Choosing a PC to Run OCAD
Mark’s maps demand more grunt
- Load very large background maps downloaded from NearMap.
- Merge thousands of chopped up contours from a GIS import.
- Do anything with very large GIS imports e.g. 5m contours, creeks and cadastre for the entire Sunshine Coast (been there, done that).
Mark delves deeper …
Solid state storage
Solid state storage should give your PC a significant boost; what about loading big background maps?
“We think this makes only a small or no difference” say the nice people in Switzerland.
I tested this with 150MB of background map. It took 7 seconds to retrieve from hard drive, 6 seconds from solid state drive!
Multi-core processors
How about multi-core processors? My local computer shop has an 8-core processor in its standard offerings.
“OCAD is not multi threaded.“
So it only uses one of the cores. The others are playing music, checking your email, and downloading from NearMap. That leaves 4 doing nothing.
64 bit processors? OCAD is 32-bit.
“Maybe when we change to a newer version of Delphi.”
Video graphics
What about a lightning fast $200 video card?
“No influence. OCAD goes directly via Windows GDI.”
… and concludes
Rugged PCs
At the time Mark was getting those useful answers, Ken was embarking on complementary, although rather esoteric, research. For mappers that want to draw up in the field, what are some options for PCs, tablets, slates? What is the difference between a tablet and slate anyway?
Coming on the (in Beta) SAQ page very soon.
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