learn more at www.bricsys.com

Celebrating 100 editions of the magazine dedicated to Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology for Architecture, Engineering and Construction

editorial

MANAGING EDITOR GREG CORKE greg@x3dmedia.com

CONSULTING EDITOR MARTYN DAY martyn@x3dmedia.comm

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News 7

Twin peeks 26

Trials extended for virtual workstations, Revit given point cloud boost and residential feasibility studies accelerated

For the launch of Twinmotion 2020, we explore what Epic Games has in store for the easy-to-use arch viz tool powered by Unreal Engine

Cover story - the subscription yoke 12 The move from perpetual licences to subscription was meant to lower the cost of software and make it easier to manage but it hasn’t really turned out that way

Software licensing: taking control 20 How WilkinsonEyre is using custom technology to get valuable insight into its licence usage to help drive down costs

Correvate - point clouds in the cloud 33 The high cost of laser scanning has kept it in the hands of specialists, but a new UK startup combines the power of the cloud with new algorithms to break the hegemony

The emergence of BIM SLC 36 Blockchain - smart contracts for BIM and digital construction management

about AEC Magazine is published bi-monthly by X3DMedia Ltd Room 7, 1st Floor, Unit 2 465C Hornsey Road London, N19 4DR T. +44 (0)20 3355 7311 F. +44 (0)20 3355 7319 © 2020 X3DMedia Ltd

Workstation special report - 43-66

All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without prior permission from the publisher is prohibited. All trademarks acknowledged. Opinions expressed in articles are those of the author and not of X3DMedia. X3DMedia cannot accept responsibility for errors in articles or advertisements within the magazine.

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Top tips on how to spot your workstation bottlenecks • Why the new 64-core AMD Threadripper is the most impressive CPU ever • How AMD’s new Radeon Pro GPU can take you into viz and VR for under $400

Why Microsoft’s new Azure cloud workstation instances are a great fit for CAD • How the Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000 has given Dell’s 15-inch mobile workstation a new lease of life + lots, lots more.

March / April 2020

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03/04/2020 16:17

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News

Virtual workstation trials extended for home workers

Collaboration for simulation imScale has added enhanced collaboration features and a multiuser licensing package to its cloud-based simulation software to support design, engineering, and architecture teams that may span various locations and time zones.

SimScale’s Team Plan allows teams to always share and work on a “single source of truth” —live and interactive. According to SimScale, this is in contrast to traditional CAE desktop applications where virtual testing is done sequentially and in silos, which can lead to long design iteration times

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■ simscale.com

o help support 3D CAD users working from home over the coming weeks and months, several workstation and cloud providers are offering free licences and trials of services and software. All of the technologies are slightly different but work on the same principle that a host workstation (in the office, datacentre or cloud) does the heavyduty processing while pixels are streamed to the home worker’s PC, laptop or entry-level workstation.

This isn’t just about giving workers access to powerful workstations from home, but about overcoming the challenges of software licensing and enabling firms to retain much better control over their project data, storing everything in the datacentre / office server / cloud, rather than having to share huge files and keep on top of revisions.

Lenovo is offering a free 120-day licence of Mechdyne’s TGX Remote Workstation software (lenovoremoteworkstations.com) that compresses and sends information from a host workstation to a receiver where it is decoded. Receiver software is available for Windows, Linux or Mac. There’s also an option to invite colleagues and contributors into a collaborative experience.

HP is extending its ZCentral Remote Boost software free trial to three months for anyone who needs it, on any workstation (it’s always included with HP Z workstations) (tinyurl.com/remoteboost.com).

Windows, MacOS and Linux are supported on the client side. iOS and Android are not.

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You can learn more about the tech in this AEC article (tinyurl.com/Z-boost).

Nvidia is expanding its free virtual GPU (vGPU) software evaluation from 128 to 500 licenses for 90 days (tinyurl. com/vGPU-NV). With vGPU software licences, companies can use their on-premise Nvidia GPUs to provide accelerated virtual infrastructure.

NVIDIA offers three tiers of vGPU software and all three are available through the expanded free licensing. This includes Nvidia GRID for VDI, Nvidia Quadro Virtual Data Center Workstation to deliver a “full Quadro experience from the data centre or cloud” and Nvidia Virtual Compute Server software for server virtualisation with GPUs. Nutanix is offering a 30-day trial of Xi Frame that allows 3D CAD tools to run in a browser (nutanix.com/work-from-home).

Meanwhile your firm might actually have remote graphics capabilities for CAD without knowing it. When using Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection it automatically uses the GPU in your host workstation. You can read more about the technology in our review of the AMD Radeon Pro W5500 on page 56.

Finally, Teradici is offering a guide to remote working and how to get started with its PCoIP technology (teradici.com).

Microsoft has launched its new AMDpowered NVv4 workstation instances on Azure that are optimised for 3D CAD (see page 62) and Workspot is hosting webinars about its cloud workstations powered by AMD (workspot.com).

Point cloud boost for Revit ndet for Revit is a plugin designed to give users better visibility, increased control and performance when using point clouds. The software generates dynamic views directly from the Undet database instead of loading heavy RCP files.

New surface analysis tools in the 2020 release let you check and visualise a created model’s accuracy based on the point cloud.

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■ undet.com

Laser scanning for FM ointfuse has launched a new toolkit for the use of laser scanning within space management, planning and utilisation.

Pointfuse Space Creator automates the conversion of features such as walls, doors and windows to BIM LOD 200, and is compatible with the latest mobile mapping systems.

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■ pointfuse.com

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ROUND UP Road safety analysis

Microsoft explores future of smart buildings in Singapore

Transoft has acquired Brisk Synergies, a specialist in automated road safety analysis software that applies continuous deep learning analytics on traffic video to help prevent vehicle, pedestrian and cyclist collisions, and improve road safety ■ transoftsolutions.com

Bentley + GroupBC Bentley Systems has acquired cloud services provider GroupBC to help support its digital twin ambitions.

GroupBC’s Enterprise+ common data environment (CDE) solution is currently being used on a number of UK projects including a £3bn new town centre at Canada Water in London.

■ bentley.com ■ groupbc.com

Energy efficiency i-REAP is a new system for determining the energy and cost efficiency of buildings. Data collected from a network of small sensors will initially help experts paint an accurate picture of energy consumption in a number of test sites with a view to setting up a service to offer energy efficiency advice to businesses ■ ireap.co.uk

Formwork planning DokaCAD for Revit is a new software tool for automated formwork planning, to help optimise safety, time and costs, as well as assembly and deployment plans.

The software provides access to more than 40,000 ‘tried-and-tested’ model solutions from Doka’s own CADindependent Tipos logic application ■ doka.com

Cloud-based CAD To help support home workers over the coming months, Graebert is making its browser-based CAD solution, ARES Kudo, available on a 30 day trial until the end of May 2020. The offer also extends to ARES Commander (desktop) and ARES Touch (mobile) ■ kudo​.graebert.com​

Material boost Lumion 10.3 features a new displacement map import feature to help give any material a more natural and realistic appearance. The popular real time arch viz tool also features a new LiveSync for AutoCAD plug-in that lets users model and render at the same time ■ lumion.com

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n collaboration with Bentley Systems and Schneider Electric, Microsoft has rolled out a digital twin of its new regional headquarters at Frasers Tower in Singapore. The digital twin is being billed as a ‘model for smart offices’ bringing together the convergence of artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and productivity tools.

At Frasers Tower, sensors are used to monitor facilities usage, energy and utilities and help optimise space utilisation, air conditioning and lighting adjustments.

Activity detection enables lighting and room sensors to reflect room bookings.

Data is collected using a mix of 179 Bluetooth beacons in meeting rooms and 900 sensors for lighting, air quality and temperature. The platform generates nearly 2,100 data points, that are connected to the cloud on Microsoft Azure, enabling the ‘holistic management’ of the environment.

Employees and staff use Smart Building CampusLink, an application that is fully

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integrated with Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Office 365. It helps employees find directions, determine room occupancy and book facilities in real-time. The sensors could potentially also monitor carbon dioxide levels in the air that negatively affect work performance and neural activity, noise levels and energy usage.

According to Microsoft, this can result in savings of up to 25%, as experienced at its headquarters in Redmond, USA. “Digital twins are redefining how we manage infrastructure, from individual equipment installations to large facilities and entire cities. While smart buildings were developed to better manage energy consumption, we have come to realise additional strategic roles of dynamically allocating space, increasing utilisation, reducing costs, improving competitiveness, and enhancing collaboration and productivity,” said Kaushik Chakraborty, vice president and regional executive for Asia South at Bentley Systems.

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azure.microsoft.com/services/digital-twins

BIMcloud as a Service free for 60 days raphisoft has expanded the availability of BIMcloud as a Service to help architects and designers collaborate in these challenging times. It is being offered free for 60 days to ArchiCAD users.

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According to Graphisoft, the cloud solution allows design teams to work together in real-time regardless of the size of the project, the location of the team members, or the speed of the Internet connection.

There is no up-front IT investment and deployment

is ‘quick, easy and scalable’.

“BIMcloud as a Service is exactly what architects need to transition to working from home without missing a beat,” says Francisco Behr, Principal, Behr Browers Architects.

■ workfromhome.graphisoft.com

www.AECmag.com

02/04/2020 17:57

News

NXT BLD London rescheduled to 8 October

Atkins and OS become digital twin partners tkins and Ordnance Survey have been appointed by the Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) to research the benefits of creating a national digital twin of the UK’s infrastructure.

The research project will explore the baseline benefits of creating digital twins of the UK’s critical national infrastructure – from hospitals to railway stations – to form a connected ecosystem of data-sharing; a national digital twin.

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■ cdbb.cam.ac.uk

EC Magazine has taken the decision to reschedule NXT BLD 2020 to the Autumn. The conference and exhibition will now take place on 8 October 2020 at the QEII Centre London.

“Over the past few months, we have been following Coronavirus developments intently. In light of recent Government announcements and, of

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course, not wanting to compromise the health or safety of our partners, delegates, employees and others, we are rescheduling NXT BLD 2020, ” said events director Martyn Day. Over the coming months AEC Magazine will be announcing the updated conference program. Sales of £49 early bird tickets have been extended until July 31.

■ nxtbld.com

Tekla boosts modelling, rebar & formwork he 2020 release of structural BIM tool Tekla Structures includes geometry improvements to enable easier modelling of complex shapes, better usability and control with concrete rebar detailing enhancements, ‘quick and easy’ formworks modelling, improved hollow-core concrete detailing, and enhanced drawing tools.

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The Tekla Structures 2020 Maintenance package also includes Trimble Connect. The cloud-based collaboration platform allows stakeholders to share, review, coordinate and comment on data-rich building models, drawings, schedules and other project information in real-time, whether from a laptop, desktop or mobile device.

■ tekla.com/2020

The digital wind tunnel amboll has introduced the Digital Wind Tunnel, a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tool that allows users to simulate, visualise and get accurate predictions of wind loading on structure(s).

The software can also be used to address a wide range of other design questions, including the impact of a new structures on its surroundings. For example, a skyscraper can change the wind flow through an area and affect air quality, pollution levels, outdoor thermal and wind comfort, and safety for pedestrians and cyclists.

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Enscape viz tool now exposes object data nscape 2.7, the latest release of the real-time rendering and visualisation software, can now take advantage of the “I” in BIM. With this new, long awaited feature, objects can now be selected in Enscape and their associated BIM information displayed. This includes dimensions, manufacturer details, and prices. BIM model information should be of particular

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interest for design review and client presentations as questions about objects can be immediately answered.

Other new features include preset orthographic views that let designs to be seen from new angles. It means users no longer need to switch between BIM and Enscape to generate 2D views, including floor plans, sections and elevations.

■ enscape3d.com

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News

ROUND UP Digital O&M Operance is a new mobile-first app designed to help anyone to easily search, share, update and utilise BIM information, without needing to know anything about BIM or navigate complicated 3D models. The ‘smart building manual’ will soon be able to auto-classify BIM models and legacy assets utilising AI ■ operance.app

Smart construction Construction firm Komatsu has built a Smart Construction dashboard using the Cesium visualisation platform so it can monitor a construction site from anywhere in the world, see how it changes over time, and compare plans with real-world data ■ cesium.com

KlearView360° KlearView360° is a new vehicle-based inspection system which combines NCTech’s iSTAR Pulsar+ high resolution 360° camera with KOREC’s K-Portal cloud-based hosting solution for live progress monitoring and assignment of work orders ■ korecgroup.com ■ nctechimaging.com

Leica on site Leica Geosystems has updated Leica iCON site, its portfolio of software solutions designed to efficiently connect the different tasks, machines and teams on construction sites. Leica says the new release helps increase the speed, performance and accuracy of all positioning related tasks ■ leica-geosystems.com

Boost for 3D Repo Mott MacDonald Ventures has formed a strategic partnership with 3D Repo.

Mott MacDonald plans to use 3D Repo’s cloud-based BIM platform to enhance collaboration and drive better results on construction projects across the UK ■ 3drepo.com

NBS Source NBS Source is a new digital platform for embedding standardised construction product information in the places specifiers need, across the project timeline. According to NBS, it will help the construction industry make betterinformed product decisions, and give manufacturers a targeted route to market ■ theNBS.com

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Revit plug-in to accelerate residential feasibility studies ondon-based Matterlab is gearing up for the launch of Unitize, a new generative design tool designed to help architects assess residential masses in seconds.

The Revit plug-in was commissioned

by Make Architects.

According to Matterlab, most designs for residential projects follow a similar workflow, requiring the architect to assess a site, taking into consideration a series of building or council requirements. During this process the architect will generate multiple volumes representing the building and will fit units within them, thereby generating floor layouts to obtain the total unit mix. Usually the resultant mix does not meet the brief so the process repeats again and again with different masses until a good solution is found.

To eliminate that cyclical process Matterlab’s Revit tool is designed to

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accelerate the assessment and reassessment of the architect’s masses. It works by providing an architect with a high-level interface to play around with when evaluating design options. The mass can be quickly pushed and pulled, with the unit mix and floor layouts recalculated instantly.

■ matterlab.co

WSP improves collaboration with Tridify ngineering, architecture and design services firm WSP Finland is using Tridify’s BIM Publishing cloud service to help improve communication with stakeholders.

Previously, for a client or colleague to view a BIM file required a BIM expert to host a meeting (in person or Skype) or for a specialist application to be downloaded. Now with Tridify’s BIM Publishing cloud service the company

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can upload BIM models into Tridify as IFC files, for stakeholders to view in a standard web browser.

“Clients or colleagues can easily view models when they want, on any device and it also solves the problem of involving stakeholders who are not accustomed to specialist design software,” says Roope Syvälahti, construction consultant and project manager at WSP Finland.

■ tridify.com

BricsCAD BIM gets smarter with IFCs marter IFC autoclassification through the automatic detection of profile types is one of the new features of BricsCAD BIM V20.2. BIMSections are also said to perform better and deliver better, more precise renderings of sections and elevations.

Other new features include BIMTags to denote

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load-bearing directions, and new BIM profile settings to help keep track of standards libraries. Finally, the AI-powered Propagate workflow has been improved to support more cases and make it easier to raise the LoD of a BIM model in a continuous way.

Meanwhile, core platform improvements include a new UI, better

support for site modelling, grading and alignment and better support for high-res displays and multicore CPUs. For example, the software now uses up to four “helper threads” when loading point clouds, which can accelerate load times by 2-3x, while ‘significantly reducing’ memory requirements.

■ bricsys.com/bim

www.AECmag.com

02/04/2020 17:57

Digital design & computation conference Take part in this two day event that showcases the latest developments in digital manufacturing, material optimisation and design method innovation Building on the success of the 2019 conference, the Institution of Structural Engineers hosts world leading experts to share their knowledge and real world application of computational design.

Day one is packed with interactive workshops demonstrating how digital design tools can empower engineers to reduce carbon and improve building performance.

On day two, Institution Gold Medallist and acclaimed engineer of the Burj Khalifa and cleantech Pearl River Tower, Bill Baker opens the conference devoted to achieving a sustainable built environment through the power of computation and digital engineering.

Book your place

istructe.info/digitalaec Sponsors

Date: 19-20 May 2020 Price: Workshops: From £175 + VAT Conference: From £65 + VAT Both days: From £225 + VAT Location: 47-58 Bastwick Street, London, EC1V 3PS

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Subscription: customer value or corporate cash cow?

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Feature

e subscription yoke Originally, we were promised that the move from perpetual licences to subscription would lower the cost of software, be easier to manage and give more regular updates. But for Autodesk customers it hasn’t really turned out that way, as Martyn Day reports

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istorically speaking, purchasing products like AutoCAD was akin to joining a club.

Buying a perpetual licence for several thousand pounds (or dollars) would give you your own copy of the lingua franca of the CAD world. Multiple floppy disks came in a substantial box, along with a dongle (software lock), an overlay for a digitizer tablet and a pile of user manuals.

From 1988 to 2003, Autodesk was not hard-set on producing a yearly release, with some intervals being between one and three years. In that time, users would typically upgrade every other release and the company’s key marketing drive was about trying to get customers to upgrade with rafts of new features. Changes to the DWG format, which happened when some core new features were added, gave an added incentive to upgrade.

Incompatibility between different versions made it harder to work with clients.

Autodesk then introduced the concept of what became known as an ‘obit’ (as in obituary), which meant that Autodesk would drop support to a version older than three releases back. If a customer still wanted updates and patches, they would have to upgrade. Letting a version of AutoCAD lapse into an ‘obit’ version meant there would be an additional fee to bring it up to date, and you might even completely lose the right to upgrade, having to acquire a whole new licence. Autodesk has always had ways and means to keep users reinwww.AECmag.com

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vesting in its draughting tool, whether they want to, or not.

Moving to subscriptions While the construction market may change its business model once in a millennia, the software industry is constantly evolving to get more money out of its customers. Software developers have become experts in ‘squeezing the lemon’.

One of the most successful is Adobe, who moved from perpetual licences of Adobe Creative Suite to Adobe Creative Cloud.

Selling perpetual licences is an inherently ‘lumpy’ and unpredictable business, as customers are usually very satiated by competent, old versions of mature products. Adobe bit the bullet and went subscription only, which meant owning its ‘Creative’ software no longer required a heavy up-front price tag and could be paid for with relatively small monthly fees.

Subscribers got access to the full suite of Adobe tools and all future updates.

Subscription also helped reduce pirate copies and increase revenues. The only downside was something called the ‘trough’, which is when revenues tank for a period due to the loss of big perpetual licence ‘joining fees’ but are then replaced by a torrent of income from monthly subscriptions. The subscription model also gave Adobe the additional benefit of its customers ending up with a higher cost of ownership, paying more compared to the old product upgrade lifecycles, where they might skip a release or three. The future renewal process also vastly reduced the March / April 2020

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cost of sales to Adobe. The software indus- was shown the cupboard where they kept 360, a 3D CAD/CAM/CAE tool used for try could only look on in awe. all the newer versions of AutoCAD which product design and engineering. With Autodesk was most certainly a disciple, they had to buy to maintain their initial stronger competition than it faces in the but the rewards would be potentially even multi-thousand pound investment, but AEC market, there is much development higher. Unlike Adobe, Autodesk had a couldn’t currently upgrade within their work to be done and users are pushing high-cost route to market, with distribu- project’s design lifecycle.

Autodesk hard for new features. As tors and Value Added Resellers (VARs) all The net result is Autodesk has estab- Autodesk is the ‘underling’ taking on the taking a slice of the big ticket software lished a money-grabbing reputation market dominator, Solidworks, you also sales. By moving to subscription amongst its customers, after years of price get a hell of a lot functionality for your Autodesk could get rid of the ‘lumpy’ and upgrade deadline manipulation. The £54 a month (£438 a year) subscription. upgrade revenue, lessen the piracy some- unwritten message to customers was keep This is undoubtedly bloody good value. what, lower marketing costs, and reduce current, keep investing. I would go so far In the past, software companies had to the number of external distributors and as to say, too often in its history, create new versions packed with new feaVARs. Today, VARs now earn vastly Autodesk’s business model and financial tures in order to entice their customers to reduced margins in return for ‘the right’ aims have been more visible than the soft- part with their hard-earned cash. With to service Autodesk’s clients. I recently ware development, on behalf of its cus- subscription, software companies don’t met a VAR that makes £1 for every tomers, especially as products have have as big an incentive to do this, as they AutoCAD LT sold online. matured. can just sit back and collect the money.

Added to this subscription move, As products age, there are less earth- This essentially means customers lose Autodesk increasingly went direct to shattering new features to add to them. their right to vote with their money to large customers to put together massive They lose what I call ‘development veloci- upgrade in return for good quality, benefiEnterprise Licensing Agreements (typi- ty’. To some extent, 2D drawing is pretty cial work. cally lasting three years), cutting out its much a done thing; it’s a commodity and Subscription is more about the right to VARs again. The net result has been has been for a long time. New features temporarily use a software tool that may more money to Autodesk or may not be significantper sale. Pre Coronavirus ly upgraded over the term it established a share of the subscription.

Customers have been reticent to move elsewhere Autodesk tends to do new price of over $200 (historically traded $40-$60 but in 30 years of covering this industry, I have feature drops twice a year per share). never seen so many customers seriously evaluate - September and March.

Product-wise Autodesk In the old days of purcompetitive replacement software followed Adobe’s path chasing a perpetual and created ‘suites’ of licence, the value was products, as well as indibuilt into the original vidual versions of popular tools that Autodesk added to AutoCAD Release proposition. It was a one-time justifica(AutoCAD LT, AutoCAD, Revit etc.). 14 in 1997, for example, would certainly tion, it was an investment. The problem Bundling the software in this way cer- have been more persuasive than anything came when customers wanted to treat tainly appealed to customers. When it added in the last few releases. This is their software like an asset and, when first launched its suites, Autodesk’s then probably one of the reasons why moving needed, sell off excess licences. Autodesk CEO Carl Bass said “Ironically, we now to a subscription model is good for devel- did not like this. It was against the End make more money by giving more soft- opers as they don’t need to overcome cus- User Licence Agreement (EULA) and the ware away.” tomer inertia caused by feature satiation. company tended to police sales of licencBut this isn’t so good for users as they are es. There were also issues when a compaCustomer coercion mainly paying to use the software as ny was acquired or it changed its name.

