Vista Pre Release

To my knowledge, its not a case of SW supporting open GL or not. Its implementation of such by windows and card drivers, which, last I checked, did not support it.

nVidia released WHQL-Certified beta drivers with OpenGL 2.0 acceleration at the end of January. Most QuadroFX cards are supported, but the drivers are not yet unified - support for specific features may vary from card to card. Updates were posted on Feb 20 and again March 2. nVidia still states that the accelerated OpenGL support is for "compatibility testing" and not yet tuned for performance. See

SolidWorks has not certified these drivers, only software OpenGL is

*supported* in the pre-release. (There are reports that the drivers do work with SolidWorks, but they are not supported.)

As of today, ATI still does not support the FireGL series with their Vista drivers.

Does anyone know if the vista pre-release is for 32bit vista or 64bit vista or both? I can't find any mention about this?

Zander

both

Actually, just 32-bit for now.

(Even SolidWorks recommends that customers working with large datasets should stick with XP for the time being. There's no firm date for Vista 64-bit support. Also, be sure to check support for whatever plotter you use. Drivers are very scarce.)

I'm suprised - with virtually all new computers being 64bit and vista64 promising to support a broader range of hardware it seems very logical to migrate from xp to 64bit vista (if your going to go that way). Where did you find out about the 'no firm date' stuff etc., I'm curious!

Thanks,

Zander

SolidWorks has been updating the Vista FAQ on their website frequently. The last update was Feb 27.

The FAQ started off pretty sketchy, but it has gotten more detailed over time. The hardware recommendations are still pretty much nonexistent (1GB for SW Vista????) but otherwise it's pretty good.

Thanks for the link - pretty depressing little list! I'll promptly forget all about vista for .... a year or so by the sounds of it. I'm surprised too that graphics drivers arn't available for vista by this stage, I thought ms was working on this for multiple years therefore vendors should have had a head start?

Zander

I'm

Vista (aka Longhorn) was a moving target for so long. I don't think anyone knew what features would be in the production release until the very end. I can't blame nVidia and ATI for holding back driver development. Also, SolidWorks is the only major CAD vendor with a Vista release at this point. In the greater scheme of things, a small minority of SolidWorks customers is a very small segment of the industry.

Zander, it is only intended for 32bit Vista. Our x64 version of Vista will not be ready till sometime after our 2008 release.

Mark Biasotti SolidWorks