Hello everyone!I have some query about rendering large land area.I am currently working as a draftsman and our project is the construction of a chemical plant having an area of about 10 hectares.I am using Autocad civil 3D and I am tasked make a 3D Model of the entire plant, all the structures, roads and others using only this software. Then make render views, both, interior and exterior. I am yet to complete 25% and my PC  would crash everytime I try to render that small area only. I am making models of the structures in separate file then Xref all in one file. What can I do to overcome this? I would be glad to hear from you guys..

What are the specs on the computer you are using?Do you have access to a program like 3ds Max?What kind of file size are you dealing with at the moment?

Renderings can be either quick or slow.  Turn OFF texture filtering, shadows, ray tracing and final gathering for quick renderings.Resolution and quality should be set to low.

The PC has 2.66Ghz processor, 2Gb ram, Nvidia Quadro FX 370.No, I don't have access to other CAD software.The file size right now is 15MB.

Your computer specs are pretty poor for the task you have before you.  You need to either upgrade to a computer with some real power or you need to send the job out to another company that can produce the renderings for you.  A third option would be to purchase something like a BOXX workstation which is a standalone system that specializes in doing renderings.http://boxxtech.com/products/RenderBOXX/rendering_Series.asp


John Connor2011-12-17 12:16:02

Thanks for your replies...I have understood before that the PC's specs is quit poor.I have checked BOXX website and their products are pretty impressive.But, if I buy other products with the same specs as their's, would the performance be different?

Similar specs should yield similar results.  Are you thinking of building a custom system?  It appears to me the more cores and the more memory the faster the system should operate.  It might help to also buy a rendering program that can take advantage of the multiple cores too.  AutoCAD can't at least not yet.  

I am thinking requesting for my company to buy a new PC with high end specs.What do mean by cannot use multiple cores on autocad?did you mean the cores in the processor or the gpu?

Yes, that is what I meant but I just came across this.http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=15224826&linkID=9240617Notice that it is in reference to dual-core so that means this article is a bit old.  Maybe you can get away without buying a separate program.


John Connor2011-12-18 13:38:08

So,even if I have a quad core prcessor,autocad cannot use all of it?

If what the article at AutoDesk is true then it would seem that Mental Ray would take advantage of the multiple cores.  As for anything other that rendering and regens AutoCAD does not utilize multi-threading.This is a really interesting article about rendering techniques.  It is a 2.1MB 12 page PDF file.http://software.intel.com/sites/billboard/article/rendering-techniques-expert-perspectives-using-multi-core-multi-threaded-intel-cpus-speed

Here is a resource you could turn to for low cost, high quality renderings.http://www.archeast.com/rendering/index.php/3drendering1.html