pixelplucker

Not exactly critical in AM but if your doing any cad surface modeling it can be a pain when you can't zoom in enough and have visual artifacts. For myself I do a lot of small text models that have draft angles and the draft angles can pose glitches. If those models are exported there is a chance a face can cross over blocking or filling in the model like in the letter B, O's and others that have negative spaces. Looks like there is another generation of cards coming out so maybe the older ones will be less money.

Answered my own question, looks like the only desktop cards that allow you to use dp would be the Nvidia Titan series. Outside of that it is strictly workstation option only. Technically it is possible to use a desktop card for dp but you would need a driver to combine the cuda cores or threads on AMD to what ever that ratio is required ie 3:1 or 4:1 etc. Too bad someone hasn't made a hack for that

All the modern cards have both sp and dp on them. The desktop cards run only in sp mode and the workstation versions have a different rom and drivers that enable the dp. You need the driver to use the dp for programs that will implement it from what I gather. On the workstation cards at least on the quadro side you had advanced options that allowed you to invoke those settings on any program through a profiler. I am assuming not much has changed but they may have dumbed it all down. I don't want to piss away 500-900 on a video card to find out some dork simplified all of that and not have the option of being able to use dp. Still looking on the web to see if there is some sort of utility that would allow me to use dp on specified programs using an ordinary game card like the rx480 or gtx 1070 etc. Really annoying when companies do this.

Interesting, don't see further info for custom setting of precision mode though.

I believe that I could enable advanced functions on the workstation cards where as they are off by default on the desktop cards. This would allow me to use the dp on programs that don't specifically have a driver for them right? I remember seeing those options when I had my quadro but things could have changed. Not sure but looks like the Fury has been discontinued? Thanks for the feedback, will wait and see where the market goes, looks like new crap coming out that will drop the price on the older crap.

Been in the market for a new video card, looking for something that has workstation performance without the big price ticket and came across the Fury cards that have 4096 bit data path. Seemed interesting but wonder if they have any double precision available on them? Seems so far in my hunt for a new card the range I was looking at is the Quadro m4000 or AMD FirePro w7100 or w8100. Not even sure if those are worh the money they are asking. I don't run a 4k display and only use my single 21ux cintiq so 4gb of memory should be plenty. The issues I have with my GTX 950 is limited zoom range on cad models and the shaded surfaces aren't exactly matched with edges when zoomed in so tiny feature can be a chore to work on especially when trying to correct trimmed surfaces etc.

I believe that system will default to the Intel graphics. My brother has an Alienware that has a similar setup and he disabled the intel so it only uses the discreet video because not all programs would see the discreet card.

I believe you should try the Nvidia card if possible and roll back to the older lower numbered open gl. Intel video may give you issues with backface culling especially with the older intel video chipsets. I would be more inclined that the Geek Squad cleaned your computer and probably washed off the old number. In either case with Win 7 (that I prefer) and Win 10 it shouldn't make a difference to AM provided the proper video requirements are met. AM in general is pretty forgiving. As far as antivirus programs go I use Win Defender here. I noticed the Win10 version seems better designed than the Win7 version but both are pretty adept to blocking most naughty bits. I do run Malwarebytes Free few times a month to make sure.

That doesn't even look descent..

Outstanding! I actually made a kid of that, electric motor, 3 channel radio. If you need blueprints of other ww1 aircraft I think I have a disk of 120+ airplanes floating around here. I could post it on onedrive or one of those.

Almost looks like a projection map

For FDM printers and short money, look at the kits that are out there. They look pretty easy to build and actually look fun. Most are based on the rep rap that has tons of addons, upgrades, and parts.

For that type of printer you might want the small Makerbot. Those guys have a good rep, parts are easy to get. There are also lot's of kits and imports from Aliexpress. I had seen dlp printers (similar to sla but use digital linear projectors) in the $500 mark and many fdm that use the reprap base for theirs in the 200-300 mark. Though I haven't used an fdm myself, one thing bothers me on the design on the one you showed is the struder head is completely enclosed to look pretty but that I think can have an adverse problem with heat dissipation. Many of the new fdm machines have heatsinks on the struder. As far as resin based printers besides being messy you need to consider supplies. The exposure of the resin to get a good print and the wear and tear on the resin tanks need to be considered. Ability to get the new tanks and resin and quality of resin is critical. Home built machines can be costly to tune and extremely frustrating.

Nice work, not sure what kind of volumes you do but if your doing short run then you may consider a dtg (direct to garment) printer. Epson has a nice unit and some guys out of NJ have a descent price on it: https://www.equipmentzone.com/epson/surecolor-f2000-direct-to-garment-printer/ This printer will allow you to do your art on any color garment (cotton and cotton polyester blend). Dye sub it usually limited to polyester only unless you use the Chromablast from scummy company Sawgrass. Most of my work is for traditional screen printing and mostly 6 colors or less all vector work, large runs, traditional printers can't be beat. One of my customers has a site where you can sell your designs out of and they take care of the printing. Basically you would have your own store and create virtuals for your customers. They use Illustrator but can accept any vector graphic. I do most of their separations and use Corel Draw or DrawPlus for the down and dirty stuff. Give me a shout if you want a link to their store site and I'll get the link from them, my brains getting old and I forget stuff like that. Wanted to mention there is section 179 that lets you write off 100% of the purchase off your taxes. That printer will typically cost 1 case of shirts per month in sales to cover cost of the equip, ie lease or loan payment. Leases arent too great but Marlin Bank is a descent co for equip like that.