Since the 1990s, Autodesk has had great opposed to gaining an edge through inno- Even though the software cost two marketing, together with a vice like grip vation. month’s wages, customers were never on its VAR channel. Most years, Autodesk In theory, commodity products with a directly told they didn’t own the software, would change the contracts with dealers, low development velocity should be rela- but they were buying the right to use it. typically lowering margins and raising tively cheap to subscribe to, yet a single When is an asset not an asset? When it’s targets but also targeting specific prod- subscription for a seat of AutoCAD for software. ucts or markets. one year is a staggering £1,890. In context, For subscription, the value proposition As for customers, it has always Adobe Creative Cloud is a professional is constantly ongoing, usage and access deployed price coercion to either incentiv- suite of applications costing £50 a month are temporary and based on need. While ise users to upgrade or upscale, or price (£596.33 a year) for a suite of 15 applica- the investment in end-user skills is a condisadvantaging those that upgrade on tions which all share the same interface stant, the software is not a company asset their own timescale. Pre-subscription, I’d and work together pretty seamlessly). but an operational cost. This does have regularly visit architectural practices that Autodesk’s Construction Collection is advantages in the accounting department. were contractually locked into an old ver- £3,420 a year per seat.

However, in stopping sales of perpetual sion of AutoCAD (or AutoCAD AEC, However, the opposite is true for rela- licences, Autodesk transitioned customADT) for a three or four year project and I tively new Autodesk products like Fusion ers to pricing models that meant they

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would pay more to Autodesk over time than they averaged under the perpetual licences. The core benefits being: no big upfront fee thereby easing cashflow, access to the latest release, access to past versions, removing the need for big budgets in the future for whole company upgrades, plus all the development in the subscription time. This undoubtedly is a beneficial simplification for CAD managers having to manage licences and products over medium to large firms.

Changes to subscription Prior to the Covid-19 crisis, Autodesk got in touch to describe forthcoming changes to its subscription licensing. Previously, Autodesk had promised that it would never take away perpetual licences from customers but this year the company has some bad news. Perpetual licences will lose the right to have maintenance. This might as well trap all the perpetual software licences Autodesk has ever sold in tree sap, rendering them amber-encased fossils in waiting.

Autodesk’s previous attempts to cost coerce hardcore perpetual licence owners to move to subscription and let go of their historic investments included punitively increasing annual maintenance fees by 5%, 10% and 20%, sequentially over the previous three years. This pushed up the cost of ownership in an attempt to make subscription look a tad more attractive.

Now it will ‘obit’ future maintenance for these perpetual licences.

While Autodesk has kept its promise to not stop customers from keeping and using perpetual licences, they will have to do so without updates or upgrades. This is the point where we all do impressions of the ‘Monty Python Parrot Sketch’.

At the same time, Autodesk has decided it doesn’t like offering Network licences, where licences are pooled for dynamic allocation, so these are also going to be removed. In the future all software will be subscription and there will be no dynamic allocation of licences. Autodesk customers will need a licence per user. As Covid19 started to bite, Autodesk delayed this happening to 7 August 2020 and moved the retirement to 7 August 2021. The company also enabled free commercial use of BIM 360 Docs, BIM 360 Design, Fusion 360, Fusion Team, AutoCAD Web and Mobile, and Shotgun until 31 May 2020, to all customers as part of its expanded access program. www.AECmag.com

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Autodesk is also getting rid of ‘Serial Numbers’ and implementing ‘Named Users’. This means Autodesk wants personal logins for each user within a company. Autodesk promised me that it will not abuse the user data and operate under strict GDPR rules, globally. This potentially gives Autodesk direct access to all of its users, as opposed to perhaps knowing a contact in accounts that ‘owns’ the purchasing.

Once Autodesk has knowledge of every user, it can build a direct relationship model and possibly bypass its channel completely, reducing its cost of sale further and growing its business without increasing the overall sales volume. Based on this new granularity ‘new features’ are going to include learning each user’s techniques and offering training on features per individual.

The cost of new subscriptions has already gone up 5% but renewals have remained at the same prices as the previous year. Autodesk is also ending three year deal discounts and it put up the price of networked licences a whopping 33%.

The deal Autodesk has an offer for Perpetual and Network licence customers that this change impacts. I am using AutoCAD here as a base product, but it applies throughout Autodesk’s product range.

For perpetual users, Autodesk is offering an eight year deal in recognition of giving up a perpetual licence. Instead of the current full price subscription, pay the current maintenance fee with a 2.5% (compound) increase each year and thereafter pay the full subscription price. For Network licence users, Autodesk assumes that typically one licence was shared between two users so, for the next eight years, customers will get two individual licenses at 50% of the yearly maintenance fee for a single licence, each with a 2.5% increase each year.

Given this is going to happen and customers either stay stuck in 2020 (not a good year so far) with the current incarnation or migrate to the new deals, some cursory maths would indicate that over the eight year period both offers provide considerable saving over the subscription prices. AutoCAD subscribers would typically save £5,000 per licence and Network AutoCAD customers would save £14,000, so long as only two users were sharing that licence. It’s actually a pretty

good deal based on subscription cost.

However, the big question is, how comfortable do customers feel giving up their perpetual licences and giving complete control to Autodesk? There is a reason why all these customers have held on for so long.

There is a fundamental issue here and I am not sure Autodesk is listening. It’s hard to remain in control of your budgeting and costs when the pricing and licence flexibility is decided by a company that seems to be committed to driving up cost of ownership and does little to improve the value proposition. Outside of AutoCAD, every Enterprise Licence Agreement holder I have spoken too has complained about the huge increases they have faced in their last negotiations, while the development velocity of their core BIM product Revit appears to be languishing vs Autodesk’s heavy investment and work on its Construction Cloud. There is a widespread revaluation of design technology underway, with firms looking at their budget and what capabilities they need and where they want to be next. Post virus, this will be even more prescient.

Software debt With subscription now at the core of so many software firms, AEC companies are now managing to accrue considerable monthly, yearly or more expenditure. For front-end authoring, to back office IT, the complete tech stack is now paid for with a mass of ongoing subscriptions. Many of these are in forward looking contracts and is actually a ‘software debt’ that needs to be built into their own business models. In some ways, it’s become similar to termed car leasing, and this nullifies one of the key benefits - should a company need to scale down, it still has to service the software lease.

I wonder how many firms build in this forward-looking software debt? Profit margins need to take account of this and profit margins have been trending down in the construction industry. Those using token-based systems are asked to predict usage three years into the future and get penalised for getting it wrong. It’s an impossible task. Software firms have benefitted from eradication of distribution and minimising VAR margins.

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tions and financially penalised if they underestimate. We now have IT directors and CAD managers worried about the cost of actually using their design system of choice, concerned about a lack of clarity in their management of project costs.

The alleged benefit of knowing your subscription costs, or having a three year deal, is only the start of estimating a company’s software debt.

The minds of IT Directors are now being focused even more. Concerned about a serious post Covid-19 recession with the cancellation of projects, potential layoffs and pressures on margins, those who recently signed three year contracts may be seen as a source of regret, committing to software usage and costs over and above any actual usage or staffing levels.

ages ago, has gone way beyond providing the capabilities of standard AutoCAD. Its core platform, ‘Ares’, enables 2D drawing on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS (smartphone and tablet) as well as in a browser. The same level of functionality is available on each, even in a browser. This is a unique achievement. This obviously opens up all sorts of new possibilities for collaboration and the system is joined up with an Amazon AWS backbone.

Ares Trinity (Desktop, Mobile, Web) is just €250 per year or €695 for three years. The company also does Flex licensing for networked users. Currently access is free till the end of May, to support home working. A single three year subscription to Ares Trinity would save £4,497 on the current advertised price of an AutoCAD subscription. If you want a perpetual licence of Ares Trinity, it’s a one-off payment of €795.

Graebert provides its technology to numerous software developers and underpins many professional applica-

running on Windows or Mac. A single three year subscription to Draftsight Premium would save £3,909 on the current advertised price of an AutoCAD subscription.

Bricssys, the Ghent developer of the DWG-based BricsCAD, now in the Hexagon group of companies, is another competent source of 2D and 3D design tools. While the company has historically been concerned with developing its DWG base platform, it recently turned into a high velocity developer of full on BIM, civils / Infrastructure and 3D MCAD. The company’s core advantage is that all of this is done on the same platform – LISP/ ARx API, 2D/3D constraints, ACIS Solids, rendering, deformable modelling, Tin surfaces, sheet metal and BIM, all in a DWG compatible design tool with the Alternative arrangements same interface. The company also offers a With escalating prices and increasing collaborative portal called 24/7, which cost of ownership, customers of all proprovides document management, verfessional-level tools are looking at altersioning, viewing and reports. It costs natives. As mentioned £175 to £525 for 20 users earlier, companies like with 10GB or 30GB of Adobe have moved from online storage.

Autodesk needs to do much better in providing desktop to cloud and dicPrices start at £320 per value for money for users of mature products as year for entry level tated subscription to its customer base. For large ‘Classic’ drafting and well as build community and work out how to firms, giving all designers up to £1,280 a year improve customer relations beyond board level range Adobe Creative Cloud for the Ultimate 3D adds up to a significant MCAD/ 3D BIM/ cost. This has enabled an Drafting. The very interopening for competitors such as Serif ’s tions. The cloud-based product design esting BIM flavour, which we have Affinity products (affinity.serif.com) with application, Onshape, for instance, utilis- reviewed several times, is £1,130 a year. A Image editing (Designer), photo editing es Graebert’s engine for all drafting. single seat, three year subscription to (Photo) and layout (Publisher) to come in CorelCAD is also based on its technology. Bricsys Pro would save £3,676 on the curand compete on price, at £23.99 each for The company’s biggest OEM success is rent advertised price of an AutoCAD subperpetual licences. Firms that become the Draftsight (tinyurl.com/draftsight-AEC ). scription. A perpetual licence of Bricsys ‘de facto standard’, which charge a premi- When Solidworks (owned by Dassault Pro is a one-off payment of £910. um and fail to build happy communities Systèmes) was relatively new in the manby adding value can get into trouble. ufacturing market, it discovered that BIM The more I look at the design technolo- many of its customers were still main- This article has largely focused on 2D gy landscape, the more I wonder why the taining their seats of AutoCAD for edit- CAD, as it’s become such a commodity hell 2D draughting still costs so much. ing and creating drawings. Solidworks and offers the biggest potential savings We are all 3D users. 2D may well be an cut a deal with Graebert where it licensed for AEC firms. However, I have also output but the value is in making model a 2D CAD system, which it called heard from many architectural firms that definitions. AutoCAD is the brand to beat DraftSight and then literally gave it away are re-evaluating their core BIM tools. and to a degree AutoCAD LT has fended to customers and anyone who wanted a Software developers including off the competitors, but in a subscription copy to ‘monkey’ with Autodesk in Graphisoft (ArchiCAD), Vectorworks, world the price differential could not be shared customers. This product is now Allplan and BricsCAD BIM are sensing a more stark. There are a number of alter- Dassault Systèmes’ biggest volume prod- big opportunity to pick up business. natives that offer professional capability uct, with millions of downloads and cusWhile Revit is widely recognised to at drastically reduced rates per seat. tomers worldwide. have lost development velocity, and there The software is underpinned by are potentially big cost savings to be Graebert: Based in Berlin, Graebert is Graebert’s continued development but is made, swapping out a BIM tool is not as probably a company that many people no longer free. Dassault now charges £79 easy as changing a 2D CAD system. BIM don’t know. It’s the oldest AutoCAD clone (Standard), £159 (Professional), £399 workflows are not easily replaced and developer and, having mastered DWG (Premium) per year for various flavours, firms also need to consider deliverables,

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collaboration, contracts, training and third-party tools. This is something we will return to in future editions.

Conclusion There is no arguing that DWG and 2D drafting is a commodity. DWG is a known entity and pretty much every design tool has the ability to read/write it fairly competently. The question is, why should it cost so much? If we are all investing in BIM, and costs are rising, can savings be made on software that offers the least bang per buck?

One of the defensive arguments against any of the DWG alternatives is that clones are ‘not professional grade’. I have heard this time and again. The hard reality is that drafting technologies from developers like Graebert are not only used by major companies but underpin platforms like Onshape and, especially, Solidworks / Dassault Systèmes who are global leaders in manufacturing.

Japan seems to be the one of the core territories that is willing to question its reliance on historical products such as AutoCAD. Having talked with Graebert and Bricsys, Japanese firms have been first to evaluate and replace seats of AutoCAD with their DWG-based tools.

CTO Robert Graebert, explained to me how they would get regular updates from their customers such as Takenaka Corporation (£10 billion annual revenue) to tell them how their software benchmarks against its competitors on a feature by feature basis, with directions as to what needs to be improved. The Japanese take benchmarking to a whole new level. Bricsys has Mazda and Takamiya and Nippon Steel.

Returning to the whole issue of subscription, it all boils down to value for money and necessity. Autodesk is making the final move to kill historic perpetual licences and, to be fair, is giving a big

discount for that. But the level of unease I sense within its customer base is palpable. The cost of ownership is escalating, irrespective of profitability within the industry. Doing things like jacking up prices 33% out of the blue, on one way of accessing licences (subscription networked licences) and then planning to remove them as an option, just adds to the narrative that the company has established and feeds fear amongst users that feel they have no control. Aggressive sales and price hikes for three year deal Enterprise customers have also spooked longstanding customers.

Autodesk needs to do much better in providing value for money for users of mature products and has to do something it has rarely achieved, by building community and working out how to improve customer relations beyond board level.

Up till now, customers have been reticent to move elsewhere but in 30 years of covering this industry, I have never seen so many customers seriously evaluate competitive replacement software for 2D drawing, BIM and collaboration.

Subscription has to work for everybody.

Customers have options. Making a budget stretch, it is not necessary to buy all the software and services from one expensive vendor. Savings can be made by opting for lower cost commodity software for generic tasks such as 2D drafting, while spending their budgets on the high-end BIM tools. This would be akin to going to Lidl or Aldi supermarket for the basics, like the very topical toilet roll and Marks and Spencer for the quality items. Also, expect to see more workflows around products such as Rhino and its ecosystem.

Addendum I began writing this just as Covid-19 was starting to appear to be a bit of an issue on the horizon. Within a matter of weeks,

we have seen a deeply saddening human crisis, along with a combined shock to all of the economies of the world, which nobody has ever witnessed before. As we all lock down and try and work from home, it’s highlighting how cloud-connected working and the new breed of cloud-ready tools can go from being ‘a nice to have’ for occasional times to becoming absolutely mission critical.

The second thing that comes to mind is the flexibility of subscription in times of trouble. Those paying monthly could just stop, cancel their subscription and restart in better times. Here, a historic perpetual licence is really just as flexible. Those on three yearly enterprise subscription deals will not benefit from that part of subscription as it’s a future software debt. But those on a token system, will keep their pre-paid tokens for usage when things hopefully return to normal.

And finally, in the last downturn, 2008, Autodesk’s revenue dropped from $2.35 billion to $1.65 billion, as users stopped upgrading and buying new seats. It is this data-point that drove them to shift their business model more to subscription, so they could flatten and slow the revenue reduction curve.

The AIA report reminded us this week that in 2008-9, US firms reduced staff by as much as 60%. Already since the crisis, US architects are reporting a 50% decrease in new design project enquires during March.

It’s highly-likely that subscription may flatten this curve for a period, but it is inevitable that firms will utilise the subscription contracts to shed costs associated with fewer designers being employed. What Autodesk will be hoping is that the revenue curve will be more ‘V Shaped’ than the ‘L shaped’ curve of 2008 to 2015, as firms find subscription easier to buy back into than buying new licences.

Subscription positives and negatives Positives of subscription • Lower cost of access vs traditional big upfront purchase price • CAPEX (for perpetual) versus paying with OPEX (for subscriptions) • Lower cost to expand usage and shrink usage • Access to previous versions

• Streamed updates • Easier to account for software and services costs per-project • Maintenance fees were a kind of a subscription anyway • Use software away from licensed premises

www.AECmag.com

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Negatives of subscriptions • Once you stop paying, you no longer have software to open files • Increased cost of ownership – over three years you will spend more than previous models • If you cancel your subscription you have nothing left for that money

• One glitch and all customers get it • If locked into a multi-year deal, flexibility of subscription is lost • Software developer might not add features in a timely fashion • Software developer can change its business model on a whim

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Software licensing: taking control Fabio Roberti and Alexandros Bertzouanis of WilkinsonEyre explain how custom technology is enabling the global architectural practice to get valuable insight into its licence usage to help drive down costs

S

oftware licences represent a significant investment for companies in the AEC industry, but most don’t have a process to analyse the licence usage. Major software companies need to provide a robust solution for this issue which will help companies to control the licensing budget and plan future licence use. The solution needs to be viable for both single sign-on licences (single-users) and multi-user licences alike as many companies base their IT strategy on the multi-user scenario.

In February 2020 Autodesk announced a price increase for multiple products which includes the 33% increase for new licences in the multi-user AEC collection.

With the licence costs ever increasing, an insight into licence usage is critical for a business. This will help them understand and predict when it becomes necessary to purchase more licences, reduce licences or change the licence subscription. An example of this might be a migration from multi-user to single-users licences, driven on the difference in pricing criteria.

The technology in the AEC industry has improved significantly in the past years with multiple cloud services, virtual reality, augmented reality, generative design and optimisation tools being routinely employed, but it remains difficult to prove the licence usage without the use of third-party plugins.

While there are third-party plugins

Fabio Roberti and Alexandros Bertzouanis

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1 FlexLM License Manager Data source for licence consumption

to analyse licence usage, an increasing number of companies are developing their own, bespoke applications. This option not only gives them greater control of licensing analysis but also allows for customisation and reduces the need to pay for a third-party plugin. The benefits of a plugin analysis tool are many, and include the following points:

The licence plugin was developed in collaboration with Alexandros Bertzouanis and with the support of IT Director, Christian Poulton.

The following two good practices help to optimise licence consumption.

Autodesk University Class tinyurl.com/AU-Wilkinson Github - tinyurl.com/GitHub-L

Once initiated, the licence goes back into the pool when a user is inactive for the prescribed amount of time. When

1) Licence Time-Out WilkinsonEyre advises introducing the • Better management of software resources licence “Timeout” of 30 minutes. If the • Maximising licence utilisation people are not using the software, the • Software licence optimisation licence goes back to the pool of licences and • Improve the project budgets allows other users to access the licence.

• Identify when extra licences are required You will need to open the “adskflex.opt” • Identify users with high licence file in Notepad to edit it. This file could consumption have a different name in your company.

The text to edit is the following line: WilkinsonEyre presented a class at Autodesk University 2019 regarding TIMEOUT 66800REVIT_F 1800 licence management and unveiled a plugin to manage and analyse Autodesk licences. TIMEOUT= Text code The source code for the plugin has been 66800REVIT_F= Product Name made freely available online and, with 1800= Number of seconds of inactivity. some coding experience, you will be able to You can adjust this to whatever timeout utilise the plug-in. you require.

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Feature 2

the person returns to use the Autodesk software, it will take a licence back.

Data workflow

2) Multiple software packages Companies purchase licences over time from multiple software packages such as single licences for AutoCAD, Revit Architecture, Building Design Suite or the AEC collection. The cascade licensing with multiple software packages may utilise more licences compared to having a single package such as the AEC Collection.

Wilkinson Eyre Licence Service Organise and push data

FlexLM License Manager Data source for licence consumption

Data workflow Understanding the data workflow will help you to replicate this process in your company. Data workflow uses two data sources and three processes to manage data.

Open Source database Structured data

Business Intelligence Dashboard

Revit Synchronisation Data source to identify users in projects

Alternative Data manually added to identify users in projects

Wilkinson Eyre Revit Plugin Organise & push data

Data sources 1) The primary data source is the FlexLM License Manager that will export the data log (see figure 1).

3

2) The Revit Synchronisation is the data source to identify users in the projects. If you don’t use Revit to collect this data, you can use Excel to create a list of projects and assign users to the respective projects.

Current licence usage

Managing data 1) WilkinsonEyre has created two plugins to organise and push data to MySQL. These are the Licence Service plugin that organises the data from the LOG file and the Revit Plugin to identify the users in the project.

2) MySQL is the open-source database that can be used to structure data.

3) WilkinsonEyre is using Power BI to create the dashboards, but there are other options such as the Metabase.

Data workflow diagram The FlexLM License Manager and the Revit Synchronisation provides data that will be structured in the open-source MySQL and Power BI will be used to create the dashboards. See figure 2 for the complete data workflow.

You can access more information about the process of decoding the Flex License data, organise the information and how to prepare the MySQL database in the class material.

reduce the number of licences.

In figure 3 the bottom left table shows the users that are using more than one licence.

In another dashboard, you can identify which applications are consuming two or The Power BI file is available in the class more licences. material along with content from other dashboards.

Historical licence usage The historical data provides weekly Current licence usage information about the licence’s This dashboard shows the licences consumption across multiple packages.

Data analytics dashboard currently acquired, those available In Power BI, you can change the date The workflow presented in the Autodesk and the total number of licences. This and visualise the previous weeks to University class will enable you to create information is useful to identify how analyse how many times your company the following dashboards to analyse the your company is using the licences and has reached the maximum consumption. licence consumption in your company. it helps on the decision to purchase or In figure 4 the Autodesk AEC Collection www.AECmag.com

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• • • •

Current licence usage Historical licence usage Historical licences versus Unique User Software usage

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31/03/2020 17:51

Feature

‘‘

The difference in price between the single sign-on and multi-users is substantial so companies may decide to change the users that utilise the software over 75% of the time to a single sign-on instead of using the multiuser licence as a means to reducing costs

4 Historical licence usage

’’

is the blue graph, and each vertical bar is one day of the week.

Historical licences versus unique user The graph in figure 5 shows the relation between the maximum number of licences used (the grey column) and the total number of unique users (the brown column) in the specific week. You can find the ratio between the used licences and the overall number of users in the company, which helps to predict a future increase in the number of licences if a new large project starts.

Historical licences vs unique users

5

Total licences vs unique users by week

Max total of used licences Count of unique users

Licences / unique users by week

Software usage The graph in figure 6 shows the percentage of each application used in the specific day but, since you are in control of the data, you could edit in Powers BI to include the projects or other fields.

Conclusion

6 Software usage 3ds Max AutoCAD Navisworks Recap Revit

Usage percentage

Licence insight helps a company to manage software resources, identify the licence consumption, and support the decisions on the licence renewal or future purchases.

It is important to proactively monitor licences to optimise the utilisation and provide licences when necessary.

The difference in price between the single sign-on and multi-users is substantial so companies may decide to change the users that utilise the software over 75% of the time to a single sign-on instead of using the multi-user licence as a means to reducing costs.

Overall, it is hoped that the major software companies will provide better tools to understand the licence consumption and facilitate the process to manage licences with transparency.

