2020 Design System Recommendations

Is Microsoft Surface Pro 3 will run 2020 design V9?

My sister-in-law needs this to be able to run on a laptop since she travels. I haven’t dabbled in laptops so I can’t recommend anything. Can anyone point me in the right direction as to what would be able to handle this software easily. The laptop she has now, to her takes too long to render, i.e around 15 minutes iirc for one kitchen setting.

Laptop models vary around the world so it”s difficult to recommend a specific model sometimes. If she has a reasonable budget, I would go for an Intel i7 based laptop running at up to 3.1GHz or faster with 8GB of RAM and if possible an SSD or hybrid hard drive. It REALLY should have an NVIDIA card or AMD Radeon as the primary display adapter or (as I’ve noticed on newer models) the ability to specify which video adapter the program runs on.

I am finding at the moment that Dell is not as good value as Toshiba. As an example, the Toshiba below has significantly better performance than a Dell costing nearly twice as much.

This model has an excellent processor speed of 3.6GHz, a hybrid hard drive and for $400 more comes with a 4K display with touch.

Thanks for the reply. She told me money wasn’t an option or something around the $3,000 range.

Have you heard anything about Eurocom’s stuff? After looking around from what I’ve read at least they’re the best of the best.

First I’d heard of them but certainly a very high spec. I might buy one if I win the lottery (have to take part in it first though!)

Just FYI, onscreen renders in V10/V11 are VERY dependent on both graphic card AND processor type and speed so pick the highest i7 she can afford with the best graphics – I prefer NVIDIA to Radeon. Other factors become less important – I found no difference on my laptop when I went from 8GB to 16GB of RAM. The hybrid hard drive upgrade I did made little or no difference to 20-20 Design.

I did need the extra RAM and disk speed because I run a Virtual Machine of Windows XP for my Catalog Tools work since on my system, Catalog Tools fails to work if I have V10/V11 resident in the same OS.

For Panoramic 360 uploads, it’s purely about processor speed. However, I only do Panoramic 360s now for customers who want a preview at home – in the showroom I use a tablet linked in as a second screen and throw the render onto this. It works quite well.

A true SSD would make no difference to render speeds but does speed up general operation.

The Eurocom notebooks equipped with an i7-4940MX Extreme can be overclocked to 4.00GHz so a VERY good choice.

With her existing system, there are a few things she can do to speed up renders (assuming it is 10.5 or 11.

Reduce the size of the display window onscreen, choose texture medium or low for the render window and in preferences set the default Shape Display Quality to Draft. These things make a big difference to the render speed. On another Designers computer that I’m working on at the moment, the photo render took just 1.5 minutes – this machine is a crappy Dell running an AMD A8 at 1.9GHz but it rendered a full screen photo render faster than my Dell 2.4GHz i7! – the reason for this is that my Dell has a higher res screen and an inferior graphics adapter.

Also, and it is suprising how often I hit this, check the power settings for the laptop and choose the ‘High Performace’ option and download a utility such as CPU-Z to see what speed the processor is ACTUALLY running at. I have come across some laptops that for no apparent reason stick at 800MHz even when High Performance has been selected and they should be running at 2.4GHZ! Also ALWAYS run the renders when plugged into the mains as the processor throttles down when on battery.

Hi,
I’m currently run design v11 on a laptop with;

-Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2410M CPU @ 2.30GHz – Dual Core
-8GB RAM
-On Board Intel(R) HD Graphics 3000 – Dedicated Graphics Memory – 64MB

As you can see it takes some time for renders, especially trying to multitask while a 360 renders is almost impossible. I’m looking at building a desktop – specific purpose to run design v11.  Here are the specs I’m looking at.

CPU:Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor
Memory:G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Storage:Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Video Card:EVGA GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB Superclocked Video Card

Do you think the CPU & GPU I have picked out will give me the extra boost I’m needing, or should I pay the extra for an I7?

I have done a LOT of testing on configs. Panoramic 360 doesn’t use the GPU at all (but it maxed out all the cores on my i7 while it was running!) so if you do a lot of these then upgrade to an i7 and pick one that can be safely overclocked to 4GHz (I would do this regardless). If you need to make savings because of the extra cost of the i7, lower the spec of the SSD to a Hybrid.

Standard renders do use the GPU but not particularly heavily. The GTX750 is fine but you could use a lower level NVidia card with much the same result. I’d also stick to the video cards listed in the first post.

