Using Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book for CAD

Recently I had the privilege of participating in the Windows 10 Devices launch in New York City, where I demonstrated Surface Book’s capabilities for 3D CAD in the ‘Surface for Work’ area. As a follow-up to the many great questions I received and feedback on Surface Book, and Surface Pro 4, I thought it would be timely to provide some additional context and observations based on my experience.

Early in my career as a product designer it was common place to move a large workstation around the office or to the factory as needed. I can recall a number of occasions when I loaded an SGI workstation with a rather heavy 20” monitor into my car so I could work interactively with a customer at their site. It seemed rather excessive for many I am sure, but I preferred to edit the digital master than mark-up a number of A1 plotted sheets. Back then I cursed a number of times (or more) as I moved that workstation around and indeed there were times when I had to revert to paper just out of sheer fatigue.

Today it’s easy. Just take a workstation class laptop with you and the problem is solved. However, everything is relative. Carrying a 6lb+ mobile workstation with you, plugging in a large power supply and so forth is often impractical, impossible or inefficient and somehow, old school.

We have become tantalized by consumer class tablets and apps, but they are not a solution for CAD work either. Despite the fact they cannot run the full CAD application needed, they are limited to a touch interface, or at best a pen like device which is really just a proxy for your finger and maybe a 3rd party keyboard can be attached in some way. It’s just not practical to tap, swipe and pinch your way around a CAD application all day long – even if it has most of the features required it's likely you would need to add a number of peripherals to it in an effort to get the functionality and ergonomics you need to be productive.

The introduction of the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book changes the equation significantly. They run full 3D CAD applications, drive up to 2 x 4K external monitors, connect peripherals such as 3D printers and yet provide the lightweight, highly mobile experience that modern work styles demand. Importantly, they offer a touch interface, but also a pressure sensitive pen, keyboard and trackpad plus the option for a mouse via USB or Bluetooth. In my mind this is what makes Surface a great device for CAD. You can choose the input method that best suits how you work. You might find that 3D viewing controls are easiest with touch, while geometry creation and editing is best performed with mouse selections and keyboard entered values. It may be a case of only using touch when Surface is your tablet, and using the keyboard and a mouse exclusively when it’s used on your lap, desk or connected to external monitors. The choice is yours.

As someone who once ran a small product design studio for many years and relied on 3D CAD, I thought it might be helpful to draw on my experience and share a current perspective on using Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book.

My objective was to observe the usability and practicality by creating a basic part, rendering it and then printing it to a 3D Systems Cube Pro. Then perform a stress test with a large, complex assembly to see exactly how far each Surface can be pushed. Furthermore, I would use a Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book in parallel: one function at time on each device in sequence.

Please note that while I did record values for compute times, most tests I performed were subjective and based on the resulting experience. As an example, when rotating a 3D model view I noted if the performance was smooth, typically 25 frames per second (FPS) or higher, moderate being 15-20 FPS, or poor being less than 15 FPS. I did not use any measurement software to record graphics performance. Let’s just say after doing this sort of thing for 25+ years you get a good feel for what is usable and what’s not.

The setup:

I used the Intel Core i7 versions of Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book both with 16GB of RAM and 256GB SSD and 512GB SSD respectively. Surface Book differed in that it has an NVidia GPU.

Siemens PLM kindly provided two applications that I had some familiarity with: NX10 and Solid Edge. I was a former SDRC I-DEAS user so NX wasn’t a stretch for me to operate with basic competency and I found Solid Edge intuitive enough to confidently work through the features. Siemens additionally provided a beautiful Eclipse 500 aircraft assembly for testing. Rolls Royce PLC kindly provided a JT version of the BR725 Turbine for testing.

I also installed Siemens JT2Go from the Windows Store, Microsoft 3D Builder, and Office 365. I used a combination of applications in random order.

I tested desktop configurations with the following elements:

• Used as is with keyboard attached.
• Connected to 1 x HD or 4K resolution monitor directly via the MiniDisplay Port.
• Connected to 2x HD or 2x 4K monitors via the Surface Dock.
• USB connection to 1TB high speed hard drive.
• Bluetooth connected keyboard and mouse.
• USB connection to 3D Systems Cube Pro Duo, or Cube 3.

I also performed tests while working in the economy cabin of a flight from Seattle to New York City, and again from Seattle to Cincinnati:

• Used as is with a keyboard attached.
• Bluetooth Surface Arc Touch mouse connected.
• USB connection to 1TB high speed hard drive.
• In tablet mode only. No keyboard attached.

All tests were performed while powered and then just using batteries, to see in the impact of power management on performance.

Observations:

Geometry Processing

• As expected, there is no discernible performance difference between the i7 based Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book for compute intensive operations such as part shelling, complex edge blending or ray trace rendering. Although not extensively tested, the i5 based Surface Pro 4 with 8GB of RAM is also highly usable for small to moderate size assemblies (<5000 parts) and limited only by RAM and lesser comparative graphics performance.

