© 2012 Autodesk

Maximizing Performance with Autodesk® Inventor® Bryan Young Alliance Manager, Lenovo ThinkStation Business Unit Product Group

© 2012 Autodesk

Class Summary

This class provides the guidance that will help you determine the appropriate hardware and settings to maximize your experience with Autodesk Inventor products. This class will cover the different user requirements and available hardware that should all be considered when seeking optimal performance.

© 2012 Autodesk

Learning Objectives

At the end of this class, you will be able to: Understand the hardware needs for Autodesk Inventor

Select the right hardware for your needs

Understand the benefits of selecting the right hardware

© 2012 Autodesk

In today’s presentation, performance is presented as a measure of the time it takes Autodesk Inventor to: • Open, Rebuild, Save & Close Our performance results came from lab tests based on the following assumptions: • Open and closing once per day • Rebuilding and saving at least once an hour

Defining Performance

© 2012 Autodesk

Inherently, Better Performance: • Reduces downtime • Increases productivity • Enables more ideas in less time • Speeds time-to-market

Why Is Performance So Important?

© 2012 Autodesk

Monetarily, Better Performance: • Accelerates your Return on Investment • Lowers Operating Costs Let’s assume a designer makes an $80,000 salary, equating to ~ $40.00 an hour A 10% performance gain effectively means $4.00/hr. of more productivity Which means, in 12.5 hours, or a day and a half, you can recover a $50 hardware investment (such as adding 8GB of memory). After breaking even on the investment, it’s all about operating at lower costs

Why Is Performance So Important?

© 2012 Autodesk

Increasing performance is achieved through investing in specific hardware upgrades. To that end, the best price/performance is truly a matter of associating the additional costs of specific configurations with their performance results: • Cost of Workstation at Base Configuration • Cost of adding memory • Cost of upgrading HDD to SSD • Cost of upgrading Graphics Basically, you’re looking to get the biggest bang for your buck

Increasing Performance

© 2012 Autodesk

Small Assembly CAD Models

Medium Assembly CAD Models Large Assembly CAD Models

Applications Benchmarked for Autodesk Inventor

© 2012 Autodesk

For our primary objective of determining how to maximize performance of CAD-only applications with Autodesk Inventor, the appropriate workstation is the E31 ThinkStation from Lenovo

Available Lenovo Workstations

© 2012 Autodesk

CPUs: Intel® Xeon E3-1225v2, E3-1245v2, E3-1275v2 or E3-1290v2 Memory: 4 DIMM DDR3 1600 MHz capacity: 8GB and 16GB Storage: 250GB 7200RPM HDD; Intel® 520 Series 240GB SSD Graphics Card: Intel® HD P4000 (aka igfx); nVidia Quadro Q600, Q2000

E31 ThinkStation – You’ve got options!

© 2012 Autodesk

It’s all about the right configuration

© 2012 Autodesk

To compare and contrast configurations for optimizing the performance of Autodesk® Inventor® we established the following base configuration for the E31 ThinkStation: CPU: Intel® Xeon® E3-1275v2 Memory: 4 DIMM DDR3 1600 MHz capacity: 8GB Storage: 250GB 7200RPM HDD Graphics: Intel® HD P4000 (aka igfx) OS: Windows 7 Base Cost = $1,098

E31 ThinkStation Base Configuration

© 2012 Autodesk

Let’s start with the processor

© 2012 Autodesk

Processors Impact Performance

Intel® Xeon® Processor- Based Workstations Can Increase Autodesk® Inventor ® Performance Up To 19%

© 2012 Autodesk

The Best Processor Price/Performance

E31 ThinkStation® Base Cost Xeon® 1225v2 = $848 Xeon® 1245v2 = $1,048 Xeon® 1275v2 = $1,098 Xeon® 1290v2 = $2,224 Best Price/Performance Xeon® 1245v2 = $1,048 Xeon® 1275v2 = $1,098

© 2012 Autodesk

And the winner is: All things being equal, for an additional $50.00, the performance gains provided by an 1275v2, make this the ideal processor choice for running Autodesk Inventor on an E31 ThinkStation.

1245v2 vs. 1275v2

© 2012 Autodesk

Have Processor. What else effects performance?

© 2012 Autodesk

Upgrading Memory Can Improve Performance

Memory Capacity Can Increase Autodesk® Inventor ® Performance By Up To 1.88x

© 2012 Autodesk

Upgrading to an SSD Can Improve Performance

SSDs Can Offer Up To A 2.1x Increase In Productivity For Autodesk® Inventor®

© 2012 Autodesk

Upgrading to an SSD Can Improve Performance

For more information on Storage, be sure to check out the Lenovo presentation “Selecting the Right Storage Options” while you’re here at Autodesk University

© 2012 Autodesk

Upgrading Graphics Can Improve Performance

Upgrading Your Graphics Card Can Offer Up To A 10% Increase In Productivity For Autodesk® Inventor®

© 2012 Autodesk

When running Autodesk® Inventor® on an E31 ThinkStation, adding memory, moving from an HDD to an SSD or upgrading the graphics can each increase performance.

