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Running Creo on the "Cloud" or one big server

TMPENG

New member
Hi Everyone,

Our IT department is looking for us to move away from using individual workstations. Currently we use PTC certified HP laptops. We have mutliple plants, and we access our data back to single server back to the main plant via the internet. Some files can take forever to open, if the open a all.

We do not have Windchill, PLM or other PDM software.

There are a lot of proposed solutions on the table right now.

The latest proposal would be to create one superpowerful central server complete with all the ram, processing power, and graphics needed to run 4-6 seats of creo. Then we would remote desktop in, and run Creo on the same server where our data is stored. Then we could run creo from any computer, and we would only need the internet speed to control the remote server and display the graphics.

Is anyone doing this? How does it work? Can you run multiple seats of Creo on one machine? How is the ram shared?

Thank you for your help in advance.

Matt
 
Remote desktop for cad work? Using "office" software on remote desktop connections (in Windows) is fine because most of the graphics work is done on the local machine, so you don't need a super fast connection like with screen sharing applications, but I don't know if OpenGL or Direct3D calls can be redirected through remote desktop, and even if they can, you'll still need a powerful graphics card on your local machine. Other than that, some software doesn't work well, or simply dosen't work at all in remote desktop (like Mathacad that worked in remote desktop until Mathacad 13 and stopped since mathcad 15)

I don't have experience using remote desktop with Creo, but in Mathcad the experience is not very good: remote desktop session don't allow font anti-aliasing under WinXP so you'll have jaggy fonts (not very good if you have to code all day), some copy/paste operations don't work, all the software for ole or dde embedding (like putting an excel sheet inside a mathcad document) needs to be installed on the server, graphics are slow in 3D (ehm...) and sometimes everything behaves strangely (scroll wheel locks and other annoyances)

Paolo
 
I have two offices and two workstations. Occasionally I have left a Pro/E session up on one workstation then used remote desktop to connect form the other workstation to finish up or close it out. Yes it works. The response time is poor, zooms and rotations are very jerky. I could not stand to do this on a permanent basis. This is with a 100 Mb hard wired connection. If you are using WiFi for your laptop networking that is your problem. It will be much worse trying to constantly send all the graphics data over a slow connection than just sending the file data one time. Ohh, I just saw you are going over some kind of internet connection to get your data. That would completely die trying to run remote desktop.

The multiple sessions of Pro/E on one machine is no problem, you can do that right now. Each session will use all the memory that running on one machine would use. Each session will be completely separate from the other sessions, they will share nothing.
 
Remote desktop would not be a good solution. You should use a solution that are designed for high graphic. Some years ago I did look at solutions but because of other important project it did not complete. Solution we was looking at was:
http://www.citrix.com/content/dam/citrix/en_us/documents/customers/abbcasestudy.pdf
I remember that vmware and dell also did had a solution but I do not remember the names.

I assume that is some accelerated/improved/high end version of Citrix as we have Citrix for all our PC's on the shop floor and standard Office applications are dog slow.
 
I assume that is some accelerated/improved/high end version of Citrix as we have Citrix for all our PC's on the shop floor and standard Office applications are dog slow.

Yes it is. It can also be used with special thin clients designed for high graphic usage.
 
Hi Everyone,

Our IT department is looking for us to move away from using individual workstations. Currently we use PTC certified HP laptops. We have mutliple plants, and we access our data back to single server back to the main plant via the internet. Some files can take forever to open, if the open a all.

We do not have Windchill, PLM or other PDM software.

There are a lot of proposed solutions on the table right now.

The latest proposal would be to create one superpowerful central server complete with all the ram, processing power, and graphics needed to run 4-6 seats of creo. Then we would remote desktop in, and run Creo on the same server where our data is stored. Then we could run creo from any computer, and we would only need the internet speed to control the remote server and display the graphics.

Is anyone doing this? How does it work? Can you run multiple seats of Creo on one machine? How is the ram shared?