Assembly Management

• Large assemblies (>10000 parts) are easily managed when loaded as lightweight representations on both devices and several parts can be activated for editing in-place or opened in a separate window without any loss in responsiveness. The largest assembly I tested was 18,000 parts, for reference.
  
• Working with large assemblies from an external USB 3 connected hard drive is practical and useful when needed. Compared with files stored on the local SSD, there is a small but noticeable difference in loading, saving and closing times using a USB 3 drive exclusively. I would recommend working with very large assemblies from the SSD versus an external drive to ensure maximum responsiveness.

Viewing Performance

• Graphics performance is very high and smooth for common viewing functions such as rotate, pan and zoom across both devices for smaller assemblies or single parts with moderate complexity. In this example, there is almost no discernible difference between devices. Note that Surface Book runs a higher resolution at 3000x2000 pixels versus Surface Pro 4 at 2736x1824 but did not exhibit any performance degradation comparatively. I did run tests with identical resolutions just to ensure parity - again no difference for this test.
• When part topology is particularly complex and the facet density is very high, Surface Book’s GPU sets itself apart by providing additional performance. This is also true for large assemblies above 10,000 parts in my test. This may be the single most important decision factor when looking at the difference between Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book: the GPU makes a difference.
• Interestingly, the integrated graphics in Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book’s tablet (clipboard mode) perform essentially the same. This means that Surface Book’s clipboard mode keeps up with Surface Pro 4.
• Both devices reduce CPU and graphics performance when off power and operating on batteries according to the default Windows 10 power plan.
• When testing with multiple monitors attached, graphics performance for an application on a single monitor is the same as if using the native device screen only. I did stretch both applications individually across two 4K monitors (ultrawide screen!!) and then I noticed degradation in 3D viewing performance and some lag in the user interface, which I think is to be expected given the 3D viewport was probably 7500x2500 pixels. I also tried one 3D application per monitor in a 3 screen setup: Solid Edge on one 4K, NX on the other 4K and JT2Go on the device screen ... they all work perfectly without no loss of graphics performance.

Application Behavior

• Certain OpenGL properties can be tweaked to improve performance in NX and Solid Edge: increased culling value, and reduced arc smoothness value (impacts surface facet count). NX in particular allows you to set the display threshold for using levels of detail (LOD) within assemblies by specifying a size. I found this works quite well to ensure 3D viewing remains responsive for very large assemblies.
• JT2Go from the Windows Store 3D graphics are notably faster than either CAD application when configured identically: same geometry set, no line edges and same facet density, same resolution, etc. It may not be a fair comparison given the functional differences between applications however it is worth noting that for pure visualization tasks, JT2Go is very capable and provides a very fluid experience.
  
• The graphics performance for Microsoft 3D Builder is also very fast and virtually identical on Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book, even when the imported STL file has a very high facet count. I had to create a 376MB file just see Surface Book’s GPU demonstrate its capabilities. This is to be expected given that geometry complexity and part count is naturally limited by the 3D Printer’s physical print envelope. In this case, either Surface Pro 4 or Surface Book makes for a perfect 3D Printing interface.
• Touch based viewing controls in Solid Edge and NX perform identically with the same gestures and responsiveness across both devices.
• I found that I used touch based viewing control in both Solid Edge and NX almost exclusively, as selecting an icon with a mouse was much slower. This is true for Function key shortcuts – they are faster than selecting icons but still slower than using touch. I also found that while a 3rd mouse button helps in this regard by bypassing the need for icon selection, it wasn’t as ergonomically comfortable as using touch. I noticed this in particular when forced to use a mouse while working on a non-touch based 4K monitor.
• Using Solid Edge and NX without a physical keyboard in tablet mode works well but is not practical for extended periods of time. In my case, if I spent more than 20 minutes working with either application in tablet mode, I almost instinctively attached the touch cover keyboard to Surface Pro 4 to keep working, or attached Surface Book’s tablet/screen to the keyboard base. It’s just faster to type on a physical keyboard than a touch keyboard.
• In Solid Edge and NX I could use Surface Pen effectively for selecting parts, faces and edges. It works well as a mouse replacement for creating geometry sketches when in tablet mode in particular. I did use the pen quite often as opposed to using the track pad when using Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book on an aircraft, where your elbows have a tendency to hit the person seated next to you.

One of the questions I am often asked is whether or not Surface Pro 4 or Surface Book can really be used for CAD work day to day, as opposed to just casual work often associated with a tablet. My answer, based on my experience over the past few weeks is yes. Furthermore, it’s helpful to know that the Surface engineering team at Microsoft uses Surface to design Surface!

I certainly hope that you were able to find some answers to any questions you have about using CAD on Surface Pro 4 or Surface Book, and of course,  feedback is welcome.  Please also check out my related blog post here: https://aka.ms/surfaces4eng

Cheers,

Simon