Days

■ wilkinsoneyre.com

www.AECmag.com

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02/04/2020 16:18

Twin peeks

For the launch of Twinmotion 2020, Greg Corke caught up with Marc Petit, General Manager, Unreal Engine Enterprise to explore what Epic Games has in store for the easy-to-use architectural visualisation tool

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L

ast year Epic Games took the AEC sector by surprise by acquiring the easy-to-use arch viz tool Twinmotion and then giving it away for free. Now, just short of half a million downloads, the company has launched Twinmotion 2020.

With this new release Epic Games is continuing its aggressive drive to build a large customer base. Those that registered for Twinmotion 2019 will now get a free perpetual licence of the 2020 release. And those that didn’t, can currently get 50% www.AECmag.com

02/04/2020 16:40

‘‘

When you look at the number of Revit users, the number of SketchUp users, if you want to declare yourself successful in this market, you have to be able to go one million, two million seats Marc Petit, Unreal Engine Enterprise

’’

off the $499 purchase price for a limited period. And to top it all, everyone gets two years of free upgrades.

Marc Petit, General Manager, Unreal Engine Enterprise at Epic Games, told AEC Magazine that he has set his sights on seven-digits in terms of number of users, but admitted that there is still a massive awareness problem.

“When you look at the number of Revit users, the number of SketchUp users, if you want to declare yourself successful in this market, you have to be able to go www.AECmag.com

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one million, two million seats. Which is interesting because, right now, none of the existing products have actually reached that level of volume. It’s all very fragmented. They are either expensive, or they’re dead-end products, or they’re hard to use.”

Twinmotion is based on Unreal Engine, so one of the big attractions is interoperability between the two tools. The idea is that an architect can start a project in Twinmotion for early stage design validation or communication and then hand

over the asset to a viz specialist for further development in Unreal Engine. This has been on the roadmap for some time, even prior to the acquisition, so it’s surprising that this feature is not part of the 2020 release. Petit told us that the technology is there, but there are some ‘legal issues with the content’.

One of the big challenges for Epic Games, and indeed any developer of real time viz software, is how to make Twinmotion work well on entry-level workstations that are typically used by March / April 2020

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1 Twinmotion 2020 includes an array of new lighting features 2 Twinmotion is used predominantly in architecture but it is also being used to enhance infrastructure projects 3 Twinmotion 2020 includes a Direct Link to Rhino

architects. Applications like Revit and SketchUp put relatively low demands on a workstation’s GPU, so there has been little need for architects to invest in more powerful ‘gaming’ GPUs. “We’ve introduced things like screen space global illumination, which is a little bit of a trick, but it allows everybody, even when you have an Intel graphics system, to actually benefit from that.”

At AEC Magazine we haven’t yet tested the software, but experience tells us that even with these optimisations the application still probably won’t perform that well with an entry-level GPU. In response, Petit makes the important point that Twinmotion is not just about real time 3D.

1

‘‘

We would like to have a solution where everybody gets the same highquality experience regardless of the device they consume the content on - it could be a phone, an iPad, or a TV in a conference room. And to get to there, you need to deploy pixel streaming Marc Petit, Unreal Engine Enterprise

’’

It also has an offline mode where a still image or video can be exported, and each frame then rendered by the GPU. “If you have low power graphics, that process can take a few minutes, but then you get super high-quality output,” he says, adding that two thirds of the deliverables produced by users of Twinmotion are actually fixed images or a video, rather than a real-time experience.

Extending the reach of assets Sharing projects with stakeholders has been made much easier in the 2020 release with “Twinmotion Presenter”.

The software enables users to share individual projects in a standalone viewer in a

2

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lightweight package, with the option for multiple points of view and camera paths, and either a locked view, guided, or freeto-explore options for viewers. This is an important development, but Petit admits it is not a perfect solution.

Stakeholders face similar challenges to users of CAD or BIM software, insofar as the quality of the experience is highly dependent on the power of their hardware.

“What we would like to have is a solution where everybody gets the same highquality experience regardless of the device they consume the content on - it could be a phone, an iPad, or a TV in a conference room,” says Petit. ”And to get to there, you need to deploy pixel streaming, right?”

Pixel streaming is where the graphics www.AECmag.com

02/04/2020 16:40

Feature

3

processing is carried out remotely and not on the client device. Petit would not be drawn on how this feature might be delivered or when it might arrive, but it would certainly help solve a big challenge in the AEC industry. Real time 3D content is becoming much easier to produce, but there’s still a big barrier to getting it into hands of clients, team members or members of the public. At AEC Magazine we imagine it would be a cloud service, possibly on subscription or pay as you go. Epic Games can certainly make software cheap or free, but GPU-accelerated Virtual Machines cost money.

To get data into Twinmotion, the 2019 release featured ‘Direct Links’ to ArchiCAD, Revit, and SketchUp. This has www.AECmag.com

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March / April 2020

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Feature

now been extended to Rhino, enabling Rhino and Grasshopper data to be synced with Twinmotion in a ‘single click’. Organisation and hierarchy are retained, and native materials are automatically substituted with Twinmotion PBR materials.

Twinmotion is also taking an important first step into design review. The 2020 release features a new note tool that lets users annotate elements within a scene and then export them to Revit, ArchiCAD, and other BIM tools.

The core user base for Twinmotion is architecture but this is expanding, “The one thing I was surprised at is the amount

of infrastructure projects - Infraworks, Civil 3D,” says Petit, adding that this is done via the FBX format. Epic Games is also looking to get Twinmotion more into construction software, specifically bringing animation to construction sequencing.

Conclusion In a relatively short space of time, Epic Games has become a major player in arch viz. Half a million downloads of Twinmotion is a substantial number and while this doesn’t necessarily mean active users, reported average session lengths of 45 mins shows there is engagement.

The good news is development is mov-

ing at pace. The 2020 release brings several visual enhancements detailed below, and the link to Rhino gives Epic Games a more solid footing at the conceptual stages of architectural design. There’s also some exciting stuff coming in the future, including pixel streaming for effective distribution of assets and the link to Unreal Engine which will transform viz workflows for many AEC firms.

All this points to a strong future for Twinmotion and while many will have missed out on the free offer, it’s still possible to get on board for $250, which continues to look exceptionally good value.

■ unrealengine.com/twinmotion

Visualisation enhancements for Twinmotion 2020

Enhanced lighting and rendering An array of new lighting features have been introduced, including a new screen-space global illumination (SSGI) method for dynamic indirect lighting, a physically-based atmospheric sun and sky model for more

realistic exterior renders at different times of day and year, an area lighting tool to accurately fill spaces with diffuse lighting, a volumetric lighting tool for accurate light ray effects through particles such as fog or smoke, and cinematic depth of field.

Enhanced vegetation system Users have access to high-fidelity tree assets (Xfrog) and bush assets (Quixel), containing various age and season options; sub-surface scattering tools accurately filter light through leaves. A new vegetation growth tool

New material and texture options Users can now import and use H264encoded video as a material, enabling animated features such as a TV playing or a flickering fireplace. A new Frosted Glass material makes it easy to simulate translucent glass (such as privacy windows) and accurate light scatter.

An enhanced Glow material uses screen-space global illumination (SSGI) to enable those objects to act as a light source. Additionally, a new X-Ray option lets users see the position of objects occluded by other objects, allowing for easy visualisation of MEP data such as pipe or air duct locations.

More realistic humans All 3D animated characters have been replaced by new high-quality photo-scanned character assets from AXYZ design. Users can choose from 62 animated characters, each with 5 clothing variations, or 82 readyposed characters.

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allows users to see how vegetation will look within a property over time, from first planting to full growth. Users also have increased control over landscapes with new grass customisation options, a new vegetation scatter tool, and improved vegetation painting.

www.AECmag.com

02/04/2020 16:40

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Software

Vercator point clouds in the cloud Laser scanning has been threatening to go mainstream for a number of years, but the high cost the of hardware and software has kept it in the realms of the specialists. A new UK start-up combines the power of the cloud with new algorithms to break the hegemony, writes Martyn Day

L

aser scan data is transitioning from the realms of the surveying and specialist reality capture firms to the workstations of architects, fabricators and builders. It had been hoped that the increased level of commoditisation would drive down prices but laser scanners where bundled with the associated point cloud software remain stubbornly costly. While the data capture devices may well remain at a price premium, the software which registers and processes the point clouds, is certainly open to competition.

To date, nearly all the software solutions for processing point clouds have been desktop-based (Leica Cyclone, Faro Scene, www.AECmag.com

Trimble Realworks etc.), with some cloud services to stream / view captured sites.

A new UK start-up, Correvate, aims to use the combination of cloud processing power with a new advanced registration algorithm to speed up workflows and broaden the deliverables from scanned data. The company has also implemented a token-based pay-per-use system, removing the high-ticket entry price of its competitors.

At the heart of Correvate’s Vercator software lie patented algorithms which automatically align 3D point cloud datasets. These were originally conceived within the University College London’s (UCL) Department of Electronic and

Electrical Engineering but have now been exclusively licensed to Correvate which is leading their development programme Vercator’s registration is not targetbased, but works by finding natural features within an uploaded series of overlapping scans and calculates vectors across the whole dataset.. There are typically millions of these features, which are used as reference points to perform horizontal and vertical alignment between the overlapping scans, processed by the Vercator registration engine. By opting to use so many vector features to align the point clouds, instead of a handful of targets, the software can increase the accuracy of the result. And by using the March / April 2020

33

Software

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Vercator’s approach to feature recognition puts it in good stead to develop the next stage of AI-derived models that go beyond the current survey deliverables from point clouds power of the cloud, provide the benefit of automation and significantly reduce registration time. Correvate estimates its software is anything between 60% and 80% faster than a typical workflow (manual registration, plus processing time) and the larger the dataset, the bigger the benefit. Whilst the registration process can be target free, therefore enabling users to modify their site methodology to ultimately become quicker and more efficient during data capture. Targets can still be processed should the user wish to implement site geo-referencing.

In field registration Vercator software is hosted in the cloud, which means it’s everywhere, on desktop or mobile. Scan data can be uploaded directly from site or when returned back to base. As scan files are notoriously big, upload times are a potential drawback vs a traditional workstation approach. Nobody wants to upload 100GB+ of files over a 4G mobile. However, many city-based building sites do have decent WiFi these days and the imminent roll out of 5G will be a game changer for big data on the move.

The Vercator Field App runs on a mobile device and allows the mapping of scanned positions relative to the building layout. Site plans can be sketched out and images uploaded to provide a backdrop to place scan markers onto. A network of scan locations is built up along with the corresponding referenced pairings, which can be read by the registration software.

This reduces the initial processing as the software knows which locations overlap thus giving it a pre-filtered head start.

On a workstation, Vercator is accessed via a browser. Users log into their account and start by creating a new project. Files can be uploaded to Vercator’s cloud storage or a company’s own hosted service. Scans are selected and added to the project and then the network is added, indicating the sequence and relationships of the files. Vercator supports ptx, pts, e57, Faro fls, Z+F zfs, Riegl rdbx formats. If the Field App is not used, perhaps when working with older scanned data, a floor plan can be added and the scan nodes moved to their relative places.

There are a number of user defined preprocessing settings which drive the quality 34

March / April 2020

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of the output: max distance threshold, resampling, coarse and fine registration settings. Jobs are then submitted to the cloud server and you will receive an email on completion. The system first produces a coarse registration and then a fine one. For those that want a bit more information on what’s happening, there are progress bars that show what the software is currently doing on the job, conversions, preprocessing, registration etc.

Completed jobs can be viewed online with a range of useful interactive tools.

It’s possible to change the colours of the scans, measure, create clipping planes, isolate scan sets. After the coarse scan, if the result is correct, then proceed to the fine processing and viewing.

Once the job is completed the resulting registered scan or scans can be exported in a number of industry standard formats: xyz, ply, e57, pts, las, laz and rcs. Vercator will provide a link once any conversion has been processed. It’s also possible to simply download the matrices required to align the scans which may be held locally, negating the need to go for a big download.

Beyond registration Correvate’s vision goes way beyond registration but this is the low hanging fruit of the existing laser scan market. The company realises that by being in the cloud, it can connect its services via APIs to the growing number of popular cloud-based collaboration systems which companies like Autodesk have developed (Autodesk Construction Cloud which includes BIM 360). Correvate has plans in place to utilise Forge components in its software development. While Construction Cloud is adept at handling BIM and drawing data, the special needs of laser scan information and increasing demand for its use will bring all sorts of possibilities.

The biggest development opportunity for Correvate is applying various Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications to the real-world data to solve key issues, such as ‘Scan to BIM’. As the system is inherently built on vector-based feature recognition, the company has set its sights on addressing the gnarly problem of extracting intelligence out of a dumb file consisting of 3D points - recognising windows, doors and ceilings and creating

respective solid entities. As the software is based on the cloud and fully automated this could be all part of the same process.

Imagine a series of unregistered scans being uploaded to Vercator and the resulting native Revit BIM model placed into BIM 360, untouched by human hands! Similarly, you could scan an entire building and get an asset management model from the items identified within the scan. The company is already hard at work at developing this technology.

Pricing Vercator is paid for by tokens. One registration is 1 token = 1 scan. A registration process between 100 uploaded scans is 100 tokens. You can ‘pay-as-you-go’ or buy through a monthly discounted auto replenish system. The more tokens you buy, the bigger the discount. For comparison, 500 tokens on PAYG is $630, while on auto replenish it’s $560. There are special deals for academic and educational users.

Conclusion Correvate has developed a unique cloudbased solution which is first aimed at assisting the traditional scanning market by automating and speeding up registration with massive parallel processing, bypassing many of the current desktop application barriers, such as high cost of ownership, time to get accurate, highly usable results and bypass throughput limitations, should they be man or machine. While it won’t replace products like Leica’s CloudWorx for the post-production work of manual creating 2D drawings or performing surface analysis, it can get you to that point faster. In the future (hopefully September) Vercator will automatically create the surfaces e.g. walls etc and then from these surfaces create takeoffs for 2D linework e.g. floorplans, sections and elevations.

Vercator’s approach to feature recognition puts it in good stead to develop the next stage of AI-derived models that go beyond the current survey deliverables from point clouds. The aim to automate the Scan-to-BIM process from individual unregistered scans would truly be revolutionary in the construction industry.

Watch this space.

■ vercator.com

www.AECmag.com

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Comment

The emergence of BIM SLCs Abel Maciel and Leo Garbutt of the Construction Blockchain Consortium (CBC) explore the latest developments in Blockchain and its relevance to smart contracts for BIM and digital construction management

A

ccording to Statista, by 2025, it drive a series of events. This is a complex and protocols are the natural choice is expected that the world will undertaking, with often sub-optimal to accelerate changes in this area. BIM have 75 billion things exchang- coordination between the various brings together project stakeholders ing information in the stakeholders starting from its onset. under one collaborative platform to ever-growing Internet of Things (IoT).

Construction is also a highly produce a federated digital design model This data flow is becoming a detailed fragmented industry. This fragmentation and therefore a coherent dataset for the account of all and each one of us and how can be described as informational and construction and management of a new we interact with our environment. To pre- organisational, with the vast majority of asset. This has resulted in a fast-changing pare and respond to this new age of ubiq- businesses being comprised of dispersed landscape for construction contracts. uitous and embedded information, we Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs). This have to carefully consider data ownership, is consistent with the European average of Enter Smart Legal Contracts (SLCs) data veracity and the application of funda- construction industry structures.

Intelligent computational contracts mental technologies such as Blockchain.

Effective information coordination appear as an ideal extension to BIM Blockchain, also known as the ‘Trust in construction projects is a persistent whereby the contractual performance Protocol’, can be described as the problem characterised by a disconnect itself becomes automated.

Smart amalgamation of a few technologies for between design and construction. This Contracts, as proposed today, are of secure decentralised data management is where BIM plays a central role in short-term execution or of instantaneous and value transaction. The interest in improving the industry. However, the effect. For example, buying a book online Blockchain has been increasing since provenance of BIM information is still on websites like Amazon is automated the idea of a decentralised from the moment the book cryptocurrency was is paid up to the delivery of established in 2008 and the parcel at your doorstep.

Blockchain can create an ‘automation of Bitcoin was launched Computation trust’ with parties having certainty regarding ( dDesign anonymously in 2009. esigncomputation.com) identity, reputability and a price guarantee Since then, the potential envisions Smart Legal of Blockchain has been a Contracts (SLCs) automating well-trodden topic.

Put many parts of construction briefly, the main arguments for Blockchain a problem. How can we guarantee we law processes and eventually replacing adoption are that its data architecture are using the right BIM objects and most or all conventional contracts provides security, anonymity, provenance, families? How do we know the contents currently being used in construction. immutability and purpose of data without of objects are accurate or have not been SLCs are applications that run exactly any third-party organisation in control tampered with? Is it safe to give all as programmed without any possibility of data transactions. Now, the focus must federated models to the entire integrated of downtime, censorship, fraud or turn to the specific deliverables and reality team? The consequences are many, from third-party interference. They have the of the technology. This article will explore statutory compliance and intellectual potential to become fully developed its latest developments and relevance property protection to building assets’ computational legal contracts and of smart contracts for BIM and digital cybersecurity issues. improve dramatically all aspects of construction management.

From a wider perspective, circular construction project administration and economies in the built environment payment systems in the sector. In fact, we The post-BIM construction challenges are becoming a priority for developers have been prototyping and testing this As a highly project-based sector, the looking to curb the consumption of technology in collaboration with major construction sector processes are natural resources, prevent waste BIM authoring software developers. We characterised by tasks typically considered and increase efficiency through the believe SLCs can become the engine for as non-repetitive activities where various recycling and responsible sourcing smart infrastructure and the combined professionals transact information to of building resources. BIM platforms circular economy.

‘‘

’’

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www.AECmag.com

02/04/2020 14:35

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Comment

‘‘

Design Computation envisions Smart Legal Contracts (SLCs) automating many parts of construction law processes and eventually replacing most or all conventional contracts currently being used in construction

’’

The use of collaborative BIM has created of BIM objects in a truly interoperable and a necessity for the use of single project decentralised framework. insurance. At the same time, collaborative procurement is a decisive enabler of Where next for BIM? digital transformation and is under As BIM evolves and furthers the 3D intensive study. All the chronic issues design description model, adding extra identified in the sector can bring cash dimensions of Time, CapEx, Carbon cost flow restrictions, such as late payments and lifecycle costing, and eventually and misuse of retentions. To address include more complex dimensions these, enhanced project management and of risk, financing and change control control, transparency and availability performance, asset management and of accurate information in project project control performance, Blockchain governance are needed. seems to embody the data architecture Smart contracts operating with BIM necessary to enable the deployment of processes offer a far more pro-active these new dimensions. This evolution method for delivering projects. The leading to highly integrated workflows interoperability of smart contracts and and closer collaboration will demand BIM can leverage for more and efficiencies in better professional the allocation of transdisciplinary in accountability in order deal with future Abel Maciel is an seconds instead challenges and to architect and of days or weeks. future proof design Senior Research Blockchain can and construction.

Associate at UCL. address project B l o c k c h a i n He is the founding complexity and in offers the means director of Design Computation Ltd, doing so reduce and opportunity to a specialist consullate payments, rethink financial, tancy delivering remediations and social and political BIM, Programmatic Design, and Smart disputes that place relationships Contracts. He is also a founding director companies under cash informing the built of the Construction Blockchain flow risk. On the other environment.

It Consortium (CBC). hand, the intelligence does so by providing Leo Garbutt is leveraged from digital assets with the Coordinator of SLCs is desperately some of the properties the Construction needed by contract and behaviours of Blockchain administrators and physical objects. This Consortium and editor of the CBC law firms. represents one of Whitepaper Series A sector-generic the key technologies in association with and project-bespoke enabling the cyberthe APPG Blockchain-enabled physical convergence Blockchain for the development of future solution can alleviate in the Industry 4.0. policy and compliance. these repercussions The rapid digital and optimise cash transformation of flow restrictions. Design Computation’s the construction sectors implies that current solution development has been lawyers struggle to keep up with the pace addressing the growing diversity of of innovation. DLT and Blockchain also Blockchains out there by multichain SLCs provides a new foundation for machines technology embedded in BIM authoring and humans to interact and exchange software. Our prototype can successfully information. As a consequence, we may see exchange BIM data with smart contracts disruption in infrastructure management, operating on 100s of cryptocurrencies and energy and real estate to autonomous DID formats, therefore offering traceability transport and water management.

About the authors

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p36_38_AEC_MARCHAPRIL20_Blockchain.indd 38

Blockchain can be used as an ID for assets for a circular economy, from design to delivery to operation and reuse. For its resilience, it is the favoured technology to connect people, assets and environments over long periods of time. It can create an ‘automation of trust’ with parties having certainty regarding identity, reputability and a price guarantee.

Conclusions In order to accelerate the understanding and development of Blockchain technologies, more investment and collaboration is necessary. In the past three to four years, extensive industry analysis and education has taken place through major reports published by a number of companies such as PwC, Arup, Deloitte, Thomson Reuters, and the Joint Contracts Tribunal.

Government research organisation Digital Catapult and institutions such as the Institute of Civil Engineers and the World Economic Forum have also contributed.

Alongside continuing investment in piloting the technology, there has been a doubling of tech investment in construction in the past decade. There are a number of well-established open-source initiatives building frameworks such as Hyperledger, R3 and Ethereum. These efforts are increasingly underscoring Blockchain’s potential for BIM and digital construction management.

The University College London based Construction Blockchain Consortium exists as a neutral platform to further these objectives through its series of white papers, providing knowledge transfer and assisting the development of use-cases.

Furthermore, there are a number of ways to find out more about Blockchain and its application in the construction sector. The CBC’s website (constructionblockchain.org) provides a number of resources, including links to our open source codebase and information about our seminars and annual specialist conference.

The CBC Conference 2020 will be held at the Bartlett School of Architecture in Autumn 2020. It was original scheduled for May but was postponed due to COVID-19. www.AECmag.com

02/04/2020 14:35

es for GPU-accelerated VMs AMD technology changing the rules for GPU-accelerated VMs

ing the expectations for VM deployments and is sure Theto introduction have IT of AMD-powered NVv4 instances is shifting the expectations for VM deployments and is s nce is the first VM on Microsoft Azure to take advantage managers of SR-IOV taking note. What’s new? Well, The NVv4 instance is the first VM on Microsoft Azure to take adv h supports GPU partitioning through AMD MxGPU technology GPU sharing(single-root input/output virtualization), which supports GPU partitioning through AMD MxGPU MI25 GPU. technology, which is built into the AMD Radeon Instinct MI25 GPU.

