1. 14 februari 2008 TMC-Nederland1 Grafische weergave in MicroStation XM en de consequenties voor het werkstation Mark Stals Consultant Bentley Systems Europe

2. 14 februari 2008 TMC-Nederland2 Tips & Tricks With the introduction of XM, all the graphics displayed on the monitors as well as the output to printers/plotters (or print/plot files) is handled by the videocard (and MicroSoft’s DirextX9.0c), thus the amount of memory on the pc’s videocard is very important. In pre-XM versions the graphics was all handled by the processors of the pc’s. Only when graphics acceleration was activated in the pre-XM versions, OpenGL on the Videocard handled the graphics. As for the hardware requirements, there is no real difference between PowerDraft XM, Bentley RedLine XM, Bentley View XM or MicroStation XM and all applicatons on top of those products.

3. 14 februari 2008 TMC-Nederland3 Tips & Tricks The MINIMUM amount of video memory is 128MB. This is per monitor. So for dual screen, you will need at least 256 MB. If the drivers are outdated or if the amount of memory is insufficient, MicroStaton will automatically switch to Software DirectX mode. That mode will use the normal processor of the pc to emulate/handle the graphics, but is significantly slower than a videocard. The higher the resolution on the monitor, the more memory you will need! Should you see the message: [Software DirectX] next to the view number in one of the headers of your views, than that indicates that the videocard has not got sufficient memory or that the driver of the videocard is outdated/does not support DirectX 9.0c. In the benchmark test of your hardware, you will also see a link to your results as well as the results of other customers, so that you can compare.

4. 14 februari 2008 TMC-Nederland4 Tips & Tricks As for the videocard (XM products): - make sure you have installed the latest video drivers. Please try the latest drivers supplied by the videocard vendor (like Nvidia or ATI) as well as the drivers supplied by the manufacturer of your PC (like HP or DELL). Note that these drivers may be different! Multiple install: XM versions can be installed next to one or more older versions of the same product(V8, J). If you want to be able to use the pre-XM versions as well as XM, than your videocard should support both DirectX9.0 for XM as well as OpenGL for V8 and J. OpenGL is used when you activate graphics accelleration in the pre-XM versions.