Banner image provided by permission of ALLPLAN GmbH
[Originally posted on 09/25/18 by Jamie Gwilliam]
ALLPLAN prides itself on precision, and AMD further increases this with the recent independent certification from Allplan on AMDs entire professional graphics range.
For over 30 years, ALLPLAN has provided software solutions to architects and engineers. With over 20 languages and 240 thousand users, the company prides itself on providing specialist software. Allplan Architecture, is one such BIM tool for building design from the German company. Allowing you to work in 3D, or combined 2D and 3D. The strength of Allplan is its precision across the planning phases, whilst ensuring a secure data exchange with third parties. With a large user base, Allplan is a critical tool within the industry, where reliable graphics performance is key.
Enter AMD’s Radeon™ Pro Series, the professional range of graphics cards (GPUs) for today’s leading Architects and BIM specialists. The Radeon™ Pro range of GPUs offer acceleration and certification for a wide range of popular packages in 2D/3D design, visualization and complex simulation. This list continues to grow and we are excited to announce that ALLPLAN has now joined this list of over 80 applications fully certified and recommended by Independent Software Vendors (ISV’s) like Nemetschek.
“Architects and Engineers are embracing new design processes using 3D modelling technology. This process, known as BIM (Building information modelling), is transforming the construction industry and as a result, our clients rely on the performance of graphics cards to support their everyday design tasks. We are pleased AMD are long-standing partners, and that AMD graphic cards provides performance Allplan users can rely on.” says Kevin Lea, Senior Vice President Product Management ALLPLAN
Both companies understand that you may not be using the latest hardware, so to ensure productivity remains high, Allplan also certified the previous generation AMD FirePro™ professional GPUs, which were replaced by Radeon™ Pro graphics. This ensures maximum compatibility and peace of mind with the latest version of Allplan.
The ‘Certified and Recommended’ status for Allplan covers the entire range from entry level WX 2100 to the high-end WX 9100, as well as the Radeon ProDuo and Radeon Vega Frontier Edition. This offers extensive coverage for Allplan 2015 to 2018, on both Windows 7 64 and Windows 10, providing users with the optimum choice combined with AMD’s price to performance heritage.
This certification is particularly important when you consider Allplan is widely known for its unique multiple-viewport experience, allowing you to view and work within several floating views simultaneously, across multiple displays. No other piece of computer hardware is tested as much as the GPU when working in this way.
Allplan has two ways of displaying data within the viewports, with the advanced functionality, like hardware accelerated shadows, being reserved for OpenGL® 4.2 and DirectX®. (It’s worth noting all AMD professional GPUs offer OpenGL® 4.5 support as standard.)
Allplan uses a more recent version of OpenGL® than typically found in AEC software. As such this places more demands on the GPU, to keep up with its advanced viewport acceleration features, however if you’re not using a Radeon Pro GPU, you can disable these advanced features. By using AMD Radeon Pro graphics you ensure the GPU and software are working together, to drive better viewports and increase graphics performance for the operator when needed.
You can review the full listing here.
AMD has a strong commitment to industry leading graphics stability. According to a third-party assessment in 2018 commissioned by AMD, QA Consultants determined that “AMD has the most stable graphics driver in the industry” 1 . This assessment highlights AMDs continued commitment to driver enhancements. 1To download a more detailed version of the report, visit: qaconsultants.com/stabilityaudit.
Like ALLPLAN, Vectorworks has also had a longstanding, collaborative relationship with AMD, both on the CPU and GPU side, testing hardware for compatibility and performance.
As a 3D design and BIM program, Vectorworks makes heavy use of the GPU for the display of CAD and BIM graphics. It recommends at minimum a card with at least 1GB of memory. Luckily the entry-level desktop and mobile GPU from AMD professional graphics has twice this, with 2GB.
For very large projects, particularly when being displayed in modern, large, high resolution displays, users will benefit from Vectorworks multicore support. In the latest Vectorworks release, version 2019, Vectorworks has been enhanced even further, allowing multiple CPU cores to feed information to the AMD graphics card many times faster than before. This is a huge time saver when preforming photo-realistic renderings and make it possible to create smooth real-time walkthroughs of the model.
Vectorworks recommends you keep up to date with graphics drivers. The majority of display problems reported to their technical support department have been traced to older drivers. This is a good recommendation for all your BIM/CAD software and does not apply to Vectorworks only.
“As part of our focus on AEC, we are pleased to partner with ALLPLAN to deliver superior solutions to market. We know that quality and stability are what drive productivity for users. This certification ensures a robust experience, making AMD Radeon Pro and ALLPLAN the ultimate choice for your firm.” – Andrej Zdrakovic, AMD Corporate Vice President of Software and Platform Solutions.
In summary, this latest independent certification for ALLPLAN highlights AMDs commitment to tailoring the GPUs to the software you love, whilst ensuring stability and reliability remain key.
You can download a free trial of ALLPLAN Architecture here.
FOOTNOTES:
ALLPLAN is a valued partner of AMD. All imagery is provided by permission of ALLPLAN GmbH. The views of ALLPLAN are their own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions.
Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied. GD-5
©2018 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, FirePro, Radeon and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other product names used in this publication are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective companies. GD-28
