Originally Posted By: tom slick
Hypothetically, if you were going to build a system to work with software like catia, inventor, solidworks, etc, and you wanted it to be a best bang for the buck, what would you build?
I *think* all of these run on *NIX, meaning you may have to start by narrowing down which hardware is compatible with openSolaris, or use Vista.
I'd also investigate the possibility of creating a rendering cluster of commodity hardware instead of a massive, expensive behemoth.
Your main workstation'd have to be loaded with RAM and have a ridiculous video card... Like one of those $2500 ATI V8650's or
this monster. Again, it depends on your OS and what drivers are available.
Depending on what kinda of work you're doing, you may also need to look at a color matching monitor. They're expensive, too.
You *might* might might even think about scoring a used SGI workstation. It'll probably only be able to run IRIX, and I don't know if the software you listed can run on IRIX, but I used an Onyx waaaaaay back and that thing screamed holy heck at graphics rendering and throughput in 1998. These days they're not too terribly expensive. Plus, some of their machines
look like beer fridges from the 31st century.