Thanks for all the help. Here’s what she ended up and according to her it gets the job done.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NWE9SBS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Thanks for the help as well. Dell was/is running a pretty good sale on these for $720.99 that I got. (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2485291,00.asp)
-I7-4790 @ 4.0GHZ
-16GB RAM
-Geforce GTX 745 4GB
-1 TB HDD
With room to grow…

Will there be support for Windows 10 on Design when it comes out the end of next month?

Been running Beta Win10 with both V10.5 and V11 of Design (as Virtual Machines) for about 8 weeks with no issues (I am one of the many Beta testers for Win10).

Don’t know about official support but Win10 is just a basic rehash of 8.1 so I really can’t see any issues.

Hi mike

what would you think of a lenevo desktop with a Xeon E3-1271 V3 CPU 8 GB RAM

and most importantly a Quadro K4000 3GB card installed in it…

im asking because I had great results with a I7 intel cpu and GEforce 970 card

would the above mentioned quadro be as good?

in particular with onscreen rendering using V.11 with all whistles like adding images with sketchup videos etc

thanks

Difficult to say without testing on the actual platform. The Xeon has a better internal architecture than a standard i7 but that architecture is optimised more towards server work although Xeons are also often used in high end CAD stations.

I’d probably try and get a system based round the i7-4790K processor as with all cores running, it runs at 4.2GHz – the Xeon runs at 3.6GHz. The actual processor cost is similar.

That said, there probably won’t be a lot of difference.

The Quadro has an awesome spec though!

Thanks mike

i was not clear perhaps my question is really centered on the Quadro vs the Gtx970

i had great success with the core i7 and GTX970 card, but i found a great deal on this xeon with the Quadro, so i wanted to know if i’m better off getting a gtx 970 again? or the Quadro should be as good?

i mentioned the CPU just to rule out other variables,

Thanks!!!

Apologies. According to a few review sites I’ve seen, the GTX970 scores higher on rendering than the Quadro K4000 so I’d probably stick with the GTX – it’s cheaper too!

Again, without actual data on 2020 rendering speeds on each card, it’s difficult to know.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Quadro+K4000

Hi Joseph.  Which one did you end up going with and what do you think about the results?  I’m in the same quandary now…GeForce or Quadro…..Thanks

Hi,

Can we have an update for the “System Recommendations” for an desktop and an laptop !

Thanks

Has anyone found a tablet suitable for 20-20 Design V10 or higher?

I’ve seen V10 and V11 used on a Microsoft Surface Pro tablet (the i7 one) and was greatly impressed. The 3D renders were coming out a lot faster than a top spec AMD with high end graphics card.

Dear Gerry
In order to provide you the all the details concerning actively supported OS, minimum and recommended Hardware, please send me your email address to share with you the information.
residential.support@2020spaces.com

Regards

Hi Edith,  This is Tammy Overstreet,  Could you please send me the updated recommended hardware for 2020 design?  My email address is Tammy@accentcabinets.com

Hello Tammy!

I Already sent them to you.

Best Regards
Edith

Hi,
I’m wondering if there is anything I can do to improve performance, this is my current rendering system, I know this is a high end machine but the performance is still dismal.

Mainboard: Asus Sabertooth X99
Processor: Intel i7 5820K – 6 core running at 5.2 Ghz
Memory: 128GB DDR4 Quad Channel @ 3200 MHZ
Storage: System Drive: Samsung 950 Pro m.2
Data Drive: 8 Samsung 850 EVO Sata 6GB/s in RAID 0
Graphics Cards: 2 x EVGA Geforce 980ti Hybrid in SLI

I should note that the display is 4k and renderings are also done in 4k.  None the less, this system should have no problems and has been by far the best performer I’ve used however, I am wondering if someone can provide more details on how the redway3d engine works.  I know it’s a GPU/CPU hybrid, and in that case would I have better performance running on a Workstation or Server class system? As in does it utilize multi-core functionality or is it more dependent on single core performance?
Additionally what else can be done to improve rendering performance? I am trying to find a solution to render upwards of 500 4k images per day.

I also considered using a multi CPU and multi GPU unit running virtual machines, with hardware such as the Nvidia Tesla cards or Grid K2 Cards, but I know these are more for mathematics than graphics.

