Pointools, Descartes hardware guidelines?

Re: Pointools, Descartes hardware guidelines?

Thomas Moore — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 02:33:48 GMT

I spec out Dell optiplex's for my office with i5 - quad core 3.2 or higher, 8GB RAM and 1GB AMD RADEON (Dual Display - 1 DP, 1 DVI) Win 7 Pro. They run about $1000 after Microsoft Office H&B and Adobe, no monitors.

They do the trick. I have a Mobile workstation that has a Nvidia card and the driver crashes on me from time to time. If you are looking for a good deal check out Dell Outlet. They get some really good computers in there.

Re: Pointools, Descartes hardware guidelines?

Dan Cutler — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 14:40:52 GMT

here's the recommended (as opposed to minimum) specs for Pointools from the user guide:

Windows 8 or Windows 7,

Intel i7 or equivalent AMD quad-core processor, 2.6 GHz or higher

8GB RAM

NVidia or ATI (AMD) graphics card with 512MB on-board memory

200Mb free disk space for installation

1920x1080 display resolution with true colour

3 Button mouse

I agree with all Mathieu says, although Pointools does use the GPU more than Descartes. I have a NVidia Quadro 2000M which works very nicely, but my previous laptop had an ATI card which was also very good. I'd say it's not worth spending a lot on a graphics card solely for Pointools as you won't get much more bang for your buck.

more RAM is always nice, and 64bit Pointools will arrive at some point - although this will only really help import/export and video render time. it's unlikely to have any significant effect for on-screen performance.

Re: Pointools, Descartes hardware guidelines?

Mathieu St-pierre — Wed, 14 Aug 2013 21:57:04 GMT

Hi Dominic,

Well as far as I know SSD seems faster than HDD, yes probably.

But by how much is another question! My feeling is that it might not be worth it to pay the extra buck for a SSD over an HDD just to have some kind of speed-up.

HTH,

Mathieu

Re: Pointools, Descartes hardware guidelines?

dominic SEAH — Wed, 14 Aug 2013 01:43:05 GMT

Matthieu... would a SSD instead of a hard drive speed things up?

Re: Pointools, Descartes hardware guidelines?

Mathieu St-pierre — Wed, 14 Aug 2013 00:49:29 GMT

Hi David,

Maybe you could try to send a PM to Dan Cutler (communities.bentley.com/.../default.aspx)?

He knows a lot about Pointools and often answer here on BE Communities.

HTH,

Mathieu

Re: Pointools, Descartes hardware guidelines?

David Flood — Tue, 13 Aug 2013 21:56:08 GMT

Hi Mathieu,

Thanks for that. Is there a contact we can inquire the same of regarding Pointools?

cheers

Re: Pointools, Descartes hardware guidelines?

Mathieu St-pierre — Fri, 26 Jul 2013 21:23:29 GMT

Hi David,

For Bentley Descartes SELECTSeries 4 I would say more a bit more than 4 Gb of RAM and a fast hard drive.

Since Bentley Descartes SELECTSeries 4 is a 32 bits application there is no need to go much over the 4 Gb of RAM since even a huge amount of RAM on your computer a 32 bit application can only use 4 Gb maximum. 8 or 12 should ensure that there is at least 4 free for Descartes.

Also considering that Bentley Descartes has been designed to work with huge amount of data (raster, dtm and point cloud) that doesn't fit in memory a fast hard drive seems a sound choice.

Finally considering that most of the code in Descartes SELECTSeries 4 can only be run using a single thread at a time no need to buy a computer with a lot of cores.

As for the video card there is no need to buy something top notch since Descartes is not currently using GPU for code optimization.

Thanks,

Mathieu