Glad to hear the new video card fixed it. Makes me think the driver on some video cards under Win 10 are missing something that AM is looking for. I have other programs that use same or higher versions of Open GL and work fine. Possible it is something with a vis c lib?

My last Radeon ran hot and drew a lot of power. The 1060 3gb is a pretty good card, mid range of the new generations and plenty fast. It is probably double the performance of my clunky GTX 950 that I am using now and the price is really good. My 950 has been able to handle just about anything I throw at it so I would say it's a safe buy. Most the high end cards I have had I have stuck with PNY, nice company and no beef if something goes wrong. My theory is all the cards sold by various manufacturers are basically the same so best to go with the company you trust and prefer even if it's a couple of bucks different. Last think you want is to have to BBB them to get them to honor a warranty.

Congrats

My last motherboard was Asus, kept turning off usb devices as they where being used. Instead of fixing the bios for it they came out with another board. My brother had 2 other Asus mainboards and within 6 months of each other they all died. My brother inlaw had 3 Asus boards all of which failed in less than a year. Maybe their tablets are ok or accessories made by another manufacturer but I wouldn't buy toilet paper from them in fear of that failing. So far or ease of setup and stability Gigabyte has been good for me so far. I heard others say Saphire is good too. What I really really hate with the desktop cards is they load them with gaming software, it has to be one of the worst ideas yet. Looking to build a workstation again, Nvide and Intel are so expensive now it is tough to make a descent server without going for broke.

If you do get an AMD card stay away from XFS brand. The company has poor support and below average quality. Big names like MSI, Gigabyte etc are viable options. I have become a Gigabyte fan. Asus is a lousy brand and also has poor support.

Good answers. I'm not partial to Nvidia, AMD or Apple but rather to the machines that do the job and products/companies that are dependable. With that being said, I used to have Open GL issues with AMD going back to the early 2000's and have gone through many Nvidia cards which all have eventually burned out. The 2 best machines I had in the past was a Soyo motherboard AMD based workstation with a Elsa Gloria card then I put a Quadro on it. My other great machine was a dual chip Intel Xeon on an Intel motherboard and that machine had gone through 3 Nvidia cards including a quadro. I finally retired it after 8 years. Previous to those I had a Daystar mac clone and an 8100. The 8100 was the workhorse. Recently I have gone back to AMD with a Gigabyte board which is a fantastic machine and I had already wore out 1 older Nvidia card and a brand new 950 gtx which I am now running from the RMA of that which replaced the AMD r9 270X that died too quickly. If you use openGL then Nvidia is a better choice and PNY is a reputable company to deal with. Plan on the card dying and plan on a company that will honor their warranty with no grief. As far as Johns issue I wonder if a clean driver install would do the trick? Completely remove all AMD drivers and associated software (ie gaming crap they all tuck in now). Then reinstall the new drivers after a clean reboot. This is assuming that that card worked previously. The OpenGL 3 error I see on my laptop with AM if I try to run it through remote desktop but that has the Intel HD 520 graphics chip that doesn't support one of the calls in OGL3 . The HD 520 is supposed to support OGL 4.5 but there must be something missing in the libraries. Maybe this is an AM bug?

Why If you have an older system with older hardware then don't go to 10, stay with win 7.

If it is less than 30 days you can roll back to win 7. I won't use 10 on my desktop machine, not all my programs play nice under 10. I would recommend on older machines to stick wtih 7 and on a new machine go with 10. I can't honestly recommend AMD video cards because in my experience the quality isn't like they used to be. The one I had ran hot, open gl performance was mediocre and it died rather quickly. My AMD cpu on the other hand is fantastic and pretty quick and cheap. I had purchased the 8350 4ghz with a Gigabyte motherboard for less than $250. The CPU is quick but calculations were still actually less than my dual first gen Xeons that were running at 2.66 ghz. If you do buy a video card take a look at the PNY cards. I am currently running a GTX 950, not a super fast card (slightly faster than the R9 270x I had but it is pretty cheap. I have been a little stuck with older cards because my Cintiq requires a DVI connector, I don't know if adapters are available or how good they may be. Personally Win 10 is ok, I still like 7 better and still far more stable with older applications. I use both daily.

Try reistalling the driver for it. If it worked before it should work again. Guessing that Win 10 update might have hosed the driver on you. My Radeon R9 series recently crapped out on my 14 days after warranty ran out. XFX who made it won't honor the warranty so if you in the market for a new card I would avoid the new AMD video cards, quality isn't there anymore. Best bet is PNY because the give you no grief with their products. Hopefully a driver reinstall does the trick for you.

Are you using Intel onboard video? I had a similar issue with an update on my Dell laptop.

That's what I was saying. I had to make a warthog skull for some castings. I sculpted them in 3dc and did a quad only retopo in 3dc. Exported the obj out and was able to convert the obj file into nurbs. You can import obj files into am in the modeler which converts them into patches. 3dc does have an easier to use retopo than AM has where you can sketch the paths and create the quads rather than clicking around a surface.