MOVING BEYOND CAD & BIM:

Extending the reach of workstations

entire enterprise, and not just the CAD users, to enjoy For customers, dedicated this means greater flexibility, enabling the entire enterprise, and not just the CAD users, to e in architecture, engineering and ceptional application experience regardless of the workloads.

GPU-accelerated Virtual Machines (VMs), delivering an exceptional application experience regardless of the

construction (AEC)

oose from, scaled to share a single GPU’s resourcesCustomers among ashave manyfour distinct NVv4 instance options to choose from, scaled to share a single GPU’s resource e user density of NVv4 with Windows® 10 multi-sessions, as eightsupported VMs. Alternatively, IT managers can maximize the user density of NVv4 with Windows® 10 multi-se Citrix® and Teradici® (see box out).

by Windows Virtual Desktop with available plug-ins from Citrix® and Teradici® (see box out).

mes to security. It allows the isolation of PCI Express® SR-IOV resources technology plays a very important role when it comes to security. It allows the isolation of PCI Expre o share networking resources (NICs) and secure network between traffic. different Each users. It is already the standard used to share networking resources (NICs) and secure net M can only access the physical resource via its ownresource allocated has VF.Virtual This Functions (VF) associated and each VM can only access the physical resource via its own mory is secured and not shared. helps ensure that each VM is isolated from others e.g. memory is secured and not shared.

th Central US and West Europe Azure regions andNVv4 will beVirtual available Machines in will initially be available in the South Central US and West Europe Azure regions and additional regions soon thereafter.

Microsoft Azure® GPU-accelerated virtual machines powered by AMD technology In the construction sector, it’s not just users of Computer Aided Design (CAD) or Building Information Modelling (BIM) software that requires access to GPU-accelerated workstations. As rich 3D models start to be re-used and data flows from design all the way through to construction, it’s also extended architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) teams that need GPU-accelerated machines. This could be for design/review, 4D construction planning or design visualization - or simply just to aid communication.

The other benefit of VMs in the Cloud is that applications run on Microsoft Azure servers, right next to your data, and only encrypted pixels are streamed to the end device. It means users can get instant access to up-to-date project data and do not have to wait for huge BIM models to download or sync.

Storing all project data in the Cloud and not on users’ personal workstations also offers big benefits for collaboration, security and revision control.

Complete flexibility In the same way that a personal workstation can be configured with different CPUs, GPUs, memory and storage, Microsoft Azure offers a range of VMs to suit different workflows.

These are known as ‘instances’.

The challenge for AEC firms is how to provide teams with appropriate hardware. Viewing a complex 3D BIM model on a PC, laptop or a standard Virtual Machine (VM) without GPU The beauty of the new GPU-accelerated Microsoft Azure NVv4 acceleration in and a very poor BasicPro view Imageinstances is Systems. that they are designed specifically to Track cater a was planned and executed usi Viaduct Widening & Salford Central Track Slewcan projectresult was planned executed using experience.

4D planning with SYNCHRO courtesy of Bentley The Middlewood Viaduct Widening & Salford Central Slewto project operations such as pan, zoom and rotate may become choppy variety of 3D workflows. The instances are powered by AMD and it can be very hard to position the model on screen. In Radeon InstinctTM GPUs. NVv4 available options some cases, the 3D application simply becomes unusable.

Previous GPU-accelerated Microsoft Azure VMs could only GPU-accelerated workstations are specifically designedSize to Memory GPU memory Displays Virtual Use TypeTarget GPUcustomers memory Displays Virtu be vCPU configured withOC a full GPU, Memory but this meant (GPU Partition) (GPU Partition) Display audience Displ handle complex 3D datasets, but AEC firms can find it hard to could end up paying for resources they did not need. While profile justify their cost for wider teams, especially when the powerful most BIM-centric workflows require some form of 3D 3D graphics capabilities might1080p onlyUp betoneeded on occasion graphics acceleration, many do not need such high levels of 1080p U 14 GB 2 GB (1/8) 1 Single KnowledgeNV4as_v4 4 Win10 14 GB 2 GB (1/8) 1 30H throughout the working week. 30Hz 3D performance.

1 Display A GPU-accelerated virtual desktop, delivered via the Cloud 4 GB (1/4)AMD powered 1-3 Microsoft config: Single Professional NV8as_v4 through Azure NVv4, offers the 4K up to 30Hz perfect solution for the part time consumer of 3D models be that a project engineer, senior architect or site manager.

1 Display

28 GB

56 GB

8 GB (1/2)

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Power of the Cloud

NV16as_v4 config: Single/Multi Workstation 4K up to 30Hz

By using AMD Radeon Instinct™ MI25 GPUs, Microsoft Azure Win10 28 GB 4 GB (1/4) NVv48 instances offer the flexibility to cater to a wide range of 1-3 GPU-accelerated workflows. Customers can choose from four Win10, one with 1/8th of a GPU, which might different VMs, including Win10 EVD, be suitable for viewing a simple56 BIM the way up to 1-4 16 GB model, all 8 GB (1/2) Server 19, one with a full GPU that could handle a rich 3D model for Server16 design visualization.

1 Disp confi 4K up to

1 Disp confi 4K up to

Delivering GPU-accelerated virtual desktops via the Cloud Win10, 1 Display 1 Disp Win10 more EVD, closely to workflows can make offers additional benefits.

Providing there isFull a high-bandwidth, Matching instances NV32as_v4 32 112 GB 16 GB (1/1) 1-4 config: Single/Multi Graphics 112 GB 16 GB (1/1) 1-4 confi Server 19, low latency Internet connection intoplace, 4K up 30Hz 3D applications can 4K up to GPU-acceleratedServer16 virtual desktops much more cost-effective be accessed from anywhere on any supported device. With than ever before. As AMD powered NVv4 instances are billed Microsoft Azure NVv4, you can stream 3D applications to a by the hour, customers can also scale resources up and down tablet on a construction site, or a home PC to support flexible to support the ever-changing needs of projects over time, both working – evenMicro a laptop a different country. mbinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Devices, Inc.in Microsoft and Azure ©2020 are trademarks Advanced Micro of Microsoft Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. the AMD Arrow logo, Radeon, and combinations thereof areof trademarks Advanced Micro in AMD, terms of performance and the number VMs ofrequired byDevices, Inc. Microsoft and Azu toCAD®, Revit®, Inventor®, Maya® and 3Ds Max® are registered trademarks or trademarks Corporation of Autodesk, or its subsidiaries Inc., and/or its in the U.S. and/or other countries. Autodesk, the Autodesk® logo, AutoCAD®, Revit®, Inventor®, Maya® and 3Ds Max® are registered trademarks or tradem the project teams. publication are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective subsidiaries companies. and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. Other product names used in this publication are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respec

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Sponsored Content 05/03/2020 17:21 10:36 31/03/2020

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Three workflows where AEC firms can benefit from Microsoft Azure NVv4 and review MOVING Design BEYOND CAD & BIM: NVv4 enable better collaboration across departments and staff

Extending the reach of workstations Design / review software comes in many forms, from simple view, measure and mark-up, to model in architecture, engineering and In addition to using BIM models it can include large reality meshes or co-ordination and clash detection. point clouds. construction (AEC) Design / review can be done in a single room with one team gathered around a large screen. Alternatively, teams can collaborate on the same 3D model from multiple locations, even on a construction site. With Microsoft Azure, as everything is hosted in the Cloud, it’s ideal for this distributed approach. In addition, as design / review might just happen once a week it’s also well suited to the flexible, per hour charging model of AMD-powered NVv4.

Design / review is not just a static process. Once any interferences, clashes or general issues have been identified, they need to be resolved. Issue tracking then allows teams to share tasks and assign work responsibilities, which means individuals may need further access to GPU-accelerated VMs.

The other benefit of VMs in the Cloud is that applications run on Microsoft Azure servers, right next to your data, and only encrypted pixels are streamed to the end device. It means users can get instant access to up-to-date project data and do not have to wait for huge BIM models to download or sync.

Storing all project data in the Cloud and not on users’ personal workstations also offers big benefits for collaboration, security and revision control.

Complete flexibility In the same way that a personal workstation can be configured with different CPUs, GPUs, memory and storage, Microsoft Azure offers a range of VMs to suit different workflows.

These are known as ‘instances’.

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The beauty of the new GPU-accelerated Microsoft Azure NVv4 instances is that they are designed specifically to cater to a variety of 3D workflows. The instances are powered by AMD Radeon InstinctTM GPUs.

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Previous GPU-accelerated Microsoft Azure VMs could only be configured with a full GPU, but this meant customers could end up paying for resources they did not need. While most BIM-centric workflows require some form of 3D graphics acceleration, many do not need such high levels of 3D performance.

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Image courtesy of Revizto (revizto.com)

By using AMD Radeon Instinct™ MI25 GPUs, Microsoft Azure NVv4 instances offer the flexibility to cater to a wide range of GPU-accelerated workflows. Customers can choose from four different VMs, including one with 1/8th of a GPU, which might be suitable for viewing a simple BIM model, all the way up to one with a full GPU that could handle a rich 3D model for design visualization.

Matching instances more closely to workflows can make GPU-accelerated virtual desktops much more cost-effective than ever before. As AMD powered NVv4 instances are billed by the hour, customers can also scale resources up and down to support the ever-changing needs of projects over time, both in terms of performance and the number of VMs required by the project teams.

2 Sponsored Content 19333452-G - NVv4 AEC Solution sheet_V5_A4.indd2 2 p39_40_41_42_AEC_MARCHAPRIL20_AMD.indd

05/03/2020 10:36

05/03/2020 17:21 10:36 31/03/2020

19333

4D construction planning

NVv4 delivers flexibility and access to your information

MOVING BEYOND CA

Planning for construction projects has historically been managed through Gantt charts. However, there are now an increasing number of software tools that can be used to create 4D simulations, linking 3D BIM Extending models to the project schedule.

the reach of w in architecture, engineer Project managers can use 4D software to plan construction sequences from beginning to end. Microsoft Azure NVv4 instances make it possible to work fluidly with simple or complex models, zoom into details or construction (AEC) play entire animations of the construction process.

4D software is not only used by the project manager. The 4D model can be used for collaborative planning and decision-making, and software that simply views 4D construction models is freely available for multiple stakeholders.

Microsoft Azure® GPU-accelerated virtual machines powered by AMD technology

The other benefit of VMs in the Cloud is that on Microsoft Azure servers, right next to you encrypted pixels are streamed to the end dev Image courtesy of Bentley Systems. The Middlewood Viaduct Widening & Salford Central Track Slew project was planned and executed using 4D planning with SYNCHRO Pro users can get instant access to up-to-date p In the construction sector, it’s not just users of Computer do not have to wait for huge BIM models to d Aided Design (CAD) or Building Information Modelling Storing all project data in the Cloud and not (BIM) software that requires access to GPU-accelerated workstations also offers big benefits for colla workstations. As rich 3D models start to be re-used and data and revision control. flows from design all the way through to construction, it’s

Design visualization

alsothe extended architecture, engineering and construction NVv4 gives designers performance they need, while on the move Complete flexibility (AEC) teams that need GPU-accelerated machines. This could With an increasingbe number of easy-to-use time viz tools, design visualization is In being used much for design/review, 4Dreal construction planning or design the same way that a personal workstation more frequently atvisualization all stages of -architecture, engineering and construction for betterwith understanding and GPUs, memory and stor or simply just to aid communication. different CPUs, communication.

Azure offers a range of VMs to suit different The challenge for AEC firms is how to provide teams with Theseteams, are known as ‘instances’.

The resulting viz assets are not just for the eyes of architects or viz specialists.

Extended especially appropriate hardware. Viewing a complex 3D BIM model on a non-technical users, as well as clients or members of the public, can also benefit greatly.

Many viz tools canGPU-accelerated Micr PC, laptop or a standard Virtual Machine (VM) without GPU The beauty of the new now push content to a browser or produce an executable for distribution. acceleration can result in a very poor experience. Basic view instances is that they are designed specifica operations such as pan, zoom and rotate may become choppy variety of 3D workflows.

The GPU requirements to view these assets can be quite high. Laptops or mobile workstations with powerfulThe instances are p and it can be very hard to position the model on screen.

In Radeon InstinctTM GPUs are not only expensive and thus hard to justify for infrequent use, but are also large and not very GPUs. 3Dextended application simply unusable. portable. Microsoftsome Azurecases, NVv4the gives teams thebecomes power on demand to viewPrevious these visually rich GPU-accelerated Microsoft Azure V assets. Instances can be matched toworkstations the complexity the model.

GPU-accelerated areof specifically designed to be configured with a full GPU, but this mean handle complex 3D datasets, but AEC firms can find it hard to could end up paying for resources they did no justify their cost for wider teams, especially when the powerful most BIM-centric workflows require some fo 3D graphics capabilities might only be needed on occasion graphics acceleration, many do not need suc throughout the working week.

3D performance.

A GPU-accelerated virtual desktop, delivered via the Cloud through AMD powered Microsoft Azure NVv4, offers the perfect solution for the part time consumer of 3D models be that a project engineer, senior architect or site manager.

Power of the Cloud Delivering GPU-accelerated virtual desktops via the Cloud offers additional benefits. Providing there is a high-bandwidth, low latency Internet connection in place, 3D applications can be accessed from anywhere on any supported device. With Microsoft Azure NVv4, you can stream 3D applications to a tablet on a construction site, or a home PC to support flexible working – even a laptop in a different country.

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19333452-G - NVv4 AEC Solution sheet_V5_A4.indd 1 19333452-G - NVv4 AEC Solution sheet_V5_A4.indd p39_40_41_42_AEC_MARCHAPRIL20_AMD.indd 3 3

By using AMD Radeon Instinct™ MI25 GPUs, NVv4 instances offer the flexibility to cater t GPU-accelerated workflows. Customers can different VMs, including one with 1/8th of a be suitable for viewing a simple BIM model, one with a full GPU that could handle a rich 3 design visualization.

Matching instances more closely to workflow GPU-accelerated virtual desktops much mor than ever before. As AMD powered NVv4 ins by the hour, customers can also scale resourc to support the ever-changing needs of projec in terms of performance and the number of V the project teams.

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AMD technology changing the rules for GPU-accelerated VMs The introduction of AMD-powered NVv4 instances is shifting the expectations for VM deployments and is sure to have IT managers taking note. What’s new? Well, The NVv4 instance is the first VM on Microsoft Azure to take advantage of SR-IOV technology (single-root input/output virtualization), which supports GPU partitioning through AMD MxGPU GPU sharing technology, which is built into the AMD Radeon Instinct MI25 GPU.

MOVING BEYOND CAD & BIM:

Extending the reach of workstations

MOVING BEYOND CA

Extending the reach of enginee construction (AEC)

For this means greater flexibility, in customers, architecture, engineering andenabling the entire enterprise, and not just the CAD users, to enjoy indedicated architecture, GPU-accelerated Virtual Machines (VMs), delivering an exceptional application experience regardless of the workloads.

construction (AEC)

Customers have four distinct NVv4 instance options to choose from, scaled to share a single GPU’s resources among as many as eight VMs. Alternatively, IT managers can maximize the user density of NVv4 with Windows® 10 multi-sessions, supported

by Windows Virtual Desktop with available plug-ins from Citrix® and Teradici® (see box out).

SR-IOV technology plays a very important role when it comes to security. It allows the isolation of PCI Express® resources between different users. It is already the standard used to share networking resources (NICs) and secure network traffic. Each resource has Virtual Functions (VF) associated and each VM can only access the physical resource via its own allocated VF. This helps ensure that each VM is isolated from others e.g. memory is secured and not shared.

NVv4 Virtual Machines will initially be available in the South Central US and West Europe Azure regions and will be available in additional regions soon thereafter.

The other benefit of VMs in the Cloud is thatMicrosoft applications run Azure® GPU-accelerated virtual on Microsoft Azure servers, right next to your data, and only machines encrypted pixels are streamed to the end device.

It means powered by AMD technology users can get instant access to up-to-date project and In the data construction sector, it’s not just users of Computer do not have to wait for huge BIM models to download or Aided Designsync.

(CAD) or Building Information Modelling Storing all project data in the Cloud and not on users’ personal (BIM) software that requires access to GPU-accelerated workstations also offers big benefits for collaboration, security workstations.

As rich 3D models start to be re-used and data and revision control. flows from design all the way through to construction, it’s

The other benefit of VMs in the Cloud is tha on Microsoft Azure servers, right next to yo encrypted pixels are streamed to the end de users can get instant access to up-to-date p do not have to wait for huge BIM models to Storing all project data in the Cloud and not workstations also offers big benefits for col and revision control.

Complete flexibility

Complete flexibility

also extended architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) teams that need GPU-accelerated machines. This could forbedesign/review, In the same way that a personal workstationbe can configured 4D construction planning or design visualization - or simply just to aid communication. with different CPUs, GPUs, memory and storage, Microsoft Azure offers a range of VMs to suit differentThe workflows. challenge for AEC firms is how to provide teams with These are known as ‘instances’. appropriate hardware. Viewing a complex 3D BIM model on a

In the same way that a personal workstatio with different CPUs, GPUs, memory and sto Azure offers a range of VMs to suit differen These are known as ‘instances’.

PC, laptop orNVv4 a standard Virtual Machine (VM) without GPU The beauty of the new GPU-accelerated Microsoft Azure The beauty of the new GPU-accelerated Mic acceleration result inViaduct a very poor experience.

Basic view instances is that they are designed specifically cater tocan aThe Middlewood isplanning that with they are designed specific Image courtesy ofto Bentley Systems.

Widening & Salford Central Track Slew project was planned andinstances executed using 4D SYNCHRO Pro operations such as pan, zoom and rotate may become choppy variety of 3D workflows. The instances are powered

by AMD variety of 3D workflows. The instances are p and it can be very hard to position the model on screen. In Radeon InstinctTM GPUs. Radeon InstinctTM GPUs. NVv4 available options some cases, the 3D application simply becomes unusable.

Previous GPU-accelerated Microsoft Azure VMs could only Previous GPU-accelerated Microsoft Azure V GPU-accelerated workstations are specifically designed to be configuredUse with a full GPU, but this meant customers be configured withTarget a full GPU, but this mea Type Size vCPU OC Memory GPU memory Displays Virtual handle firmsPartition) can find it hard to could end up paying for resources they did not need.complex While 3D datasets, but AEC (GPU could end up paying for resources they did n Display audience justify their cost for wider teams, especially when the powerful most BIM-centric workflows profile most BIM-centric workflows require some form of 3D require some f 3Dhigh graphics might only be needed on occasion graphics acceleration, many do not need such levelscapabilities of graphics acceleration, many do not need su 1080p Up to Single NV4as_v4 4 Win10 14 GB 2 GB (1/8) 1 Knowledge throughout the working week.

3D performance.

3D performance.

30Hz GPU-accelerated By using AMD Radeon Instinct™ MI25 GPUs, A Microsoft Azure virtual desktop, delivered via the Cloud Single NV8as_v4 8 Win10 28 GB Azure NVv4, 4 GB (1/4) through AMD powered Microsoft offers the 1-3 NVv4 instances offer the flexibility to cater to a wide range of perfect solution for the part time consumer of 3D models GPU-accelerated workflows. Customers can choose from four be that a project engineer, senior architect or site manager.

Win10, different VMs, including one with 1/8th of a GPU, which might Win10 EVD, be suitable Single/Multi for viewing a simple BIM model, all NV16as_v4 16 the way up to 56 GB 8 GB (1/2) 1-4 Server 19, Power Cloud one with a full GPU that could handle a rich 3D modelof forthe Server16 design visualization.

Delivering GPU-accelerated virtual desktops via the Cloud Win10,

1 Display By using AMD Radeon Instinct™ MI25 GPUs config: NVv4 instances Professional offer the flexibility to cater 4K up to 30Hz GPU-accelerated workflows. Customers can different VMs, including one with 1/8th of a 1 Display be suitable a simple BIM model config: for viewing Workstation 4K up to 30Hz one with a full GPU that could handle a rich design visualization.

1 Display

offers additional benefits. Providing there is a high-bandwidth, Matching instances more closely to workflo Win10 EVD, Matching instances more closely to workflows Single/Multi NV32as_v4 32 can make 112 GB 16 GB (1/1) 1-4 config: Full Graphics 19, connection in place, 3D applications can latency Server Internet GPU-accelerated virtual desktops much morelow cost-effective GPU-accelerated virtual desktops much mo 4K up to 30Hz Server16 be accessed from anywhere on any supported device. With than ever before. As AMD powered NVv4 instances are billed than ever before. As AMD powered NVv4 in Microsoft by the hour, customers can also scale resources up andAzure downNVv4, you can stream 3D applications to a by the hour, customers can also scale resou tablet a construction site, or a home PC to support flexible to support the ever-changing needs of projects overontime, both to support the ever-changing needs of proje working – even a laptop in a different country.of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Microsoft in terms of performance andInc. the number ofAMD, VMs required in terms and the number of ©2020 Advanced Micro Devices, All rights reserved. the AMD Arrow logo,by Radeon, and combinations thereof are trademarks and Azureof areperformance trademarks of Microsoft Corporation or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and/or other countries. Autodesk, the Autodesk® logo, AutoCAD®, Revit®, Inventor®, Maya® and 3Ds Max® are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its the project teams. the project teams. subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. Other product names used in this publication are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective companies.

4 Sponsored Content

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05/03/2020 17:21 10:36 31/03/2020

MARCH / APRIL 2020 | AECMAG.COM

BIM / Viz / VR workstation special report CLOUD WORKSTATIO NS

KNOW YOUR BOTTLENECKS LEARN HOW SOFTWARE WORKS - GET MORE OUT OF YOUR WORKSTATION BUDGET p43_AEC_MARCHAPRIL20_WS_COVER.indd 1

AMD RADEON PRO W5500 REAL-TIME VIZ AND VR FOR THE PRICE OF A TYPICAL CAD-FOCUSED GPU

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64-CORE THREADRIPPER WOW! JUST WOW. CAD AND RENDERING HAVE NEVER BEEN SUCH GOOD BEDFELLOWS 02/04/2020 12:06

workstation special report

All workstations have bottlenecks that slow you down, but do you know where they are?

Greg Corke shares some tips to help you identify the components in question and get the most out of your workstation budget

F

or architects, engineers and product designers the workstation is an essential piece of equipment.

But for many it’s just a black box that sits under the desk. Very little attention is paid to the components inside, and when things slow down it’s the ‘bloody workstation’ that gets both barrels, rather than the CPU, GPU, memory or storage.

It can pay dividends to discover when and where your bottlenecks are occurring.

