How much RAM?

[Eric Scheuing]

I was just wondering how much RAM do you think you need in order to run Inventor without any problems. Our school currently has 256MB in the computers with Inventor and it tends to lag and freeze a lot. We talked to a teacher, and he said he'd talk to the IT guys to get upgrades. We can get 512 for each computer. Is this enough to at least speed things up a decent amount?

[Darkforces]

I find that at least one gig is the minimal amount but Ive used inventor with 256, just make sure to save allot. 512 should be enough to let you draw and assemble you robot and other parts but i wouldn't try animation or i res rendering.

I'm running 1.5 gigs at home, and it's plenty. At robotics we're running 4 gigs of Corsair Dominator, but those machines were donated from our sponsor: Nvidia.

[AustinSchuh]

I fill my 1 Gig of RAM and ~ 1 Gig of swaq every now and then. I am using Solidworks, and don't know how that compares to Inventor in terms of how much RAM it uses.

[GMAdan]

The system requirements are 1 gig of ram. But also mind the "box" also says if doing under 300 parts in assembly 126 graphics memory if 300+ 256 graphics memory

[Dan Zollman]

512 is still pretty low, but it'll be a substantial improvement.

[Andy A.]

For small parts and assemblies, 512 will be adequate. Avoid adding textures to parts, and kill any extraneous programs running before starting Inventor.

I've also noticed that periodically minimizing and maximizing Inventor causes it to drop memory usage drastically. Try opening Inventor with the task manager open and monitoring the process list. Look at the amount of memory Inventor uses with nothing open, then minimize it. It will probably go from over 100,000 K to about 30 thousand. I imagine it has something to do with a graphics cache or some sort of magic.

I can't find any real correlation to memory and stability. I had a hunch that writing to the page file was causing problems, but I can't prove it. Inventor seems just as buggy on my computer as it does on the schools computers. More memory certainly speeds it up, but that usually just translates into faster crashes. Its not like it dies every 10 minutes, but I have learned not to trust it for any length of time. And I always save before trying something fancy, like opening a large assembly, or you know, saving.

Save early, save often. And if things are slow, be patient, Inventor works at its own pace.

-Andy A.

[65_Xero_Huskie]

1G is the requirements if you want it to run with no problems.
Ive run it on 512 but it isnt the same quality, everything was slow and i dont like it.