It’s Still About the Configuration

BUT THEY ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE!

© 2012 Autodesk

In our lab tests, to arrive at optimal E31 ThinkStation configurations, we measured Autodesk Inventor performance (Open, Rebuild, Save, Close) for Small, Medium & Large Assemblies with the following Base Configuration: CPU: Intel® Xeon® 1275v2 Storage: HDD Memory: 8GB Graphics: Intel® HD P4000 (aka igfx) OS: Windows® 7 Base Cost: $1,098

Configuring for Optimal Performance

© 2012 Autodesk

Next, we tested and measured the performance (Open, Rebuild, Save, Close) of the same Small, Medium & Large Assemblies by incrementally adding the following: • Moving from 8GB to 16GB of memory (Added cost = $50)

• Moving from HDD to SSD (Added Cost = $500)

• Using nVidia Quadro Q600 (added Cost $200)

• Using nVidia Quadro Q2000(added Cost $500)

Configuring for Optimal Performance

© 2012 Autodesk

And the results are in…

© 2012 Autodesk

Small Assembly Performance

© 2012 Autodesk

Medium Assembly Performance

© 2012 Autodesk

Large Assembly Performance

© 2012 Autodesk

Large, Medium & Small Assembly Performance

© 2012 Autodesk

So, what did we learn?

© 2012 Autodesk

Optimal Performance for Small Assembly

Best price/performance — Adds a SSD. Performance Gain = 1.36x Total added investment: $500 Time to ROI (based on ~$40/hr.) = 34.7 or 4.3 days

Best performance — In this case the best performance is also the best price/performance.

© 2012 Autodesk

Optimal Performance for Medium Assembly

Best price/performance — Adds SSD. Performance Gain = 1.95x Total Added Investment = $500 Time to ROI (based on ~$40/hr.) = 13.1 hrs or 1.6 days

Best performance — Adds 8GB memory, SSD and Q2000 Graphics. Performance Gain = 2.13x Total added investment = $1,050 Time to ROI (based on ~$40/hr.) = 23.2 hrs or 2.9 days

© 2012 Autodesk

Optimal Performance for Large Assembly

Best price/performance — Adds 8GB memory. Performance Gain = 1.87x Total Added Investment = $50 Time to ROI (based on ~$40/hr.) = 1.5 hours

Best performance — Adds 8GB memory, SSD and Q600 Graphics. Performance Gain = 2.47x Total added investment = $750 Time to ROI (based on ~$40/hr.) = 12.7 hrs or 1.6 days

© 2012 Autodesk

Optimal Performance for Large, Med. & Small

Best price/performance — Adds SSD. Performance Gain for Small Assembly = 1.36x Performance Gain for Medium Assembly = 1.95x Performance Gain for Large Assembly = 2.12x Total added investment = $500 Time to ROI (based on ~$40/hr.) = 11-34 hrs or 1-4 days

© 2012 Autodesk

What about Simulation? Photo Real?

© 2012 Autodesk

Configured properly, the E31 ThinkStation, is the right workstation for CAD-only. But, for those of you using performing CAD plus simulation applications such as CFD, Mechanical & Ray Tracing, it’s time to consider your point of entry based on the price & performance of the S30 and D30 ThinkStations and their processors.

Mapping Applications to the Right Workstation

© 2012 Autodesk

At a glance – measuring workstation & processor impact on the performance of simulation & photo-real applications

© 2012 Autodesk

Processor Impact on Simulation CFD

© 2012 Autodesk

Processor Impact on Mechanical Multiphysics

© 2012 Autodesk

Processor Impact on Ray Tracing

© 2012 Autodesk

Takeaways • Properly configured, the E31 ThinkStation is the right workstation for CAD-only applications

• Based on processor performance alone, CAD plus simulation and photo-real applications are best served by the S30 and D30 ThinkStations

• Based purely on price/performance, the S30 with an Intel® Xeon® E5-1660 (3.3GHz, 6C) is the attractive point of entry for running Autodesk Suites

• Based purely on performance, the D30 with an Intel® Xeon® E5-2687W (3.1GHz, 16C) provides tremendous performance gains (for a price).

© 2012 Autodesk

In Conclusion • How you configure your ThinkStation workstation, effects how it will perform

• Better performance equates to a faster ROI, and overall lower operating costs • To truly get the most from your hardware investment, make sure your purchase is based on where you’ll be spending your time:

• CAD-Only — Optimize the configuration of an E31 ThinkStation

• CAD + Simulation — You’re ready for an S30 ThinkStation

• CAD + Sim + Photo-Real — Take a hard look at the impressive performance gains of the D30 ThinkStation

© 2012 Autodesk

Questions?

© 2012 Autodesk

Autodesk, AutoCAD* [*if/when mentioned in the pertinent material, followed by an alphabetical list of all other trademarks mentioned in the material] are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. Autodesk reserves the right to alter product and services offerings, and specifications and pricing at any time without notice, and is not responsible for typographical or graphical errors that may appear in this document. © 2012 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.