It can help you understand where to best allocate your workstation budget or how a simple upgrade or a change in behaviour could boost performance. And key to this, is knowing how the software you use every day actually works.

This is a lot easier than it might sound and there are some simple tools that can help you. Some are built into Windows; others are freely downloadable. Many of the major workstation manufacturers including Dell, HP and Lenovo also offer their own utilities.

At AEC Magazine we regularly use Windows Task Manager (right-click the Taskbar and click Task Manager), GPU-Z (techpowerup.com/gpuz) and CPU-Z (cpuid.com).

These give you real time feedback on how each workstation component is being stressed at any point in time. For longer term monitoring, there’s also Windows

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March / April 2020

p44_45_AEC_MARCHAPRIL20_Bottlenecks.indd 44

Performance Monitor (type ‘perf’ into software is multi-threaded, and it may Windows search and click the result). then benefit from a CPU with more cores.

Even though modern workstation CPUs Memory feature a minimum of six or eight cores, a One of the first and easiest things to check lot of software still can’t take advantage. is system memory. When it becomes full, Most CAD software, for example, is singlethe workstation slows down because threaded, although there can be certain applications have to fall back to permanent processes within it that are multithreaded. storage - Solid State Drive (SSD) or Hard It’s relatively easy to track core Disk Drive (HDD) - which is much slower. utilisation in Task Manager as there’s a These days we use multiple applications graph for each logical processor - both the with huge datasets. Even simple Office physical core and the virtual core (enabled applications can use crazy amounts of through Intel HyperThreading (HT) memory. If your memory regularly becomes or AMD Simultaneous multithreading full, either limit the number of applications (SMT)). However, as the charts in Task you keep open or get a memory upgrade. Manager show CPU utilisation within the Memory is very easy to fit. entire workstation (including operating With compute intensive software, system, background operations and including simulation and point cloud graphics drivers etc.) it’s important to processing, memory usage can go up and make sure your workstation is only down over a long period of time. Windows doing one thing at a time. Closing other Performance Monitor is a great way of applications certainly helps. tracking this without staring at your CPU rendering software is extremely screen for hours on end. good at utilising multiple CPU cores so will devour all the processing power you CPU throw at it. However, this isn’t true for The main thing to look out for with CPUs most other multi-threaded software. Some is core utilisation. i.e. how many CPU point cloud processing, simulation and cores your software uses. If it uses one CAM applications for example, only use core the software is single threaded, a few cores. Others use around a dozen or and the bottleneck is likely to be CPU more. Only a few applications will benefit frequency. If it uses lots of cores the from virtual cores (SMT or HT). Core utilisation can also vary by dataset and available system memory.

Task Manager is a good starting point for finding out exactly how many cores your software uses. It’s usually quite easy to see if the software is single or multithreaded. And with rendering software, all cores will generally be at 100%.

However, things get more complicated with other multi-threaded software.

Too many cooks can certainly spoil the broth, so even if Task Manager shows lots of cores in use, the software won’t necessary be using them efficiently. In some cases, the software might actually Windows Task Manager is your friend run faster on a workstation with fewer cores. To get to the nitty gritty you really www.AECmag.com

02/04/2020 18:03

workstation special report

need to do some benchmarks, testing with different numbers of cores, by disabling them in the BIOS. Keeping track of CPU frequency is also very important. All modern CPUs feature some kind of ‘boost’ that increases the frequency of one or more cores above the base clock speed. This is done wherever possible, so long as the CPU stays within its power and temperature limits.

Boost speeds can vary dramatically which can have a huge impact on performance. In general, in single threaded workflows, the CPU should hit or get close to its top advertised Turbo frequency. In multi-threaded workflows it usually sits somewhere between the base and Turbo.

When a CPU gets really hot it can even be throttled so it goes below the base frequency. If this happens you can really feel the workstation slow down.

To observe CPU frequency simply use Task Manager or CPU-Z. If it’s lower than expected, first check out Windows Power Options and see if selecting a highperformance power plan makes any difference. If it doesn’t, then it could be that a heatsink or fan is covered in dust, or vents are blocked, which makes the CPU harder to cool. This can be a particular problem with mobile workstations where the CPU is crammed into a small space. However, if you are experiencing throttling because of overheating, you’ll probably also notice excessive noise as the fans will already be working overtime. Here, a quick clean can sometimes do wonders. Alternatively, simply make sure your machine has enough ventilation, especially in hot weather. Those who are more technical could also upgrade the cooling system.

Sometimes frequencies can drop over a longer period of time, say when ray trace rendering. Frequencies might start off high but then slow down after a few minutes when the CPU heats up. Performance Monitor is a good way to track this.

Mobile workstation CPUs can also slow down when running off battery, simply because they can’t get enough power. You may be surprised at how much slower a mobile workstation runs when it’s not plugged in, which will make you think twice about where and how you work.

Frequency variations are not limited to the CPU. Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) can also experience the same issues and this can be tracked through GPU-Z or Performance Monitor.

GPU For the GPU, utilisation and memory usage are the main things to look out for. For any 3D application, load up your largest dataset, turn on your common viewing modes, www.AECmag.com

p44_45_AEC_MARCHAPRIL20_Bottlenecks.indd 45

then move the model around the viewport.

It’s important to do this ‘full screen’ as when the application is Windowed it typically uses less resources. To stop Task Manager becoming hidden behind your 3D application, click options > Always on Top. You can do similar in GPU-Z. If GPU utilisation hits 100%, as it will likely do in any real time viz, VR or GPU rendering application, then you can be fairly certain that the GPU is causing the bottleneck. Here, upgrading to a more powerful GPU will increase 3D performance or reduce render time.

However, if GPU utilisation is very low – as it often is in CPU limited CAD and BIM applications like Autodesk Inventor or Autodesk Revit, then it’s quite likely that the bottleneck is in the CPU and there would be little to no benefit to upgrading to a more powerful GPU. In such cases, the best way to increase 3D performance would be with a higher frequency CPU. For CAD, GPU memory typically isn’t a bottleneck, especially with newer professional graphics cards, although anything under 4GB can cause problems with larger models. But, with the rise in real time viz, GPU rendering and VR, memory demands have grown. And if you do run out of GPU memory, things can really slow down, or sometimes even crash.

For real time 3D applications there is a little bit of leeway. Some GPU rendering tools also support ‘out of core’ where some of the memory from the GPU is offloaded to the main system RAM. Generally speaking, however, if you regularly push the memory limits, you’ll likely benefit from a GPU with more memory. However, unlike system memory, it’s not possible to upgrade GPU memory. You have to upgrade the entire GPU. Getting a better understanding of GPU memory usage can be really important in making the best decisions. For example, there are a wide variety of 8GB professional GPUs out there and while some offer a huge upgrade in terms of raw performance, you may still experience a bottleneck unless you go up to 16GB. One final mention should go to mobile workstations. If you’re experiencing really poor 3D performance, it could be that the software is using the wrong GPU. Most mobile workstations offer switchable graphics which is designed to use the high performance Nvidia Quadro or AMD Radeon Pro GPU for 3D applications, and Intel integrated graphics for less demanding tasks. However, sometimes it gets muddled up. A quick look at GPU-Z will show which GPU is in use and change settings accordingly. Sometimes switchable graphics needs to be disabled in the BIOS.

Storage Task Manager and Performance Monitor include several tools for tracking disk performance and activity but generally the best way to identify storage bottlenecks is through real world benchmarking. i.e. testing different drives to see how long it takes to complete tasks such as opening or processing datasets or booting up Windows and launching applications.

Synthetic benchmarks, such as CrystalDiskMark, which measure sequential or random read / write performance, only really tell you part of the story, so don’t be seduced by numbers on charts. Most operations also involve some form of processing and disk activity may only contribute to a relatively small part of the overall time. When it comes to opening a CAD assembly, for example, a fast Solid State Drive (SSD), is hardly any quicker than a slow Hard Disk Drive (SSD).

Disk performance becomes more important when working with huge multi GB datasets used in point cloud processing, simulation or 8K video editing. It becomes even more critical when system memory is in short supply.

Of course, disk performance is not just important for tasks that take seconds, minutes or hours. Responsiveness is very important, as is the ability to read data from and write data to multiple sources at the same time. This is why you should absolutely not be using a rotating HDD as the system drive in your workstation.

As SSDs are now so cheap these days, it’s a bottleneck no one should have to endure.

Conclusion Understanding where your bottlenecks occur can help ensure you get the most out of your workstation budget. Over the years we’ve heard several examples of money being thrown down the drain with firms investing in multi-core CPUs or high-end GPUs to ‘speed up’ CAD. While some software companies publish recommended workstation specifications, these tend to be base level and, because of fast changing hardware, not always up to date. In addition, as everyone’s datasets are different, ‘one size fits all advice’ doesn’t really exist. We’ve also seen cases where technical reality is distorted by marketing ambition.

There are many ways you can identify bottlenecks in your workstation beyond those noted in this article, but hopefully this gives a good starting point. We all want our workstations to go faster as it can have a huge impact on productivity. And if it can also help keep profanities at bay, then that’s no bad thing.

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02/04/2020 18:03

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©2020 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. AMD and the AMD Arrow logo, Radeon, and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. AutoCAD is a registered trademark or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. NVIDIA, and Quadro, are trademarks and/ or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. Other product names used in this publication are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective companies.

See FOOTNOTE RPW-274 on http://amd.com/RadeonProW5500

1

workstation special report

Armari Magnetar X64T-G3 FWL [64-core Threadripper]

With its new 64-core Ryzen Threadripper 3990X, AMD has completely transformed the design viz workstation. Ray trace rendering and CAD have never been such good bedfellows, writes Greg Corke

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few years ago, it was almost unthinkable for there to be a CPU with 64 cores. And, even if there was, the frequency of those cores would be so low that you wouldn’t really want one inside your workstation.

Lots of cores are great for rendering, but if that comes at the expense of singlethreaded performance, which is what makes CAD and many other design and engineering applications tick, then it’s a compromise few would be willing to make.

Until recently, advances in CPU technology had become quite predictable, but it’s amazing how quickly things can change. In summer 2017, AMD launched Ryzen Threadripper. The first-generation CPUs featured up to 16 cores and were great for multithreaded workflows but lacked the all-important single-threaded performance to make them a serious threat to Intel. Today, two and a half years later, and with AMD’s 3rd Gen Threadripper rollout complete, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Early February saw the release of Ryzen Threadripper 3990X, a 64-core, 128-thread beast of a CPU, which hardly compromises on frequency at all. It has a base clock of 2.9GHz and a max boost of 4.3GHz, but with sufficient cooling in place, it can even get close to 4.0GHz on all 64 cores. Viz specialists, architects, engineers and product designers can really have their cake and eat it too. It’s a phenomenal proposition for anyone that uses a CPU renderer.

As far as multithreaded performance is concerned, Intel simply can’t compete.

The closest it has is the Core i9-10980XE 48

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(18-cores) ($1,000) and the Xeon W-3175X extreme demands. The 3990X is rated (28-cores) ($2,999). If you want more at 280W Thermal Design Power (TDP) cores, you’d need the server-focused but, unlike AMD EPYC, it can actually Xeon Platinum 9282 (56-cores) ($50,000) be pushed much higher. And when more or two Xeon Platinum 8280s (28-cores) power gets pumped into the CPU, the ($20,000). And you still wouldn’t be able brakes come off and Threadripper really to beat Threadripper 3990X. starts to fly in multithreaded workflows.

Of course, with limited competition To do this, Armari uses AMD Precision on the desktop workstation front, AMD Boost Overdrive, which will essentially can charge a premium, and continue to push the the Threadripper 3990X frequency of the CPU as Product spec doesn’t come cheap. The 64long as the workstation ■ AMD Ryzen core CPU will set you back can cool it adequately. And Threadripper 3990X $3,990, matching its model the Magnetar X64T-G3 CPU (2.9GHz, 4.3GHz Boost) (64 cores) number precisely. This might certainly can. Its Full ■ 64GB (4 x 16GB) seem expensive but, when you Water Loop (FWL) cooling Corsair Vengeance consider the huge impact it can system is impressive and LPX DDR4-3600 C18 SDRAM have on design viz workflows, comes with a giant radiator ■ ASRock TRX40 many will consider it money well with nearly three times the Taichi motherboard spent. After all, there’s only so surface area of those used in ■ 2 x 1TB Corsair many coffee breaks you can take its other workstations.

MP600 PCIe 4 M.2 NVMe SSD (RAID 0) in one day, while you wait for a On average, Armari ■ AMD Radeon Pro render to finish. reckons it can sustain 550W5700 GPU (8GB) 650 Watts of power in real■ Full Water cooled The render god Loop system (FWL world applications, with upgrade) – includes Armari has a long history of momentary boosts in excess one free service developing high-performance of 800 Watts. In practice, ■ Microsoft Windows 10 Pro for workstations that are both this means the machine can Workstations 64-Bit extremely well-built and wellmaintain very high clock ■ Armari Magnetar tuned. The UK firm was one of speeds over long periods S/M/R/X Series - 3 Year RTB workstation the first to get on board with of time; not just in single warranty 1st Gen Threadripper and now threaded workflows, but ■ £6,664 (Ex VAT) offers AMD CPUs across its when rendering as well. armari.com entire Magnetar range, from We left it rendering in the single-socket Ryzen and singledesign viz-focused KeyShot socket Threadripper, to single- and dual- for well over an hour and it maintained socket EPYC, which is AMD’s official a phenomenal 3.90GHz on all 64 cores. enterprise CPU. Fan noise was noticeable, but not too For the Threadripper 3990X, Armari distracting. However, it’s important to note has designed and manufactured a that this is a prototype system and, when completely bespoke chassis to handle its the machine hits production, Armari says www.AECmag.com

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workstation special report

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The Threadripper 3990X is phenomenal proposition for CPU rendering.

As far as multithreaded performance is concerned, Intel simply can’t compete

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the radiator fans will be tuned back to around 50-60% duty cycle maximum.

The machine completed our 4K, 128pass test render in a record breaking 38 secs. That’s nearly twice as fast as a 32core Threadripper 3970X and more than ten times as fast as the six-core Intel Xeon E-2176G, the kind of CPU you’d typically find in a CAD workstation. It was also streets ahead of the competition in the V-Ray NEXT benchmark, with a result of 93,436 ksamples.

But this isn’t just about numbers on charts. A CPU like this can have a huge impact on workflow. With high-

quality 1,280 x 720-resolution renders literally taking a few seconds and 1,920 x 1,080-resolution renders not much longer, there’s no more stop and start. You really can iterate in real time without having to compromise on quality or resolution – although, naturally, this depends on your scene’s complexity.

System memory Memory also plays a very important role in rendering. 3rd Gen Threadripper can support up to 256GB, spread across eight slots, which is important if you work with very large scenes. This is the theory, at

least. Armari tells us compatible 32GB modules are currently quite expensive, which is one of the reasons why our test machine was configured with 64GB (4 x 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR43600 C18 SDRAM modules) – the other being that 64GB is a good amount for mainstream viz workflows.

But it’s not just about capacity. 3rd Gen Threadripper also features a new memory architecture that gives every single core fast and equal access to memory. In contrast, with 2nd Gen Threadripper, not all cores had direct access to memory, so sometimes had to ask other cores for data

Chaos Group on 3rd Gen Threadripper Chaos Group CTO Vladimir Koylazov

The third generation Threadripper CPUs are great for ray tracing – and there is one crucial breakthrough that makes it possible.

The Threadripper 3990X CPU implements uniform memory access for all

cores, which gives a huge performance boost for rendering.

That’s because usually, the main bottleneck for manycore machines is RAM. Especially with ray tracing, different cores usually need different parts of the scene

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geometry or shaders.

Scenes these days can be very large, measuring hundreds of gigabytes.

Making sure that each CPU core gets the data that it needs from the system RAM as quickly as possible is a fairly difficult task.

To make it somewhat easier for hardware manufacturers, the socalled ‘NUMA’ architecture was introduced (where NUMA stands for ‘NonUniform Memory Access’).

For multi-CPU systems, this means that each CPU only has access to a portion of the system RAM directly, and if it needs data from the other portions, it needs to ask another CPU to fetch it.

Within a single CPU, it means that only certain

cores have direct access to the memory, and other cores must ask them to fetch the data they need.

For ray tracing specifically, this adds quite a bit of overhead, and typically, NUMA configurations affect performance in a significantly negative way.

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to optimise the software around this hardware peculiarity.

This is one of the reasons why many-core dual-CPU systems have sometimes not performed as expected for our customers, especially with large scenes that are far larger than the CPU caches.

At Chaos Group, we have profiled many such systems with CPUs from different manufacturers

and, barring bugs or other multithreading problems, what we have found, invariably, is that the main bottlenecks tend to occur when the CPU cores are left waiting for data to arrive from the system RAM. Anything that slows that operation, like a NUMA architecture, has an adverse effect on performance.

In the newest [3rd Gen] Threadripper CPUs, all cores have equal access to the system RAM without additional delays like asking another core to fetch the data.

This allows each CPU core to move through the compute operations a lot faster than with previous NUMA-based architectures.

What you get are 64 CPU cores operating closer to their maximum potential – something that has not been possible with any other CPU previously.

This means that, on the whole, we have found that we have not had to do much to optimise the V-Ray and Corona code for the new Threadrippers.

We did have one piece of code in V-Ray (the light cache calculations) that was limited to 64 threads and which we had to rework a little bit in the latest V-Ray builds, in order to use all 128 logical threads.

But beyond that, we only had to make sure that each CPU core could operate as independently as possible from the rest. chaosgroup.com

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1 64 cores, 128 threads rendering in KeyShot 2 Interior of the Armari Magnetar X64T-G3 (yes, that’s a heat sink at the top taking up half the chassis) 3 Flip handles for easy carrying 4 Full Water Loop (FWL) cooling system

and then wait for it to arrive. simulation. 3rd Gen Threadripper can also M.2 sockets, it comes with a Hyper Quad Chaos Group’s CTO Vladimir Koylazov support much more memory – 256GB, M.2 PCIe add-in board that can host up to explains this in more detail in the box-out compared to 128GB in 3rd Gen Ryzen. four M.2 NVMe SSDs. In our review on the previous page.

For single-threaded applications machine, it has a pair of 1TB Corsair like CAD or BIM, the 64-core 3990X is MP600 M.2 NVMe SSDs configured as a Beyond rendering never going to beat a top-end, eight-core 2TB RAID 0 array.

Of course, designers, engineers and Intel CPU like the Core i9 9900K. But The MP600 is based on PCIe 4.0, architects aren’t only interested in ray it’s not that far behind. It completed our offering twice the bandwidth of PCIe trace rendering. Putting BIM and CAD to Solidworks 2020 IGES export test in 84 3.0, so is already a fast SSD. It boasts one side for a moment, there are several secs, only 9 secs slower than an overclocked sequential read and write speeds of multithreaded tools that can benefit from 4.9GHz Core i9 9900K, which is still one 4.95GB/sec and 4.25GB/sec respectively, multiple CPU cores, although very few of the best CPUs out there if you want a but configuring it as RAID 0 takes it apart from video encoding and editing workstation that is 100% focused on CAD. to new levels. In the CrystalDiskMark that can use all 64 cores as efficiently as benchmark, it clocked 9,062MB/sec read a ray trace renderer. Many simulation Inside the Magnetar X64T-G3 and 8,298MB/sec write and copied a 90GB and point cloud processing tools, for Armari’s 64-core Threadripper zip file in just over 50 secs. example, are limited to a dozen or so cores, workstation is a serious piece of Of course, SSD performance like this or offer very little additional benefit if engineering and one of the heaviest will only truly benefit those working with your workstation CPU colossal datasets, typically has more. With some seen in workflows such as applications, processing high-end viz, 8K video, point In all the years I’ve been reviewing times can even go up once cloud or simulation. Anyone workstations I can’t remember a CPU ever you hit the CPU core sweet with more mainstream viz spot for the software or impressing me as much as the 64-core 3990X. workflows will likely be more It truly is a phenomenal feat of engineering dataset you’re working on. than happy with a single With this in mind, MP600, backed up by up one unless you know for to four 3.5/2.5-inch SATA/ certain that your design and engineering- workstations we’ve ever reviewed, thanks SAS HDDs/SSDs. focused software will benefit from 64 in part to its hefty cooling system. To If you’ve forked out $4k for a 64-core cores, we wouldn’t really recommend the make it easier to carry, there are two CPU, the chances are you’ll only really Threadripper 3990X for anything other handles on top that flip around 180 want to use the GPU for 3D graphics or than ray trace rendering. Instead, money degrees, so they sit flush when not in VR. The Magnetar X64T-G3 came with a would probably be better spent on the 24- use. Next to the front handle, you’ll also single AMD Radeon Pro W5700 (8GB), core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X, find two USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports and (on which is a decent choice for mainstream which is less than half the price, or even the production version, at least) a USB design viz. the 16-core AMD Ryzen 9 3950X. 3.2 Gen2x2 port. There are plenty more For more demanding 3D workflows, the In saying that, it’s important to USB ports on the rear of the machine, machine can handle one or two Nvidia note that Threadripper beats Ryzen as well as two Ethernet ports (2.5Gb/s Quadro RTX 5000, 6000 or 8000 hands down when it comes to memory and 1Gb/s).

GPUs, but if you want three or four GPUs, bandwidth and cache, both of which can To handle the big power demands of the perhaps for GPU rendering, then you’re be really important for memory intensive 3990X, Armari uses the ASRock TRX40 best off talking to Armari. workflows like point cloud processing or motherboard. With limited on-board With a different motherboard (the

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ASRock TRX40 Creator) and a 2000W PSU (instead of our test machine’s 1300W EVGA SuperNOVA G2 GOLD Modular), the workstation can support four GPUs. However, it may not be able to deliver the same power to the Threadripper 3990X, so all core clock speeds may be lower.

Conclusion In all the years I’ve been reviewing workstations, I can’t remember a CPU ever impressing me as much as the 64core Threadripper 3990X. It truly is a phenomenal feat of engineering, giving the best of both worlds for single-threaded CAD and multithreaded ray trace

4

rendering. If you use a design viz tool like V-Ray or KeyShot, then it’s completely untouchable. Intel has nothing that gets remotely close.

But Intel Core or Intel Xeon aren’t the only competitors to AMD Threadripper.

In the last few years, the GPU has also become a serious challenger for rendering. This is especially true for Nvidia RTX GPUs, which feature dedicated cores for ray tracing and AI denoising, and more memory on the high-end Quadros. RTX is also supported by an increasing number of viz tools, including V-Ray, KeyShot and Enscape.