I should also note that in my personal opinion is that there is some severe issues with the applications design that the performance is so poor, It does not utilize current technology efficiently and in my experience since version 7 it never has.  I understand it’s a bit of a specialized software but none the less there must be tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of users, and as one of those users with major sway over large accounts, I want to mention that IMHO 2020 Technologies should be investing more into their software efficiency and rendering performance.  For all of Redway 3d’s pro’s it also has many cons from what I can tell.
Has there ever been any consideration on having 2 versions, one that is for people who care more about having the software run efficiently on more budget type units, and having a version that is designed for enterprise use? I would love to be able to remote app the application to our sites in a production environment (as right now we can not do this without licensing concerns) As everything is moving to the cloud, I think you need to do some major overhauls on your core business applications or you’re going to get ran over by companies that have the ability to build efficient web applications that can do the same or more than 2020.  Even with version 11 it feels antiquated, and while it’s worked well for many years, such is the way of a technology or software business, it either needs to adapt or it gets ran over.

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my questions and please understand my comments are not meant as insults as I love the software and only wish to see it improve.

Hey Timothy,

With that rig it certainly isn’t the hardware that is slowing things down.  Presently 2020 is still only a 32 bit software and that places some limits on its ability to take advantage of newer hardware.  That said they are working on getting it up to being a 64 bit and they are hoping that by version 12 it will be implemented.  Even in the upcoming version 11.5 they are supposed to be implementing a “Reduced memory footprint”.

As to the licencing of the product they are moving to a cloud based model so that will inherently move away from the single user single licence model they have right now and towards a more enterprise friendly way of licencing the software.

For the technical information on how the redway engine works, you will have to ask the folks at Redway.

Neil

Thanks Mike!

That’s encouraging.  I have an i5, AMD, 64-bit that is over 5 yrs old —- but so much better than others I’ve seen until now.  May have to take the plunge into another machine.

Niel,

I have noticed the more desktop links and background operations are allowed to run will occupy your speed response.  I run virus scans more often than I should to eleminate cookies, etc. when I leave internet links open while designing.

Also, see if your Active X need an upgrade.

Thanks Neil for your reply.

I am in fact pretty familiar with how redway3d works, and the capabilities of it’s SDK.  It’s actually an amazing piece of software which can add some awesome feature-sets to software such as 2020, I do wish they would make 64bit a bit more of a priority it seems to be a little behind the times in that aspect, however I also understand the time involved in porting it over so hopefully that will happen soon, it has been a number of years since I would have benefitted from it.

With the redSDK I wonder if 2020 technologies is working on building redSDK’s cloud rendering tech.  It is available in their new SDK and I have been looking into it, and it looks pretty amazing.  If you want some further information on what I am discussing view here: http://www.redway3d.com/downloads/public/documentation/bk_rednet.html  For enterprise businesses with a hybrid cloud envrionment, or even a public cloud environment; having this featureset available would really open up new doors about what we could offer our customers, and what shops all over the country could offer to consumers.  I can think of a thousand uses for this, although I understand it is not necessarily something that the average 2020 user may benefit from.

That brings me back to my original question which you touched on briefly but I would really love to receive more details about.  When will there become a version of the software that is more enabled on the cloud technology that is available? Not just cloud licensing but cloud technology such as the redNET that I mentioned earlier.

Thanks, If you prefer I can create a new thread for this.

Hi Timothy,

I’m not so impressed with Redway I’m afraid – their 3D algorithms seem clumsy (where is the antialiasing!) and the redNET cloud is a brute force approach to rendering rather than using better techniques. You only have to look at some current games available or some other room/house design software to see what current graphics processors are capable of doing in real-time.

That said, we do not know what 2020 have signed up for with Redway – they may have contracted for a subset of the main engine with more limited capabilities. I think 2020 are moving very definitely in the right direction but one has to ask whether it is time for a complete re-write of the product rather than the constant tweaking we are seeing. The tweaking is adding features but introducing ever more bugs.

2020 are not alone in this – if Microsoft had completely rewritten Windows about 5 years ago when 64 bit multicore processors became a lot cheaper, it wouldn’t be the bloated lump it is now.

A software package like 2020 Design succeeds or fails due to a number of factors including marketing but also on the user base. A strong user base results in a strong package. Given that there must be a substantial 2020 user base out there, I am surprised that I see just a few people (almost always the same faces) posting here and in the other 2 forums.

I’d like to see far more interaction between 2020 and it’s users – formalised bug reporting and actioning, wishlists that are prioritised and so on.

Can I run design 2020 on my Asus laptop (Model Q500A)? It has all the required specs (Windows 10, Intel Core i7, 8 GB RAM, 500 GB free disk space, DVD-RAM and free USB port), EXCEPT the graphics card which is an Intel HD. If 2020 will run on it,  how bad will it be with this graphics card? Is there a work-around for this, short of a new laptop or desktop?

