Trimble Business Center

What sort of PC specs does everyone run?  Processor/RAM/Graphics Card.

I quickly realised 16Gb isn't enough and 32Gb is a bit average. 

Just get the fast single threaded processor you can. Almost any modern graphics card will do as long as it will drive your monitor configuration, SSD and 32gb ram. 

I just built a Ryzen 3600XT 4.8GHz, 64GB of 3200mhz RAM, Nvidia 1660 Super, SSD program drive, HD data drive, 750w PSU. Was using a 7 year old Dell I7 2.8GHz laptop with m1200 card, 32GB ram and SSD and yeah the new PC is faster but it wasn't a night and day difference. TBC and many other CAD programs can only utilize a single core most of the time (10-20% of processing power), so the best you can do is get fastest single core speed you can. The 3600 is the best bang for the buck I think. If your an intel guy probably like a 9700k or 10400k would be nice. 

I've got a Dell Precision 5540 Laptop with 32GB, i9-9880H and Nvidia Quadro T2000.

The Laptop is a bit picky when using DirectX, most programs using that will crash it to a BSOD. But using OpenGL it works fine. But that's probably a Dell/Nvidia driver issue that hasn't been resolved yet. Disabling the internal GPU doesn't work for me since the docking station with the external screens won't work anymore.

But TBC's lack of multithreading is a real shame. The newer parts of TBC like Photogrammetry and Pointclouds use it quite a bit but the legacy parts don't. My CPU has got 16 threads but most of the time just 1 is used. 

Although it might not be possible for a few functions since they rely on a previous results it should be possible for quite a few surface/corridor/clipping/project cleanup functions. It should be possible to split them into packages and be computed simultaneously.

The problem is, changing the program code would just save us some time, is of no benefit for Trimble anymore

This issue has been discussed on the forum previously, but I will cover it again here

1) Multithreading is implemented in various places of the software, however not all processes can be multithreaded due to the nature of the computations being carried out e.g. Surface Modeling triangulation is a linear process that starts at a single seed point and radiates from there using a radial sweep algorithm using the Delauney Triangulation method - this type of function cannot be multi-threaded as a result - that is why it only uses a single core processor.

2) Some of the Mass Haul computations can be and are multi-threaded, however some of the processes cannot be - if you watch the Mass Haul Analysis process you will see that in the first part we spin up multiple threads, and then in the later part of the process it returns to a single thread - this is not because we do not want to Multi-Thread the process, but because it is considered by our development team that it cannot be multi threaded.

3) Many processes use the GPU (Graphics Processor) (screen regeneration, display management etc.) these are not something that can be multi threaded.

Of course there are some areas that are older code in TBC than others in the software, and not every possible thing that can be multi threaded has been multi threaded yet. Most software on the market is this way - TBC is using more modern programming methods than many of the older software out there on the market, but even TBC is now 19 years old in some parts, and we do not always rewrite everything to maximize its potential speed - like all companies we have many things to do / many requests to satisfy and we try to continually improve the product in parallel to investing in new features and capabilities.

More recent additions to the software like the Photogrammetry and Point Clouds are multi-threaded because a) they are the newest parts of the software and b) they simply have to be multi-threaded to make them possible / viable.

We have been steadily improving the User Interface for 4K monitors, the Graphics Management of objects and a variety of other things in the last 2 years. We also updated TBC to 64 Bit well before most of the competition did the same thing, so I would not say that we are sleeping at all - as users you cannot see the backend work that is / has been going on and many of these changes happen gradually over time so you do not see a Quantm jump in capability.

Some of the issues introduced in the software this year have been created by a massive refactoring of the graphics code or the changes required to implement the CAD Command Line function that impacted nearly every one of the CAD commands in one way or another.  We believe that we have got the product back to good stability again now.

Alan 

We recommend the following

1) Get a good SSD Drive with fast Read / Write Times

2) Get 64GB RAM if at all possible

3) Get a good Graphics Card with 4GB Memory or higher if possible

4) Get a Fast Processor, a multi core processor is good for some areas of the product

Remember also that when you work through a Docking Station and when you work with multiple screens that your GPU is split equally across all screens, so the more screens that you run the more GPU you require to get the best performance - you will always get the highest performance with no docking station and only a single monitor. 8GB Graphics Memory will help you when running 3 screens for example.

Alan

Related to this, I had a Dell docking station causing SERIOUS issues with TBC during the most recent update. Turns out the docking station has its own "video card" and wasn't utilizing the graphics card like it should have been. The fix was to just plug in my monitors to my laptop separately. 1xHDMI, 1xDisplayport, 1xUSB-C. Problem solved. It wasn't a TBC issue necessarily, but a graphics card issue. That meant that I wasn't using my graphics card correctly for months, until TBC upgraded and kept crashing non-stop. So in this situation, a TBC update caused my computer to crash in a way that was beneficial. Please report that back to the development team haha!