GPU rendering has certainly been gaining traction, but with AMD

Threadripper delivering genuinely huge leaps in performance and offering quick access to up to 256GB memory, the battle is far from over.

Of course, a 64-core CPU isn’t for everyone. Designers, architects and engineers who only use CAD or BIM will likely fare better on Intel, which still offers faster single-threaded performance with an eight-core CPU like the Core i9-9900K. But if you’re into ray tracing in any form, any one of the 3rd Gen Threadrippers, including the 24-core 3960X and the 32-core 3970X, should serve you well. And Armari is proving to be one of the best at getting the most out of this exciting new platform.

Threadripper workstations alternatives

Boston offers two Threadripper workstations in its VENOM range, the mid-tower TR31-10NP and the full-tower TR32-10NP. The main difference is expandability, with the TR32-10NP offering up to four double-width GPUs and up to eight 3.5-inch HDDs. The Venom TR3 series is available for testing, purchase or hire.

The BOXX APEXX T3 is one of the smallest Threadripper workstations out there, with the same chassis as the AMD Ryzen-based APEXX A3 we reviewed earlier this year (tinyurl.com/BOXX-A3).

For more memory (up to 256GB), more GPUs (up to four), more M.2 SSDs (up to four) and slighly higher clock speeds, there’s also the larger APEXX T4.

Interpro’s Threadripper workstation might go under a single name (IPW-TR), but it’s highly customisable, with many different combinations of chassis, motherboard and cooling to suit requirements. The IPW-TR is said to be near silent in operation and can be overclocked, but Precision Boost Overdrive is proving most popular.

Puget Systems is a US firm that specialises in custom workstations. To demonstrate its knowledge of software, it has tailored its Threadripper workstation to different workflows, including photogrammetry and rendering. The website features several articles on Threadripper which include some benchmarks.

Velocity Micro is a US manufacturer of custom workstations.

The Threadripper-based ProMagix HD80, is available in a GX5 mid-tower or full-tower chassis and comes with a choice of two motherboards, the Asus Prime TXR40-Pro or the Asus ROG Zenith II Extreme.

Check out the website for a Threadripper ROI document.

Workstation Specialists’ WS-1640A-G4 Threadripper workstation can take up to four double-height GPUs and can be rack-mounted with an optional kit. The UK firm also offers a 2nd Gen Threadripper mini workstation, but the current lack of Micro-ATX motherboards for 3rd Gen Threadripper means it hasn’t been updated.

■ boston.co.uk

■ boxx-tech.co.uk

■ ipworkstations.com

■ pugetsystems.com

■ velocitymicro.com

■ workstationspecialist.com

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Scan 3XS GWP-ME Q248T [32-core Threadripper]

AMD has transformed Ryzen Threadripper from a costeffective multi-core CPU, to one with leading performance.

Greg Corke reviews this impressive workstation for rendering

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hen AMD first launched Threadripper in 2017, some of the mainstream IT press were left scratching their heads as to what to do with a 16-core CPU. The truth is, AMD didn’t really appreciate what it had on its hands, so review samples went out to journalists who were more familiar with Killzone than they were with KeyShot, or any other ray trace renderer.

In short, Threadripper changed the game for ray trace rendering on the CPU, or at least paved the way for change. Intel finally had some serious competition and prices of high-end multi-core desktop CPUs came tumbling down. It was no longer just the viz specialists who could justify a workstation with more than the standard four or six cores. With CPU renderers built into CAD and BIM software, along with standalone pushbutton viz tools, architects and designers also had a strong case for investment.

In just two years, things have changed dramatically. At the tail end of 2019 AMD released 3rd Gen Threadripper: the 24-core 3960X (£1,024*) and the 32-core 3970X (£1,500*). Last month these were joined by the 64-core 3990X (£3,075*). Intel can’t get anywhere near this number of cores 52

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on a single-socket desktop CPU, reviewed in 2018. We had Product spec the closest being the 28-core a similar experience in Xeon W-3175X (£2,400*) and the V-Ray, with a 26% lead.

■ AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X recently released 18-core Core i9We haven’t tested the Intel CPU (3.7GHz, 4.5GHz 10980XE (£1,083*).

Xeon W-3175X, but we Turbo) (32 cores) It’s the Threadripper 3970X expect rendering perfor■ Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000 GPU (24GB that sits at the heart of the Scan mance would be in a GDDR6 memory) 3XS GWP-ME Q248T, the similar ballpark, although ■ 64GB (4 x 16GB) subject of this review,. that Intel CPU costs nearly Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3600MHz The 3970X has a base clock £1,000 more. memory speed of 3.7GHz and a Turbo of One of the trade-offs with ■ 2TB Corsair MP600 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD 4.5GHz. On paper, this is a big 2nd Gen Threadripper was ■ Fractal Design increase over the 32-core 2nd its inferior performance in Define R6 chassis Gen Threadripper 2990WX single-threaded operations, 543mm (l) x 233mm (w) x 465mm (h) it replaces (3.0GHz, 4.2GHz which are used in CAD ■ Microsoft Windows Turbo). But frequencies only software. The difference 10 Pro 64-bit tell half the story. 3rd Gen wasn’t huge, and nowhere ■ 3 Years – 1st Year Threadripper offers more near as big as it was with Onsite, 2nd and 3rd Year RTB (Parts performance, better efficiency, 1st Gen Threadripper, but it and Labour) and significantly higher was significant all the same.

■ £6,399 (Ex VAT) instructions per clock (IPC) – With 3rd Gen Threadripper, scan.co.uk/3xs 15% more, according to AMD. this has changed and there In other words, even if the CPUs really is now very little ran at the same frequency, the 3970X between AMD and Intel. In Solidworks, for would be substantially faster. example, it completed our single-threaded The results from our rendering IGES export test in 81 seconds, only a touch benchmarks illustrate this perfectly. behind an 8-core Intel Core i9 9900K In KeyShot, the Scan workstation (75 secs) and a 6-core, 3.7GHz, 4.7GHz rendered our 4K test scene in a mere Turbo Intel Xeon E-2176G (80 secs). The 69 seconds, a staggering 41% faster Threadripper 2990WX took 107 secs. than the Threadripper 2990WX we 3rd Gen Threadripper also features www.AECmag.com

02/04/2020 13:11

workstation special report

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At the moment, it’s only specialist manufacturers like Scan that offer Ryzen Threadripper, but surely Dell, Fujitsu, HP and Lenovo can’t ignore it for long?

a whopping 128MB L3 cache and a new unified memory system which theoretically should further improve performance in applications where there are dependencies between threads and memory needs to be accessed by multiple cores. Simulation software is a good example, although you might want to consider error-correcting code (ECC) memory. Also, not many FEA or CFD tools can actually take full advantage of 32 cores.

The sweet spot for Ansys Mechanical, for example, is around 12 to 16 cores.

The workstation features 64GB of Corsair DDR4 3,600MHz memory, which should really be considered a minimum for a viz-focused machine like this. 3,600MHz is quite fast for memory and while some workflows will benefit, it certainly won’t be all.

The other notable feature of 3rd Gen Threadripper is support for PCIe 4.0, which offers double the bandwidth of PCIe 3.0. Scan has made the most of this advancement by choosing a 2TB Corsair MP600 NVMe M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD. Rated at 4.95GB/sec sequential read and 4.25GB/ sec sequential write, this should give significant benefits when working with large continuous datasets.

The Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000 GPU www.AECmag.com

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is PCIe 3.0. But unless you’re shifting serious amounts of data in and out of the GPU, this shouldn’t make a big difference.

In addition, there isn’t much choice at the moment, as the only PCIe 4.0 professional GPUs are currently the AMD Radeon Pro W5500 and W5700 – more ‘mid-range’ than ‘high-end’.

With 24GB GDDR6 memory and a hugely powerful processor, the Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000 is a very serious professional GPU, and one with an equally serious price tag (£3,499*). Those pushing the boundaries of real-time viz or VR will benefit most. Then, of course, with dedicated RT cores, there’s also GPU rendering. But if you’ve invested in a 32core CPU, and presumably tuned your render pipeline accordingly, do you really need both? Of course, Scan does offer other GPUs, including the Quadro RTX 4000 and RTX 5000, which significantly brings down cost.

By packing so many cores into a single CPU, it’s inevitable that 3rd Gen Threadripper is power-hungry. The 3970X is rated at 280W and, when combined with the 295W Quadro RTX 6000, it’s clear why the 3XS workstation needs an 850W PSU. Despite the significant power draw, it stays relatively quiet even when both CPU

and GPU are being hammered at the same time. The sizeable Fractal Design Define R6 case and the Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML360 TR4 hydrocooler cope well with the high thermal output. The CPU maintained a very impressive 3.9GHz (O.2GHz above the base frequency) when rendering for 30 mins.

Conclusion When you consider just how far AMD was behind Intel a few years ago, it’s incredible to see it now leading the pack in high-end desktop CPUs. At the moment, it’s only specialist manufacturers like Scan, Armari, BOXX and Workstation Specialists that offer Threadripper, but surely Dell, Fujitsu, HP and Lenovo can’t ignore it for long?

Of course, not everyone needs 32 or 64 cores on a desktop machine, and with increased competition from GPU rendering in applications like V-Ray and KeyShot, architects, designers and viz specialists have a big decision to make. But if you’re heavily invested in workflows that can take advantage of so many CPU cores (and lots of memory), not forgetting simulation or point cloud processing, the Scan 3XS GWP-ME Q248T has much to offer.

March / April 2020

*CPU/GPU PRICES TAKEN FROM SCAN.CO.UK ON 05/03/20 (EX VAT)

’’

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workstation special report

Scan 3XS GWP-CAD Q116C Greg Corke gets hands-on with this Intel Core i9 workstation from Bolton-based Scan. Despite strong competition from AMD across the board, the i9-9900K still rules the roost in single-threaded software such as CAD

R

ecently, there’s been such a focus on AMD with its excellent 3rd Gen Ryzen and 3rd Gen Ryzen Threadripper CPUs that it’s been easy to forget about Intel. But the fact remains that Intel continues to have a lead in single-threaded performance, albeit a relatively small one, and we all know this is what matters for CAD or BIM. Scan’s new 3XS GWP-CAD Q116C is built around the Intel Core i9-9900K CPU. Even though it has eight cores and 16 threads, it has the highest Turbo frequency (5.0GHz) out of all of Intel’s desktop CPUs, and a base clock of 3.6GHz. The high frequency makes it good for CAD, but to help with multi-threaded workflows like rendering, simulation or point cloud processing, you’ve also got plenty of cores to play with.

In all the years I’ve been reviewing Intel Core-based 3XS workstations from Scan, this is first one I’ve seen where the CPU isn’t overclocked.

Scan’s reason for this is to deliver ultimate performance in CAD by running one or two cores at the full Turbo frequency of 5.0GHz. However, as Scan can deliver the same CPU overclocked, with all eight cores running at 4.9GHz, you only get a small additional benefit on paper. More importantly, when using a CPU renderer like KeyShot for any amount of time, the all-core frequency goes down to 4.2GHz. In Solidworks, when exporting an IGES model using a single thread, we saw no difference between the stock Core i9-9900K in the Scan 3XS GWPCAD Q116C and one that is overclocked to 4.9GHz, as reviewed in the Scan 3XS WI4000 Viz last year. Both machines finished the test in 75 secs, the fastest time we’ve recorded, and five seconds faster than the 16-core AMD Ryzen 9 3950X-based www.AECmag.com

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BOXX Apexx A3 workstation we may even be able to go down to a Product spec reviewed last year.

Quadro P620 (2GB). Entry-level When it comes to rendering, AMD Radeon Pro GPUs are also ■ Intel Core i9 9900K CPU (3.6GHz, however, the 4.9GHz overclocked an option, including the Radeon 5.0GHz Turbo) Core i9-9900K has a significant Pro WX 3100 (4GB) or WX (8 cores, 16 threads) lead, finishing our 4K KeyShot 4100 (4GB).

■ 32GB (2 x 16GB) Corsair Vengeance scene in 255 secs, 13% faster than For those with bigger graphics DDR4 3000MHz memory the standard Core i9-9900K, demands, the Scan GWP-CAD ■ Nvidia Quadro which took 293 secs.

Q116C can take anything up to P2200 GPU (5GB Armed with this information, a pair of Quadro RTX 8000 GDDR5) we’d almost certainly go for GPUs, so there’s plenty of scope ■ Asus Z390-A motherboard an overclocked CPU in this for this machine. But unless ■ 1TB Samsung 970 machine, especially as it’s a noyou’re into GPU rendering, Evo Plus M.2 cost option from Scan. But it’s there’s little benefit to having NMVe SSD down to the customer to decide, dual GPUs in a system like this.

■ Corsair Carbide 275Q case and there are other factors to With the cost of solid state ■ 550W Corsair TMX, consider such as workflow and drives (SSDs) coming down, 80PLUS Gold PSU energy consumption. it’s increasingly common to ■ Microsoft Windows For a CAD-focused see larger capacity M.2 NVMe 10 Professional 64-bit workstation like this, 32GB (2 SSDs as standard issue in ■ 3 Years warranty – x 16GB) of DDR4 3,000MHz workstations. Scan has gone for 1st Year Onsite, 2nd and 3rd Year RTB memory is pretty standard, but a 1TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus, a (Parts and Labour) the machine can actually hold solid choice. With this capacity, ■ £1,667 (Ex VAT) up to 128GB, spread across four you don’t necessarily need a hard £2,083 (Ex VAT) with 128GB memory modules. This could be very disk drive (HDD) for secondary upgrade useful for memory-hungry storage, especially if you store scan.co.uk/3xs applications like point cloud most of your files on a server. processing or simulation.

However, the machine can take However, when the machine is maxed out up to four 3.5-inch drives. like this, Scan fits it with slower 2,666MHz As we’ve come to expect from Scan, the modules to maintain stability due to the machine runs incredibly quietly, even increased load on the memory controller. under heavy load. The chassis is wellUpgrading or replacing memory isn’t equipped with ports, with two handy USB straightforward. In order to get to the 3.1 on the front and five more on the rear, modules, you first together with a single USB Type C and two need to remove the USB 2.0. There’s also Gigabit Ethernet, but radiator/fan unit WiFi is not built in. from the top of the Corsair Carbide Conclusion 275Q case, which If you use CAD or BIM software, you won’t is attached with find many workstations faster than the eight screws. It’s Scan 3XS GWP-CAD Q116C. Intel offers not hard to do, cheaper CPUs with fewer cores/threads, but it does take a but the Core i9-9900K continues to be the little time. This fastest when it comes to single-threaded isn’t an issue with performance, closely followed by the Intel the larger Corsair Core i7 9700K, which has a Max Turbo of cases that Scan 4.9GHz but costs around £100 less. uses on some of its With eight cores and 16 threads, the other workstations, Intel Core i9-9900K also delivers decent as the radiator performance when rendering. But if you sink is mounted on take design visualisation seriously, you’ll the front. likely get more out of the similarly priced The Nvidia AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, which has 12 cores Quadro P2200 and 24 threads, even though performance (5GB) graphics in CAD will take a small hit. card is a solid choice While rendering software will generally for CAD, delivering great performance in devour all the CPU cores you throw at it, Solidworks 2020 in particular. However, many other multi-threaded applications if your CAD or BIM application is do not. Some point cloud processing and particularly CPU-limited, like Autodesk simulation software, for example, peak Revit or Autodesk Inventor, then you can at fewer than eight cores. With multicore probably save yourself some cash and CPUs now standard and Intel seeing go for a Quadro P1000 (4GB) instead. serious competition from AMD at all price Depending on the memory demands of points, it’s never been more important to your application and of your models, you understand how your software works.

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AMD Radeon Pro W5500 Greg Corke test drives AMD’s new affordable pro graphics card that delivers real-time viz and VR capabilities for the price of a typical CAD-focused GPU Price $399 amd.com/radeonpro

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or years, the sub-£400 graphics card has been a mainstay of the CAD and BIM workstation. Each new generation delivers more power, but because of the nature of most CAD and BIM software, better performance on paper might not necessarily translate to a better experience for the end user.

The fact is, the majority of 3D design software is very CPU-limited. In other words, 3D performance is bottlenecked by the CPU, not the GPU. So, even if you got the most powerful workstation graphics card in the world, your 3D model still wouldn’t move more smoothly. With top-end cards costing close to £5,000 you could end up wasting lots of money on graphics processing power you never use.

But workflows are changing. In architecture in particular, the use of realSolidworks 2020 SP1 Black Owl PC model

4K

Shaded with edges

1.23

Components = 295 Triangles = 3.6 million

Radeon Pro WX 5100

Frames Per Second (FPS)

62.26

single-slot graphics card features 8GB GDDR6 memory and four DisplayPort 1.4 outputs to drive up to four 4K displays.

The maximum power consumption is 125W and the board requires an external 6-pin connector, which is fed from the PSU. With this spec, it should be compatible with almost all desktop workstations, apart from Small Form Factor (SFF) models, which tend to take low-profile graphics cards.

The Radeon Pro W5500 is PCIe Gen 4-compatible, which offers double the bandwidth of PCIe Gen 3. The new interface standard is currently only available in workstations with 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen or AMD Ryzen Threadripper CPUs, but AMD’s graphics card will still work perfectly well in PCIe Gen 3-based Intel systems. This isn’t really a big deal for CAD or design viz centric workflows, however, as having more bandwidth is unlikely to make any real difference to performance.

In terms of positioning, the Radeon Pro W5500 sits below the double height 205W Radeon Pro W5700. We see it as the natural replacement for both the CADfocused Radeon Pro WX 5100 (8GB) and the entry-level ‘VR Ready’ Radeon Pro WX 7100 (8GB), both of which are over Specifications three years old and based on AMD’s 14nm The Radeon Pro W5500 follows on from Graphics Core Next (GCN) design. the Radeon Pro W5700 to become AMD’s second professional GPU based on its The competition new 7nm ‘Navi’ RDNA architecture. The In terms of price point, the natural Solidworks 2020 SP1 Production machinery model

77.45

Radeon Pro W5500

81.33

Radeon Pro W5700

142.82 115.96

Quadro P2200

141.88 312.82 50

100

150

200

250

Shaded with Edges + Shadows + RealView + AO

1.23

Components = 295 Triangles = 3.6 million

Radeon Pro W5500

57.75

6.96

Radeon Pro W5500

6.53

Radeon Pro W5700

Quadro P2000

90.04

Quadro P2000

236.63

300

17.72 20.29

Quadro RTX 4000

33.43

0

4K

Solidworks 2020 SP1 (RealView) Production machinery model

24.25

Radeon Pro W5500

34.83

Radeon Pro W5500 63.37

126.74

4K 1.23

Frames Per Second (FPS)

0

49.18

5

10

15

Components = 8,000 Triangles = 59 million

4.57

Radeon Pro W5500

4.22

90

120

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150

0

20

4K

Frames Per Second (FPS)

11.34 13.25

Quadro RTX 4000

23.51

20 FPS 60

1.23

35

7.21

Quadro P2200 107.06

30

3.51

Radeon Pro WX 7100

Quadro P2000

Quadro RTX 4000

25

Shaded with Edges + Shadows + RealView + AO

Radeon Pro W5700

51.05

20

Solidworks 2020 SP1 (RealView) MaunaKea Spectroscopic Explorer telescope

Radeon Pro WX 5100

41.80

20 FPS 30

250

27.73

Quadro P2200

Quadro RTX 4000

200

29.63

Quadro P2000

58.66

150

20.19

Radeon Pro W5700

49.35

Quadro P2200

100

Components = 591 Triangles = 5.7 million

Radeon Pro WX 7100

Quadro P2000

50

Shaded with Edges + Shadows + RealView + AO

Radeon Pro WX 5100

Radeon Pro W5700

20 FPS

350

Frames Per Second (FPS)

Frames Per Second (FPS)

10.52

Quadro P2200

Quadro RTX 4000

4K

5.61

Radeon Pro WX 7100

97.09

113.20

1.23

Components = 8,000 Triangles = 59 million

Radeon Pro W5700

36.92

56

Shaded with edges

Radeon Pro WX 5100

58.83

Radeon Pro WX 7100

0

Solidworks 2020 SP1 MaunaKea Spectroscopic Explorer telescope

20 FPS

Solidworks 2020 SP1 (RealView) Black Owl PC model

Radeon Pro WX 5100

Frames Per Second (FPS)

46.09

Radeon Pro WX 7100

20 FPS 0

1.23

Components = 591 Triangles = 5.7 million

Quadro P2200

Quadro RTX 4000

4K

Shaded with edges

Radeon Pro WX 5100

Radeon Pro WX 7100

Quadro P2000

time visualisation and virtual reality (VR) is on the rise. These applications are extremely GPU-intensive and are not bottlenecked by the CPU in the same way that CAD software typically is. Tools like Enscape, Lumion, Twinmotion, Unity, Unreal Engine, IrisVR, VR4CAD, eDrawings Professional and others will happily devour all the graphics processing power you throw at them.

If you currently own a sub-£400 professional graphics card, you probably won’t be getting the performance you need for real-time viz, especially at 4K resolution. And you can forget about VR. To use these GPU-hungry applications effectively, you’d have to invest in a more powerful and more expensive GPU. The ‘VR Ready’ Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 and AMD Radeon Pro W5700 would certainly get you there, but will set you back some £700 and typically take the cost of your workstation beyond £2,000.

Now, with the release of the AMD Radeon Pro W5500, those with more limited budgets can also get on board.

At $399, it might be priced like a professional GPU for CAD or BIM, but it’s significantly more powerful and can also be used for VR.

20 FPS 40

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competitor to the Radeon Pro W5500 is the Nvidia Quadro P2200. This CADfocused GPU launched in Spring 2019 as an incremental update to 2017’s Quadro P2000. It has since become a mainstay in many CAD-focused workstations.

Both the P2000 and P2200 are based on Pascal, and not the newer Turing architecture that powers Nvidia’s higherend Quadro RTX GPUs. Fitted with 5GB GDDR5X, they feature less memory but have a max power consumption of 75W, which is 50W less than the Radeon Pro W5500. However, in certain CAD-centric workflows, AMD claims a workstation powered by the W5500 actually consumes less electricity at the plug.

Test set-up To test out the Radeon Pro W5500 GPU, UK firm Armari provided one of its excellent Magentar X Series workstations with the following specification: • • • • •

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X CPU (32-cores) 128GB of DDR4 memory 1TB Corsair MP600 PCIe 4 M.2 NVMe SSD ASRock TRX40 Creator motherboard Microsoft Windows 10 Pro

Autodesk Inventor 2020 Mastenbroek model 1.23

AMD Radeon Pro Driver version – Different software deals with this Enterprise 20.Q1 in different ways. In Solidworks, for • Nvidia Quadro driver version – 442.19 example, detailed geometry is turned into simplified blocks. In Autodesk Revit, The AMD Ryzen Threadripper lines, shadows and small objects are workstation has a bigger brother, the removed. In Autodesk Inventor, you can Armari Magnetar X64T-G3 FWL, which set a minimum frame rate between 0 and we review in depth on page 48.