Hi Debbie,

2020 will install and run on a computer without a dedicated graphics card but you will have frequent issues with the software crashing when you are generating Rendered pictures, creating 360 panoramics, accessing cabinet attributes, editing countertops and mouldings and believe it or not, printing the floorplans.  That is why, in the system requirements, “We recommend that you buy a computer with a dedicated graphics card and avoid integrated graphics cards or chipsets.”  The Intel HD is an integrated chipset.  I would recommend against running 2020 on that computer.

Neil

What Neil said. It may well work adequately enough for low res renders and general use but if you want high res, higher speed renders then a dedicated Nvidia or Radeon option is a must.

HOWEVER, I have had V11.4 running on a cheap (under $300) Windows 10 Chuwi Hi12 Tablet with no issues and OK renders – yes a bit slow but worked perfectly.

You can get a Dell i7 with Radeon graphics for sub US$700 – at this price it’s really not worth spoiling the ship… (after all, the software costs more than twice as much as the laptop!)

And no matter what anyone else says, ONLY go for an Intel i7 processor at the fastest speed you can afford. The AMD processors do NOT work as well as the i7.

I just purchase the HP Envy i7 with the NVIDIA GeForce GT 730.  I still can’t get the renderings to look photo realistic.  Did I make the wrong choice?  I have closed the room, adjusted the light settings.  I still can’t get it to look good.  Any help or direction would be appreciated.  I am still running V9.

Michelle

Hi Michelle,

V9 does not produce what I would call Photo realistic images. You can get some quite good effects especially if you switch on all the relevant settings (see attached) but if you want really impressive results, you need to upgrade to V11 – it is definitely worth doing even with the current buggy version.

If you want to stick with V9 then I suggest you contact Bill Zielinski  (bill@freelancekitchendesigner.com) as he has some tutorials that really get V9 as close as possible to photo realistic (see attached example from his Advanced Render tutorial).

So much depends on using the right surface textures – glossy etc.

You should also go and get the free UNDRGRND catalog as this has very many useful items including invisible, pointable lighting and lots of ‘extras’ to enhance the design.

Thanks for the info Mike. Even the rendering you attached is way better than mine with the settings matching yours. I will check out the tutorials and I will look into v11.  I appreciate it.

Michelle

Hey Timothy, whats your approx. render time per 4K image at the the highest quality settings on your rig? This is the rig I’m currently running 2020 design on at 2560×1440.

http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/Ygshyf

I was looking for benchmarks with different set ups and couldn’t find any.

I average around 15 minutes per image on high quality at my resolution.

I am using windows 10 pro 64-bit OS. System check utility suggest me to install ATI Catalyst 14.4 driver. But website show that <span style=”line-height: 1.5;”>ATI Catalyst 14.4 driver is for windows 8 64-bit. don’t know what to do? please suggest which driver is batter for my system? Thanks in advance. </span>

I’d try the latest Windows 10 driver and not worry too much about the System Check utility. I’m running the latest AMD drivers as the version the System Check suggested was about 20 versions too old and caused me issues with Windows crashing.

This is such valuable info BUT is outdated. Can you post a current recommendation for Desktop/Mobile/Workstation please.

We have seen many issues with performance and the clients are not 100% satisfied and we want to make sure we recommend what is needed. Budget is always an issue of course but At least we can give a valuable recommendation.

One of the systems that they are NOT happy with is:

Dell Precision 5520
IntelCore i7-7820HQ CPU @ 2.90GH
SSD / 16GB RAM
NVDIA M1200 4g

ISO best LAPTOP config for 2020Design V11….

Priorities:

• High render performance
• Longevity
• Moderately priced

Oscar – that is a good spec for a notebook and should certainly run 2020 Design pretty efficiently – what aren’t they happy with? The i7 processor is only 18 months old and certainly one of the better ones.

The graphics card while not being phenomenally powerful is pretty darn good and 2020 tends to rely more on the main CPU than the GPU anyway.

Just be aware that Dells (like most major manufacturers) add a lot of bloatware that can slow things down – I generally re-image from a clean Windows 10 image and have the minimum amount of software on the machine. I also use a Windows 10 debloater script to make things run even faster. I only use the Microsoft antivirus with a weekly offline scan via Malwarebytes.

Is the issue one of on-screen renders, panoramic generation or what?