You may be aware that som Autodesk applications don't currently take advantage of a dual core processor. (Check the Autodesk website for details on what applications may take advantage of one)
I just got my new machine last week, and I must say it is awesome.
My corridors do build faster than they did on my slower machine, but since right now I am experiementing with building one monster corridor for the whole site (I have not yet made my final decision about whether or not this is a good idea) even a fast build is at least 3-5 minutes when you have 60+ baselines.
So a few times a day when I rebuild the whole thing, I can take advantage of my second "core" in a variety of ways.
Here are some recent favorites:
1- Exercise Videos- Play your DVDs on your second monitor and get toned and fit while your corridor knits. I also moved my weights into the home office so I could get in a few sets during hang time.
2- Civil Engineering Community Site- you thought I was kidding about a Civil 3D MySpace? Autodesk has moved the discussions groups and a whole heap of other goodies like shared VBA, templates, etc. You can also make a Profile where you list your fave Civil 3D commands, your love of gadgets and your IM handle. You can leave endorsements (cough- comments) and add people to your network (cough- friends). I've already spent hours in here trying to see what those folks from the DG actually look like. http://civilcommunity.autodesk.com/
3- Blog- No need to know anything or have anything important to say. Just sign up for a blog and start waxing poetic on any subject you feel you want to talk about. Like puppies, butterflies or Civil Engineering software.
4- ITunes- Who needed money this month for rent? Certainly not me since I downloaded about $400 worth of songs I really needed. And now no rude musical hiccups because it has a whole processor to itself!
5- Gtalk or other IM- being as my first email account was in 1994 and that was on Georgia Tech's Unix monster, I missed the middle school IM craze. I still need the IM to english dictionary for things like "YT" and "TTYL", but somehow I have managed to while away many a corridor building hour yammering about nothing in particular and sharing links to good YouTube clips .
I am sure I will discover more as time goes on.... send in your suggestions!
Saturday, September 09, 2006
101 Uses for a Dual Core Processor
Posted by Dana at 11:39:00 PM
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2 Comments:
I often open another session of Civil 3D and work on a different drawing. A side benefit of this is that when one session of C3D crashes (and it will crash) the other drawing stays intact.
Personally I find that Civil 3D is choking up the second core after a while. Like now: I've got Outlook going (no comments!), playing a bit of music on WinAmp, got this reply open in IE and I've got C3D going. C3D's done nothing for about 20 minutes and currently only has one drawing open, that consisting of some lines, arcs, two Point Groups and one Surface. And my processor is permanently running 50%: one core. Who's got it? acad.exe, that's who.
I'll come up with a couple of dozen uses if I can work out how to restrain XP from giving Acad a core simply because it had it available.
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