20 frames per second (FPS) and in order to maintain it, smaller objects disappear.

Performance in CAD / BIM To accurately test the relative When using CAD or BIM software, performance of GPUs, we disable all being able to move models quickly and performance optimisations, so the accurately into position is important for model is always displayed in full detail. creative flow. But Observing how the Radeon Pro W5500 and other GPUs work with Revit and Inventor exposes just how CPU-limited these applications are, with all GPUs giving nearidentical FPS scores when rotating a model in a consistent way using a 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse Pro. In general, we find anything around 20 FPS and above to be adequate for 3D modelling. with Even lower frames can be most CAD software being bottlenecked by acceptable to some, but going below the CPU and single-threaded performance 10 FPS is undesirable. Our Revit hotel in CPUs advancing at a very slow rate, model is relatively small and while the this is not always possible when working Mastenbroek heavy machinery model with large models. As a result, software in Inventor is larger, architects and developers have had to look for other ways engineers are certainly working on much to improve 3D performance. more complex models. And as model The answer has been to temporarily complexity increases, frame rates will simplify the model when it’s in motion, go down, increasing the reliance on the then fill in the details once it stops. software’s model simplification.

Autodesk Revit 2020 Hotel model

4K

Shaded with edges

•

Frames Per Second (FPS)

4K

Shaded

Frames Per Second (FPS)

1.23

Radeon Pro WX 5100

39.9

Radeon Pro WX 5100

17.5

Radeon Pro WX 7100

40.2

Radeon Pro WX 7100

17.3

Radeon Pro W5500

41.5

Radeon Pro W5500

17.3

Radeon Pro W5700

42.3

Radeon Pro W5700

17.1

Quadro P2000

41.7

Quadro P2200

41.1

Quadro RTX 4000

39.1 10

30

40

1.23

Quadro P2200

18.8

Quadro RTX 4000

18.7

Frames Per Second (FPS)

0

5

10

15

20

Autodesk Revit 2020 Hotel model Realistic

1.23

10.1

Radeon Pro WX 5100

15.6

Radeon Pro WX 7100

10.3

Radeon Pro WX 7100

15.4

Radeon Pro W5500

10.1

Radeon Pro W5500

Radeon Pro W5700

10.2

Radeon Pro W5700

Radeon Pro W5700

257

9.9

Quadro P2000

16.8

Quadro P2200

16.9

Quadro RTX 4000

9.8

Quadro RTX 4000

16.7

20 FPS 12

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200

400

600

800

1000

LumenRT roundabout model

15.4

9.6

10

256

14.8

Quadro P2200

8

Radeon Pro W5500

Frames Per Second (FPS)

Quadro P2000

6

695

0

4K

Radeon Pro WX 5100

4

Render time in seconds (lower is better)

943

Radeon Pro WX 7100

18.9

50

4K

Realistic + all shadows

2

1.23

20 FPS

20

Autodesk Inventor 2020 Mastenbroek model

0

1,000 passes, accurate quality FHD (1,920 x 1,080 resolution)

Radeon Pro WX 5100

Quadro P2000

20 FPS 0

Solidworks Visualize 2020 (ProRender) FHD 1969 Camaro

20 FPS 0

5

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To illustrate just how CPU-bottlenecked Pro W5500 was well above the minimum the Quadro P2200 took a slight lead when these applications are, we used the freely ideal 20 FPS, even at 4K resolution. anti-aliasing was enabled. downloadable utilities GPU-Z, and However, with our largest model, the In Enscape, where we use a very large CPU-Z. When rotating a model in Inventor colossal MaunaKea Spectroscopic architectural scene of a museum and and Revit, CPU utilisation hit 100%, but Explorer telescope (8,000 components, its surrounding area, the W5500’s lead the Radeon Pro W5500 hardly got out of 59M triangles), it fell below. got even bigger at 4K resolution. This first gear, using only around 10-20% of its If working with models of this probably isn’t down to the raw power of resources. In CAD/BIM applications like size, you’d probably want to boost the GPU, but available GPU memory. At these, of which there are many, you could performance by enabling Level of 4K, the model needs around 7.5GB, which use a much lower specced GPU and still Detail (LoD). The Nvidia Quadro far exceeds the Quadro P2200’s 5GB. get the same 3D performance.

P2200 performed much better and only For CAD, 5GB is usually plenty, but Solidworks used to suffer from similar went below 20 FPS when RealView because real-time visualisation uses problems in some viewing modes, but was enabled. It looks like AMD has more realistic materials and lighting, it for the 2020 release, it got a brand-new some optimisation work to do here. often needs more. graphics engine that is But what do these results much less CPU-limited. show us? In general, the We looked at the OpenGL Radeon Pro W5500 looks AMD has filled a bit of a gap in the pro 4.5-based graphics engine well- suited to real-time work graphics market, offering a GPU that goes when it was still in beta in at FHD resolution, but may beyond CAD into real-time viz and VR at a Solidworks 2019. You can struggle with some scenes at very competitive price point read the in-depth article at 4K and above. If you need to tinyurl.com/SW-D3D. maintain frame rates at these In Solidworks 2020, higher resolutions, you’d we tested with a range of models and Performance in real time viz really need to look at a more powerful GPU. viewing modes – shaded with edges and Performance in CAD and BIM software with the more realistic RealView, with may have been mixed, but the Radeon Pro Performance in GPU rendering shadows and Ambient Occlusion enabled. W5500 starts to show its true colours in In addition to real-time 3D, the AMD We observed GPU utilisation to be real-time viz. It doesn’t hit the heights of Radeon Pro W5500 can also be used for significantly higher, often hitting 100%. a design viz-focused GPU like the Radeon ray trace rendering. However, its use is It means users can get a real benefit from Pro W5700 or Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000, limited by application support. more powerful GPUs, as shown in our but it does offer a significant benefit over As you’d expect, it works with benchmark charts. the Nvidia Quadro P2200. applications that use AMD Radeon For our small to medium-sized models, In the AEC-focused LumenRT, it was ProRender, either directly or via a plugthe Black Owl PC (295 components, 3.6M between 25% to 31% faster. We experienced in. These include Autodesk 3ds Max, triangles) and production machine (591 similar with our automotive test model in PTC Creo, Modo, Solidworks Visualize, components, 5.7M triangles), the Radeon Autodesk VRED Professional, although Cinema 4D, Acca Software and others. It’s

‘‘

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Enscape 2.6 Museum model

FHD

GPU memory required = 6.15GB

Radeon Pro WX 5100

1.23

Frames Per Second (FPS)

14 26

Radeon Pro W5500

28

Radeon Pro W5700

45

Quadro P2200

GPU memory required = 2.49GB

22

Radeon Pro W5500

19

10

20

30

40

GPU memory required = 7.49GB

1.23

Frames Per Second (FPS)

5

16

Quadro P2200

10

15

25

30

2 (erratic)

GPU memory required = 3.59GB

1.23

58

5

10

15

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40

0

259

100

150

1.23

Radeon Pro WX 5100

250

10

29

Radeon Pro W5700

7

Quadro P2000 8

49 19

Quadro P2200 20.5

Frames Per Second (FPS)

23

Radeon Pro W5500 17

300

11

Radeon Pro WX 7100

200

VR

Frames Per Second (FPS)

8

Quadro RTX 4000

50

VR Mark Blue

4

20 FPS 0

132

Quadro RTX 4000

4K

Quadro P2200 19

35

Lumen RT Roundabout model

Quadro P2000

20

Radeon Pro W5700

3 (erratic)

Quadro RTX 4000

5

Radeon Pro W5500

Quadro P2000

233 112

Quadro P2200 37.5

Radeon Pro WX 7100 9

Radeon Pro W5700

162

Quadro P2000

14.5

Radeon Pro WX 5100 8

Radeon Pro W5500

142

Radeon Pro W5700

12.5

0

50

4K

Radeon Pro WX 7100

77

Radeon Pro W5500 32.5

Frames Per Second (FPS)

20 FPS

Enscape 2.6 Museum model

Radeon Pro WX 5100

1.23

Radeon Pro WX 7100

Quadro RTX 4000

20 FPS

VR

Radeon Pro WX 5100 16.5

Quadro P2200 59

VR Mark Orange

Frames Per Second (FPS)

8.5

Radeon Pro WX 7100

Quadro P2000

0

1.23

Radeon Pro W5700

8 (erratic)

Quadro RTX 4000

FHD

Radeon Pro WX 5100

Radeon Pro WX 7100

Quadro P2000

Lumen RT Roundabout model

23

Quadro RTX 4000

55

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not compatible with Nvidia Iray or Nvidia RTX, which is found in Luxion KeyShot 9, V-Ray NEXT, Unreal Engine, Enscape and many others.

Solidworks Visualize 2020 supports both Nvidia Iray and AMD Radeon ProRender – but it’s not possible to compare performance directly, because there are visual differences between all render engines.

In the world of Radeon ProRender, we were surprised by what we saw: the Radeon Pro W5500 stood shoulder to shoulder with the more powerful Radeon Pro W5700. The GPU was also significantly faster than the Radeon Pro WX 5100 and WX 7100.

Performance in VR The Radeon Pro W5500 is the first sub$400 professional GPU that can be used for pro VR, but it’s really for entry-level VR workflows. A quick run through the VRMark benchmark shows it to be around 13% to 23% faster than the Radeon Pro WX 7100, but significantly slower than the Radeon Pro W5700 and Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000.

Of course, VR for design, architecture and engineering is a complex matter and performance is not only influenced by the application, but the size of the dataset, the complexity of the geometry (number of triangles), how well the geometry has been optimised, as well as the lighting and textures.

Autodesk VRED Professional 2020 Automotive model Anti Aliasing (disabled)

FHD 1.23

Radeon Pro WX 5100

Frames Per Second (FPS)

22.6

Radeon Pro WX 7100

Autodesk VRED Professional 2020 Automotive model Anti Aliasing (medium)

Radeon Pro WX 5100 37.3 54.3 82.7

Quadro P2200

43.0

34.8

23.7

Quadro RTX 4000

50.1

20 FPS 0

20

20 FPS 40

60

80

Anti Aliasing (disabled)

4K 1.23

Frames Per Second (FPS)

8.9 17.0

Radeon Pro W5500

34.0 12.1 15.2

5

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3D performance with Black Owl PC model (shaded + edges) in Solidworks while rendering in the background with KeyShot (CPU)

80.6 18.4

3D performance with Black Owl PC model (shaded + edges) in Solidworks while rendering in the background with Solidworks Visualize (GPU)

6.9

Radeon Pro W5700

Radeon Pro W5500 Quadro P2200

10.9 7.2

22.9 0

5

10

26.9 0

6.00

20

40

60

80

100

3D performance with Mastenbroek model in Inventor (shaded + edges) while rendering in the background with Solidworks Visualize (GPU)

8.9

Quadro RTX 4000 20 FPS

25

Multitasking

Radeon Pro W5500 Quadro P2200

20 FPS 0

50

5.7

Quadro P2200 37.7

40

2.8

Quadro P2000

Quadro RTX 4000

30

1.23

Radeon Pro W5500

Radeon Pro W5700

20

Anti Aliasing (medium)

Radeon Pro WX 7100 21.6

Quadro P2200

10

Autodesk VRED Professional 2020 Automotive model

Radeon Pro WX 5100

Radeon Pro WX 7100

Quadro P2000

0

100

Autodesk VRED Professional 2020 Automotive model

Radeon Pro WX 5100

Frames Per Second (FPS)

18.8

Quadro P2200 95.2

Enscape museum model

22.9

Quadro P2000

Quadro RTX 4000

AMD has made a lot of noise about the multitasking capabilities of the Radeon Pro W5500 and how it compares favourably to the Quadro P2200. The Radeon Pro team specifically highlights how its new GPU can maintain 3D performance even when the CPU is being taxed heavily on a multithreaded task like ray trace rendering.

We put this to the test, rendering a scene in KeyShot using the CPU, while modelling in Solidworks at the same time. Using the Black Owl PC model, the Radeon Pro W5500 maintained a solid 80 FPS, virtually the same as it did when KeyShot was not in use. Meanwhile, the Quadro P2200 went down from 141 FPS to 18 FPS, a significant slowdown.

There are workarounds for this that effectively tune your workstation. Setting CPU affinity, for example, which binds a process to specific CPU cores, can help reduce the performance impact on the Quadro P2200. With our 32-core Threadripper 3970X workstation, we set Solidworks and the Nvidia Quadro driver to run on cores 1-4 and KeyShot to run on cores 5-32 and got a fast 139 FPS out of the P2200.

16.7

Radeon Pro W5700

33.6

Multitasking

8.75

Radeon Pro W5500

Radeon Pro W5700

We haven’t tested it out ourselves with the W5500, but AMD has had ReLive for VR working with Unreal Engine and Solidworks eDrawings Professional. Read more about it at tinyurl.com/D3D-relive.

FHD 1.23

Radeon Pro WX 7100

Radeon Pro W5500

Quadro P2000

We tested it out on some real-world CAD data using an Oculus Rift. In Enscape, we were pleasantly surprised to get a generally good experience with our colossal museum model, although for it to be completely flicker-free from all angles, we needed to dial down quality to low. However, for the excellent Enscape application, low quality is still pretty good.

In Autodesk VRED Professional, we fired up the automotive Genesis sample model (5.7M triangles). It worked fine with Anti-Aliasing (AA) set to off, but flickered as soon as it was enabled, even on low. In summary, the W5500 isn’t the kind of GPU you’d use for automotive styling, but it should do a pretty good job with less visually rich models and in AEC workflows – unless you’re working with really complex datasets. Here, it’s important to note that the Oculus Rift is an entry-level VR headset with a per-eye resolution of 1,080 x 1,200. With more modern headsets, which have higher resolution displays, so more pixels to render, performance may go down. This includes the HTC Vive Pro (1,440 x 1,600) Oculus Rift S (1,280 x 1,440) and HP Reverb (2,160 x 2,160).

Finally, with the W5500, you don’t have to be tethered to your workstation to use VR. With AMD ReLive for VR, which comes with the Radeon Pro driver, users can get a professional wireless VR capability by streaming data from the GPU to an HTC Vive Focus Plus headset.

15

20

25

0

20

40

43.0

Radeon Pro W5500 Quadro P2200

24.0 0

20

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60

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Of course, with a 32-core CPU you have the luxury of losing a few cores and not impacting render times significantly.

But in a standard quad-core or six-core workstation, you’d miss out on a lot by going down this route.

The AMD Radeon Pro W5500 also performs well when handling multiple GPU tasks at the same time. Rendering a scene on the GPU using Solidworks Visualize, we got 27 FPS out of the Black Owl PC model in Solidworks. With the Quadro P2200, it went down to an unusable 6 FPS. For the Quadro P2200, the extent of the performance impact does depend on how demanding the 3D application is.

As mentioned earlier, Solidworks 2020 uses 100% of the GPU. With Autodesk Inventor, which uses far less, the Nvidia Quadro P2200 dropped from 41 FPS to an acceptable 24 FPS and in Revit from 19 FPS to 12 FPS. It’s important to note here that with Nvidia’s Turing architecture, the foundation for Quadro RTX, Nvidia has improved the multitasking capabilities of its GPUs considerably and, from past experiences, we’ve found the Quadro RTX 4000 can handle concurrent GPU rendering and real-time 3D tasks very well.

Enscape museum model in VR

Connection app to connect remotely.

Remote Desktop automatically uses the Radeon Pro GPU on the host workstation, so you get full 3D acceleration in your CAD application.

In our tests, everything was so responsive it felt exactly as if we were working locally. Nvidia Quadro GPUs also work with Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection and we got a similarly good experience with the Quadro P2200.

On a local network, this feature could be great for getting 3D acceleration into a meeting room without having to physically move a workstation, but the real power of the technology comes when accessing

should certainly take note, but the new GPU looks to be a particularly attractive proposition for architects, who increasingly want to augment their 3D design process with rich interactive visualisation or immersive VR. Client presentations are one thing, but there is huge potential to use VR during the Remote working design process, dipping in and out of the virtual world to get a much better sense One of the less publicised features of of scale and proportion for your evolving the AMD Radeon Pro W5500 is outbuilding. Previously, this simply wasn’t of-the-box support for AMD Remote possible with the typical workstation that Workstation technology. As the name sits on the desks of most architects. suggests, this allows users to access their The W5500 isn’t for everyone. Those who physical workstation remotely, from simply use CAD, especially CPU-limited almost any device – PC, laptop or tablet. applications like Revit and AMD says you get the same Inventor, could certainly workstation experience you’d expect to get in the The W5500 looks to be a particularly attractive get away with a lower spec GPU. In addition, those design office, although this proposition for architects, who increasingly who take their real-time viz will depend on the quality want to augment their 3D design process with or VR seriously would be of your internet/network connection, both in terms rich interactive visualisation or immersive VR much better served by the of latency and bandwidth. significantly more powerful This feature would Radeon Pro W5700, typically resonate with those who workstations from different locations. Quadro RTX 4000 or even the Quadro RTX need to work from home on occasion We didn’t try this out, as it’s a bit more 5000. But if you want to dip your toes into (think flexible working, boiler service complex, involving port forwarding on the viz or VR, or give your entire design team or sick child) or finish off a design in the router and connection over virtual private the capability to do so, then the $399 price evening, but with the current COVID-19 network (VPN), but this should be bread- tag is much easier to swallow. pandemic, it’s become even more relevant. and-butter work for most IT departments.

Of course, we don’t expect Nvidia to AMD doesn’t charge a licence fee for the stay quiet for long. Its current competitive technology, which works with Microsoft Conclusion card, the Quadro P2200, is based on its Remote Desktop Connection and Citrix With the Radeon Pro W5500, AMD has older Pascal architecture and there’s a Virtual Apps and Desktops. filled a bit of a gap in the pro graphics huge performance gap between the CADWe tested it out using Microsoft Remote market, offering a GPU that goes beyond centric GPU and the powerful Quadro Desktop Connection on our local network CAD into real-time viz and VR at a very RTX 4000, which is built on the more and it worked very well, even over wireless. competitive price point. Previously, a modern Turing architecture.

Set-up is remarkably easy. In Windows, professional VR Ready GPU would have AMD has said the Radeon Pro W5500 simply ‘allow’ remote connections to set you back around £700 + VAT. The will be available from Dell in the first half of the host workstation; then, on the W5500 is half that price.

2020. We’d be surprised if other workstation client device, use the Remote Desktop Product designers and engineers manufacturers didn’t follow suit.’

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Cloud workstations Microsoft Azure NVv4

MI25 GPU, which can be virtualised multiple separate physical PCIe devices. at a hardware level. Each M125 can be In the case of the AMD Radeon Instinct partitioned into one eighth, one quarter MI25, this is up to eight separate GPUs. or one half of a GPU. It can also be used as As with most cloud-based VMs, the a full GPU. In contrast, Microsoft Azure NVv4 family does have its limitations instances powered by Nvidia, such as insofar as the instances that come with NVv3, can only be configured with one or bigger GPUs also have increased CPU, In these uncertain times, the cloud more GPUs, making them better suited to memory and storage. Depending on your workstation has suddenly become much more demanding 3D workflows. workflow, this could mean you end up more relevant. Greg Corke explores paying for resources you don’t really The NVv4 instances the new Microsoft Azure NVv4 family need. For example, most real-time viz of virtual machines, some of which are Microsoft currently offers four different applications will benefit from a fast GPU extremely well-suited to 3D CAD NVv4 instances, which are detailed but don’t need a CPU with lots of cores. If in the table below. Just like a personal that is the case, you might get better value Price from $0.233/hour workstation, each offers different levels from one of the Nvidia-based instances, of CPU, memory, GPU, GPU memory and which sometimes have ‘promo’ pricing. tinyurl.com/NVv4-Azure storage.

If you are after real flexibility, some of NV8as_v4 uses 1/4 of the AMD Radeon the smaller cloud workstation providers, loud workstations capable of Instinct MI25. This makes it well-suited such as Scan, who partners with Ebb3, can running 3D applications have to 3D CAD and BIM software, as many be more flexible, scaling individual VM been around for some time, but of these applications have relatively low resources up and down as required. this has mostly been through GPU requirements. If you work with small smaller firms like Cloudalize (cloudalize. models in a 3D CAD tool like Inventor A global solution com) and Frame, now under the ownership or Revit, you might even get away with NVv4 is currently limited to a few Azure of Nutanix (nutanix.com/products/frame). the NV4as v4 instance, which uses 1/8 regions, including South Central US, East It’s only in the last few years that the of a GPU, although this VM is probably US and West Europe (Amsterdam), but it major cloud providers have come on better suited to part-time consumers will be rolled out to additional regions soon. board, offering a range of virtual machines of lightweight 3D models, who might For cloud workstations, the location (VMs) or workstation ‘instances’ that are typically struggle with a standard VM of the datacentre is really important, accelerated by professional GPUs. without GPU acceleration. as latency (reaction time, measured in Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services For more demanding 3D applications, milliseconds) increases with distance.

(AWS) and Google all offer several you’ll need a more powerful instance. So the further away you are, the bigger different GPU-accelerated instances from NV32as v4, for example, features an the delay you might see between moving their datacentres around the world. To entire AMD Radeon Instinct MI25 GPU the mouse and seeing the 3D CAD date, most of these have been powered by with 16GB of memory. However, for more model react on screen. High latency can Intel Xeon CPUs, Nvidia Tesla GPUs and demanding 3D workflows, firms can severely impact the user experience.