Thank you for your help in advance.

Matt

Has your company explored blade workstations? This is a server based solution that allows a user to seamlessly work on a workstation, and if an issue arises, the server pushes the user to a different workstation and the user can continue without interruption. The user logs in remotely and only keyboard, mouse and display data is transferred. I had a chance to demo a setup and it had potential.

The benefit to this solution is that all machines are centrally located and have the same hardware. They can be upgraded at any time, even without user interruption (if additional machine are available). They can be accessed from anywhere (provided the permissions are granted by the network) with a seamless user experience.
 
Remote desktop would not be a good solution. You should use a solution that are designed for high graphic. Some years ago I did look at solutions but because of other important project it did not complete. Solution we was looking at was:
http://www.citrix.com/content/dam/citrix/en_us/documents/customers/abbcasestudy.pdf
I remember that vmware and dell also did had a solution but I do not remember the names.

At work citrix has been used for some simple task with some success ( task like making stp files for mfg.) I do not advise using it for any thing other than simple task on citrix though.

Keep us post on which option you go with.
 
Remote desktop for cad work? Using "office" software on remote desktop connections (in Windows) is fine because most of the graphics work is done on the local machine, so you don't need a super fast connection like with screen sharing applications, but I don't know if OpenGL or Direct3D calls can be redirected through remote desktop, and even if they can, you'll still need a powerful graphics card on your local machine. Other than that, some software doesn't work well, or simply dosen't work at all in remote desktop (like Mathacad that worked in remote desktop until Mathacad 13 and stopped since mathcad 15)

I don't have experience using remote desktop with Creo, but in Mathcad the experience is not very good: remote desktop session don't allow font anti-aliasing under WinXP so you'll have jaggy fonts (not very good if you have to code all day), some copy/paste operations don't work, all the software for ole or dde embedding (like putting an excel sheet inside a mathcad document) needs to be installed on the server, graphics are slow in 3D (ehm...) and sometimes everything behaves strangely (scroll wheel locks and other annoyances)

Paolo
When remoting, the graphics work is not done on the local machine, it is done on the host.
We use remote desktop all the time when we need to show a client a model via GoToMeeting. The computer that it is displayed on has a cheap graphics card, a minimal amount of RAM and the performance is acceptable. We are doing it over a local network, not the internet. Your results may vary.
 
Since you use HP hardware, HP developed a "proprietary" remote desktop system for workstations. Basically it's an optimized compression algorithm to compress and send the video on a high speed network. It should be better than traditional remote desktop (that doesn't support acceleration) or other screen sharing options like Teamviewer (not optimized).

There are other ways to have "desktop on demand" but I can't recollect who was doing them
 
Hey guys, this thread is over two years old and you're still giving the guy advice. He left this thread a long time ago.
 
Hey guys, this thread is over two years old and you're still giving the guy advice. He left this thread a long time ago.

LOL, someone answered and I thought it was a new thread, I even found an old reply from myself :D BTW in my experience when remote desktop is enabled graphics acceleration is disabled on the host, so yes you don't use the local machine but the host, yet in remote desktop the host can't enable 3D acceleration.

GotoMeeting is not "Remote Desktop" as intended in Windows, is a screen sharing tool like Teamviewer, that's why it works but you need a fast connection
 
I am using Go To Meeting WITH remote desktop.
So Creo and GoToMeeting is running on the host, remote desktop is on the slave. The graphics work is done on the host, our slave has minimal graphics capability and RAM.
The GoToMeeting portion of this is running over the internet (we have a t1 connection although our download speed is only 5 megabits) in that it is being shared with our clients (sometimes overseas) with acceptable latency times.
 
Hi Matt,

We're offering virtual CAD Machines to run Creo in the cloud. If you go to our website (www.designairspace.com) you can sign up for a free trial of PTC/Creo running in the cloud.

If this sounds interesting, just check it out. If you have questions or concerns, feel free to share them.

Hope this helps.

Don
 

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