DISQUS

I have it up and running pretty smoothly, so far so good.

the variety is what keeps me checking in. you balance your posts very well w/ solidworks core info/news w/ more fringe CAD related stuff. keep it up!

@ matt

to clarify: obviously you need an ok graphics card, but the difference in performance between the two I was comparing makes a nominal difference in SW, especially w/out realview. I use photoworks regularly, (2007 still... waiting for work to upgrade) and photoworks doesn't even use the GPU on the graphics card.

they find lots of people like me, sadly too many like you, who jump to conclusions and feel the need to point out somebody's assumed blunder instead of giving helpful comments.

I've been running sworks on my imac for a bit now, and am extremely happy w/ the performance. I have the late 07 aluminum imac. 2.8 GHz dual processor, 4 gb ram, and the Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256mb card. I'll have to check what drivers I have when i get home tonight.

@ work I use a pc for sworks. dell precision, 2.5 GHz dual processor, 3 gb ram, quadro fx1700 512mb card.

In comparing the two in running sworks, I don't notice any difference.

Cost? iMac - $2150 - plus $90 dollars later for the 4 gb ram, plus $85 for XP
dell - $2800 and thats for computer alone (no monitor keyboard, etc) plus a business program discount, the dell has a better graphics card, but that doesn't effect sworks much, except realview, which I don't use yet.

the iMac was much the better deal imho. plus the applications that come w/ leopard and iLife blows any preloaded software on a windows computer away. (no trial software )



I installed xp when I first got it w/ bootcamp. I only had 2 gb ram and vista being a bit to heavy of a os, picked xp. but now that I have 4 gb ram, (xp only recognizes 2.9 gb) do you think I'll see much performance increases w/ vista (recognizing all 4 gb)

Lin, your photoworks camera explanation was great, thanks. It does make since that as a I reduce the amount of light in a scene to creat DOF, indirect illumination, while still used, makes less and less of an impact, because the environment isn't very bright.

I had normally just used indirect lighting, and used photoshop to create a post-rendering DOF. But with time restraints at work becoming tighter, I started to try to use DOF in conjunction w/ ind. ill. to pop out some renderings w/ little or no post photoshopping.

Thanks for all the comments.

In Photoworks, do many people use both the depth of field and indirect illumination? I find the two don't work together well- turning DOF on causes indirect illumination to make little difference. I know this isn't the most exciting question, and maybe a better one will be sparked from this.