Nvidia GRID technology. also choose from several NV instances Project data needs to be stored next to But now, with new-generation that use an entire Nvidia Tesla M60 the VMs, but this doesn’t mean globally hardware, AMD is starting to get in on the GPU, including NVv3. Product design, dispersed teams have to work out of the action. Microsoft Azure NVv4 is a new architecture and engineering firms can same datacentre, with those furthest series of virtual desktops that are built choose a combination of instances to away taking a performance hit. Azure entirely on AMD technology, namely best support their teams and upscale or can be set up to work with global file AMD Radeon Instinct MI25 GPUs and downscale as required. system technologies from firms including AMD 2nd Gen EPYC 7V12 (Rome) CPUs. The partitioning of the AMD Panzura (panzura.com) and Nasuni The driving force behind NVv4 is to Radeon Instinct MI25 GPU is made (nasuni.com) which can automatically offer customers cost-effective, entry-level possible by AMD’s hardware-based consolidate data from different data GPU-accelerated VMs. This could be GPU virtualisation technology. AMD centres so there’s a ‘single source of truth’. for applications like CAD or BIM, which MxGPU is built on the single root I/O generally don’t place huge demands on the virtualisation (SR-IOV) interface, Enterprise grade GPU, but also for anyone in an extended an extension to PCI Express (PCIe). Microsoft NVv4 is an enterprise solution. project team who might need to view or Originally developed for networking, As such, it’s probably better suited to larger interact with 3D models – on desktop SR-IOV allows a PCIe device to appear as organisations. This doesn’t mean smaller or mobile devices. In manufacturing, this could be through a product Temp GPU lifecycle management (PLM) system. In Memory Size vCPU storage GPU memory GiB construction, it could be a common data (SSD) GiB GiB environment (CDE).

Because the allocation of processing Standard_NV4as_v4 4 14 88 1/8 2 resources in NVv4 is really flexible, Microsoft is able to get a really good Standard_NV8as_v4 8 28 176 1/4 4 density of users on each of its servers, which means lower costs for customers.

Standard_NV16as_v4 16 56 352 1/2 8 Prices start at $0.233/hour, which is very cheap as far as GPU-accelerated VMs go.

The key component that makes this Standard_NV32as_v4 32 112 704 1 16 possible is the AMD Radeon Instinct

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engineering firms or architectural practices We tested first with Autodesk Inventor desktop workstation CPUs commonly can’t benefit, but they would almost and Autodesk Revit, both at FHD and 4K go above 4.0GHz, the 64-core “Rome” certainly need help to get up and running. resolution. In general, everything worked EPYC 7V12 CPU is locked at 2.4GHz. Firms can work directly with Microsoft, very well. We got the best experience when CPU frequency will also impact 3D but there are also several service the Windows PC was connected directly performance, especially in CPU-limited providers, including Workspot (workspot. to the router via Ethernet, cutting out any applications like CAD. com), IMSCAD Cloud (imscadcloud.com), additional latency. It was just like working We didn’t get involved with tuning the CloudJumper (cloudjumper.com) and on a local workstation with no lag or image VM – a task best done by experts, which Nutanix Frame (nutanix.com/products/ degradation. This was the case when we are certainly not. Working with some frame). Some simplify deployment so using both Microsoft Windows Remote remote display protocols in constrained new customers can get set up in a matter Desktop (RDP) 10 and Teradici PCoIP. networks, for example, the VM could be of minutes. Others offer counsultancy, With the Teradici PCoIP Software Client, configured to prioritise performance over assessing customer needs in order to we also had the added benefit of being able visual quality. create ‘turnkey’ solutions based on to use a 3D Connexion SpaceMouse.

In doing so, the model might be quite Azure, handling everything from storage, Things didn’t work quite as well over heavily compressed when in motion, software, licensing, performance tuning 802.11g WiFi, where we experienced a but a fraction of a second after you stop and VM management, to ongoing small lag. The lag was more noticeable moving the mouse, it will render an monitoring, maintenance and cost over our poor one-bar 4G connection, uncompressed frame. management. although the machine was still usable.

Remote display protocols allow the We even got Revit running on an Conclusion desktop hosted in Azure to be displayed iPhone. This was more of a technology NVv4 opens up a new chapter for on the screen of the end client. The NVv4 demonstration than a practical test, as Microsoft in its ever-evolving cloud VM series works with three different desktop applications with small icons workstation platform. It gives CAD users types: Microsoft Windows Remote don’t mix well with tiny touchscreens. and part-time consumers of 3D models Desktop (RDP) 10, access to cost-effective GPUTeradici PCoIP, and Citrix accelerated virtual desktops HDX 3D Pro. with a level of 3D performance NVv4 gives CAD users access to costThere are pros and much better matched to the effective GPU-accelerated VMs with a level demands of their software. cons to each, and this of 3D performance much better matched to Using a high-end GPU to run is certainly where a service provider can a CPU-limited CAD the demands of their software earn its money with application like Inventor or expert advice. RDP is Revit is not only overkill, but free and already installed/enabled in However, with the right kit, you could also means firms pay for resources they Windows and Azure by default. However, actually run CAD on an Android simply don’t need. it’s generally considered not to offer as phone, hooking it up to a TV, mouse and NVv4 is not without compromises. good an experience as HDX 3D Pro or keyboard.

While the NV8as_v4 instance is a good PCoIP, which are more robust in terms of We also tested out the instance with spec for CAD, anyone requiring more 3D adjusting to meet network performance a more demanding 3D application, the performance for workflows including constraints.

AEC-focused real-time viz tool Enscape. real-time viz will also have to pay for With our standard test models, frame unwanted CPU cores and memory.

Hands on testing rates were very low and while you might Also, in terms of single-threaded We got hands-on with NVv4, testing out get away with working with smaller performance, the EPYC CPU can’t the CAD-focused NV8as_v4 instance from models at FHD resolution, for a GPU- compete with a typical desktop our London office, connecting to the West hungry application like this, you really workstation CPU. But comparing desktop Europe Microsoft Azure datacentre in need a bigger instance. to cloud in terms of specs alone misses the Amsterdam, a distance of around 250 miles.

One thing that’s important to note point entirely.

We used a Virgin 100Mbps internet is that, however good your connection Cloud workstations are all about connection (wired and wireless) and a ten- is, NVv4 won’t be as fast as a personal flexibility and ease of deployment. In year-old Windows PC and five-year-old workstation with a six- or eight-core CPU. these unprecedented times, supporting MacBook Pro as end points. We also tested CAD is mostly single-threaded, so is very CAD users working from home on PCs over 4G, tethered to an iPhone 6S. reliant on CPU frequency, and while or laptops is very complex. With the cloud, you only need to worry about the end point and its Internet connection, although increased competition for bandwidth may also be a challenge.

Cloud workstations can be used from The ability to work from Cloud workstations not huge files and manage workers are having to anywhere, on any device, with resources anywhere on any device only allow architects, revisions. compete for bandwidth, scaled up and down on demand and is a key benefit of cloud engineers and designers But using cloud not only with neighbours engineering datasets kept secure, in sync workstations that has to access powerful CAD workstations in this but within their own long been promoted. workstations and licensed current climate also household, thanks to and available to global teams in seconds.

In light of the current software from home, brings its own set of schoolwork and YouTubeThis isn’t just a workstation in a different COVID-19 pandemic and but firms can also retain challenges. In the UK, as based entertainment. This guise. It’s a completely different way of the dramatic increase much better control over we write this on March is especially true at peak in home working, it their project data, storing 24, Internet usage has times, so individuals may working that, thanks to advances in CPU has become even more everything in the cloud, risen dramatically in the need to consider shifting and GPU hardware, has now become relevant. rather than having to share last week and many home their working days. much more cost-effective for CAD.

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Dell Precision 7540 [Quadro RTX 5000] Users of real-time viz, VR and GPU rendering software can now get performance and portability from this beefed-up 15-inch mobile workstation, writes Greg Corke Price £4,690 (ex VAT) dell.co.uk/precision

E

veryone wants their laptop to be slim and light, and there are several impressive 15-inch mobile workstations out there that come in under 2kg. But while the Dell Precision 5540, HP ZBook Studio and Lenovo ThinkPad P1 might be perfect for 3D CAD, they will likely fall short in more demanding workflows.

When Dell launched the chunkier Precision 7540 in May 2019, it followed a familiar template for mainstream 15-inch mobile workstations: top-end mobile CPU (up to an 8-core Intel Xeon), lots of memory (up to 128GB), plenty of storage (up to three drives), but a more conservative selection of GPUs, maxing out with the Nvidia Quadro RTX 3000 (6GB).

The machine proved great for CPUintensive workflows, such as ray trace rendering, simulation and point cloud processing. But the Quadro RTX 3000 was only really suited to entry-level real-time viz, GPU rendering and VR. As Dell’s more demanding customers were led to the 17-inch Precision 7740 and its high-end Quadro RTX 5000 (16GB) GPU, other manufacturers were looking to pick up business by offering the same GPU in a 15-inch mobile workstation, a form factor that’s smaller and lighter and considerably more popular.

3 Lenovo was the first to break the mould. With its ThinkPad P53, it became the first major workstation OEM to offer such a high-end GPU in a 15-inch mobile workstation.

Acer, Asus, BOXX, MSI and Razer also delivered 15-inch laptops with the Quadro RTX 5000.

In response to this competition, Dell completely re-engineered the cooling system in the Precision 7540, so that it can take the Quadro RTX 5000. What’s more, Dell reckons it can run it at 80W, which it claims is 10W more than the Lenovo ThinkPad P53, although Lenovo disputes this and says the P53 also runs at 80W. 64

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The chassis

Windows ramps things up to Product spec The Quadro RTX 5000 might 250%, but we found the best grab the headlines, but there’s balance to be at 200%. If you’re ■ Intel Xeon E2286M CPU (8 Cores) a lot more to this mobile on a tight budget and don’t (2.40GHz, 5.00GHz workstation than simply a need 4K, you can save yourself Turbo) powerful GPU. The 7540’s around £300 by choosing a ■ Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000 GPU (16GB chassis is incredibly well-built more basic FHD panel.

GDDR6 memory) and feels extremely solid.

In terms of connectivity, ■ 64GB (2 x 32GB) DDR4 2666MHz At 25mm (front) and 29.95mm the machine is relatively non-ECC memory (rear), it’s not exactly thin and well-equipped. There are 2 ■ 512GB M.2 NVMe with a large bezel surrounding x USB 3.1 Type A ports w/ PCIe Class 50 SSD the 15.6-inch display, it’s also PowerShare on the right, ■ Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 2x2 .11ax 160MHz + wide and deep (337.6mm x 2 x Thunderbolt 3 Type C Bluetooth 5.0 251.3mm). However, starting ports on the left, and a mini ■ 15.6”UltraSharp at 2.53kg, it still feels relatively DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0 UHD (3,840 x 2,160) Anti-Glare IGZO, portable, and is significantly and Ethernet at the rear. Those 100% Adobe colour smaller and lighter than the with multiple USB Type A gamut panel 17-inch Precision 7740, which peripherals can always plug ■ From 2.53kg starts at 3.08kg. in a hub or use a USB Type C ■ 337.6mm (w) x 251.3mm (d) x A larger chassis does have to A adapter, as we did when 25mm - 29.95mm (h) its benefits. Unlike the slender setting up an Oculus Rift VR ■ Windows 10 Pro for Workstation Precision 5540, there’s a fullheadset with two sensors.

(4 Cores Plus) sized keyboard, complete with Key repairs and upgrades ■ 3 year ProSupport number pad for punching in are relatively simple. After and Next Business Day onsite service dimensions. There’s a little loosening five Philips screws, bit of flex in the middle of the the back panel pops off, giving deck when typing, but it generally feels access to the battery, storage and two of the nice to use. four memory slots.

The trackpad is of a decent size with a good amount of resistance and three Core specs clickable buttons. There’s also a trackpoint The machine comes with a big choice of with its own set of buttons below the space CPUs, from the quad-core Intel Core i5bar. But for precise design work in general, 9400H (2.50GHz, 4.3GHz Turbo), right we’d always recommend an external mouse. up to the eight-core Intel Xeon E2286M There’s a choice of four displays: three (2.40GHz, 5.00GHz Turbo), which was in are FHD (1,920 x 1,080) and one is 4K our review unit.

(3,840 x 2,160). We’re used to seeing nice If your workflows aren’t particularly displays on Dell mobile workstations multi-threaded, you could save yourself between £120 and £180 by going down to six cores, but you will lose a little bit of single-threaded performance as well: the six-core Xeon E-2276M and Core i7-9850H, for example, peak at 4.7GHz and 4.6GHz respectively.

1 For GPUs, there’s an equally big 2 choice. This includes the entrylevel AMD Radeon Pro WX 3200 (4GB), Nvidia Quadro T1000 (4GB) and T2000 (4GB), the mid4 range Nvidia Quadro RTX 3000 (6GB) and RTX 4000 (8GB) and, of course, the high-end Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000 (16GB). If you 1 2 x spare memory slots 2 2 x NVMe SSD slots simply work with 3D CAD and 3 M.2 NVMe SSD slot or 2.5-inch drive bay when fitted therefore don’t need anything more than with smaller battery 4 97wh Li-ion battery the Quadro T2000, you’re probably better and the 4K IGZO panel that came with served by the smaller and lighter Dell our review unit is no different. Linework Precision 5540. in CAD is super-sharp and colours are The machine can be fitted with up to notably vivid. The panel supports 100% of 128GB of RAM, spread across four DIMMs. the Adobe RGB colour space, so you should Our test unit came with 64GB (2 x 32GB) of pick up nice subtleties in your renders.

DDR4 2666MHz Non-ECC memory, fitted 4K on a 15.6-inch display means a very behind the keyboard. This should be plenty high-pixel density. To avoid tiny icons for most users, but should your needs and text that’s unreadable to ageing eyes, change, there are two slots free for upgrades. www.AECmag.com

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There’s lots of scope for storage with support for up to three drives: either three M.2 PCIe SSDs or two M.2 PCIe SSDs and one 2.5” HDD. There is a caveat to this, however: you can’t have a 2.5-inch drive with a Quadro RTX 3000, 4000 or 5000, as these power-hungry GPUs need the larger 6-cell 97Wh Lithium Ion battery, which blocks off the 2.5-inch bay. With the larger Precision 7740, you can have both.

For those who work with very large datasets this an important consideration, as the price per GB of SSDs is still significantly higher than it is for HDDs. Our test unit came with single 512GB ‘Class 50’ SSD, an SK Hynix PC601. We found very little information about this particular SSD, which may or not be used in other Precision 7540s (Dell uses a range of suppliers). However, in Dell speak ‘Class 50’ means better performance than ‘Class 40’, where an equivalent capacity SSD is £200 cheaper. For many professional users, a more important metric is endurance, but we couldn’t find any data on this.

Performance

a desktop Quadro RTX 4000.

Of course, the Quadro RTX 5000 is also VR ready and we had a very good flickerfree experience with an Oculus Rift in both Autodesk VRED Professional and Enscape. With newer, higher resolution VR headsets, you’d likely see a bit of drop in performance here.

The machine was a fair bit off the pace in GPU rendering. The Quadro RTX 5000 took about 40% longer to render a scene than a desktop Quadro RTX 4000. This was in both the V-Ray NEXT benchmark and Solidworks Visualize. This could be down to sustained demands on the GPU. With interactive graphics, the GPU is taxed on and off as and when you move the model, whereas with GPU rendering, it is hammered for extended periods. In one eight-minute render, for example, as the GPU heated up, we saw the clock speed drop from around 1,500MHz to 1,200MHz. What these results show is that while the mobile Quadro RTX 5000 m i g h t have the s a m e

even launch Solidworks and spin a model without it locking up. Most impressively, fan noise never became too loud and the palm rest stayed cool, although the keyboard did get a little warm, but certainly not hot.

The battery drop We also tested performance when running off battery and were quite surprised, if not completely shocked, at how much the GPU and CPU clocked down. In KeyShot, the CPU dropped to 2.2GHz, taking 45% longer to complete the test render. In Solidworks Visualize the difference was even more dramatic, with the GPU instantly dropping from 1,500MHz to 300MHz. It was so slow, in fact, that we didn’t even wait for our render to finish.

In short, when running off battery, you can get away with rendering on the CPU, but for GPU rendering, you really need to be plugged in. And, of course, any compute intensive operation will drain your battery much more quickly.

Conclusion The Precision 7540 is built for performance and we were largely impressed with the Dell has given its mainstream 15-inch results from our real-world tests. mobile workstation a new lease of Exporting an IGES model from 3D life with the powerful Nvidia Quadro CAD software Solidworks took 82 secs RTX 5000 GPU. It might not reach the and for this singleheights of a desktop RTX 5000, and threaded process, the there are questions about performance Xeon E2286M CPU when GPU rendering, but it gives those maintained a clock speed with GPU-hungry workflows a strong of 4.7GHz. This is on par with alternative to the bulkier 17-inch mobile most desktop workstations. workstation.

Using all eight CPU cores, When shoehorning powerful For a blend of speed, portability and a 4K render in Luxion components into a small chassis, KeyShot took 381 seconds. stability in a very well-engineered chassis, there’s always a danger that This is slower than you’d thermals will get out of control. the Precision 7540 is hard to beat expect from a top-end But Dell’s engineering team looks eight-core desktop CPU but to have done an excellent job here considering the Xeon E2286M has a TDP name as its desktop counterpart and be and in our real-world tests, the machine of 45W and a base clock speed of 2.4GHz, built from the same silicon, you can’t maintained relatively high clock speeds we were very impressed that it hit 3.2GHz expect the same performance. This is without too much fan noise or heat. for the duration of the test. In fact, it even down to the available power and the Considering the high-end spec, it will maintained this frequency when rendering challenges of keeping a hot GPU running come as little surprise that our review for over an hour, with fan noise at quite cool in a small space. unit costs £4,690 + VAT. Moving down acceptable levels.

To put this in perspective, the to a Quadro RTX 4000 would save a Putting the Quadro RTX 5000 through Quadro RTX 5000 runs up to 80W in substantial £812. We’d be interested to its paces in Autodesk VRED Professional, the Precision 7540, up to 110W in the learn how this impacts 3D performance, an application used extensively in larger Precision 7740 and up to 265W although the drop from 16GB to 8GB of automotive design, 3D performance was in a desktop workstation. However, it’s GPU memory should also be considered. good at 4K resolution. We got a smooth important to note that the relationship With our largest models in Enscape VR 42 frames per second (FPS) with anti- between power and performance is non- and Solidworks Visualize, for example, we aliasing (AA) off and 26 FPS with AA set linear and the performance curve will were pushing 10 - 11GB. to medium. This is slightly faster than flatten off above 80W. In summary, those who value we’d expect from a desktop RTX 4000, To really push the machine to its limits, performance above anything else would but slower than a desktop RTX 5000. we started a CPU render and GPU render likely be best served by the Precision In Enscape, a popular real-time viz tool at the same time. The CPU clocked down 7740, or even a desktop workstation, for architecture, we got an adequate 17 FPS to 1.95GHz and GPU utilisation went but for a blend of speed, portability and at 4K with our large architectural scene. down from 95% to around 70-80% but stability in a very well-engineered chassis, Here, performance was almost identical to the machine remained stable. We could the Precision 7540 is hard to beat.

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workstation special report

Wacom One

pressure sensitivity (4,096 levels) and tilt sensing (up to 60 degrees).

What’s interesting about Wacom One Wacom’s Cintiq products have been is that, for the first time, the company is the de facto standard for pen-based also supporting EMR-powered pens from workstation input for decades – but other vendors. A number of different can the Japanese master continue models are already available. While we to dominate at a lower price point? also tried out the Staedtler Norris Digital Al Dean takes a look at the Wacom One (designed to resemble the company’s iconic yellow and black Norris pencils), Price $400 the one we really loved was the Safari EMR from Lamy, which looks and feels wacom.com like one of Lamy’s Safari fountain pens, but is actually a stylus. ost of us learn to use pens The big question is how does the Wacom and pencils at an early age, One differ from Wacom’s entry-level Cintiq so it feels natural to use 13HD product? The answer is that there’s pen-based input in combibeen a cost-reduction effort across the nation with computing devices. The hisboard. While the Wacom One display tory of pen-based input technologies offers the same resolution, there’s stretches back several decades, from tablower pressure sensitivity, lower let-and-digitiser sets for tracking speed and lower pen early CAD systems, to today’s resolution. Other features more nifty devices for have been stripped advanced mobile tabaway, so there’s only lets and computing one button on devices, via 1970s the pen and pop-rocker Todd no eraser tip.

Rundgren’s Utopia On the main Graphics Tablet System. body of the tablet, (Seriously, Google it). there are no shortcut Japan-based Wacom keys. This may not matter has been a vocal champion and to many users, but it’s promoter of the pen/device combination important to note. since the mid-1980s and, more specifically, In use, the device is responsive. its electromagnetic resonance (EMR) Depending on your applications, the technology which powers its pens so they pressure sensitivity works just as you never need charging or batteries – ever. would expect. While Wacom One doesn’t Wacom’s products initially quite match the all-singing, allfocused on drawing tablets and dancing Cintiq, it is a perfectly This product is a lot cheaper than the pens/mice. But more recently the usable display and drawing company has taken advantage entry-level Cintiq, but will still give you tablet. The 13-inch display is of widely available touchscreen crisp and sharp and the drawing the functionality you need technology, which has delivered surface has just the right amount its Cintiq products. of friction, particularly when The Cintiq range has proven popular compared to using a stylus on the glass with architects for sketching. There are The all-important pen surface of an iPad or similar tablet. many others who might also benefit, The pen supplied with the system is pretty but for whom the associated costs are standard, featuring the replaceable tip for Conclusion harder to justify, especially if only used which Wacom is known (spares are stored So what are the sweet spots for the Wacom on occasion for tasks like redlining or underneath one of the legs).

One? Cost is the first. This product is a lot markup. This is where the recently There’s a single button on the pen, with cheaper than the entry-level Cintiq, but will released Wacom One comes into play. which to activate your right-click menus. still give you the functionality you need. If If you’re an existing Wacom user, you’ll you travel a lot, its compact size and light A no-frills tablet immediately notice that there’s no eraser weight will make it a good companion for The Wacom One follows the same concept on the other end of your pen. This is just your mobile workstation (and it’ll provide a as the Cintiq – an LCD screen with pen- one example of an area where Wacom has handy second display, too). based interactivity. The pared down the product in order to strip If you’re just looking to add a little more product is built out costs and thus make it more affordable interactivity to your computing work, around a for customers. then it’s also a solid option. And it’ll be a As previously mentioned, one of dream for those in search of a more direct Wacom’s core technologies is the EMR way of redlining and marking up digital powering of its pens, which documents, enabling them to start taking means no batteries or advantage of the pen-based input options charging, but that CAD vendors have recently been others include adding to their systems.

M

13-inch display running at standard HD resolution (1,920 x 1,080 pixels). It connects to your workstation, your Mac or your Android tablet / phone by means of a USB cable, enabling that device to mirror or extend your display.

Power is pulled from a separate adapter that can either be plugged directly into the mains or via a USB hub. One thing to note here is that the USB-C connect on the back of the unit is unidirectional only, due to the shape of the socket recess and the plug, which may disappoint some users.

To switch the unit on, you’ll find a power button at the back, along with two snap-out legs that prop up the display at 19 degrees.

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02/04/2020 12:56

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