Adjusting PowerBoost Settings for Ray Tracing

Ray tracing is a technique for rendering 3D scenes. Ray tracing traces the path of every ray of light from its source until it either leaves the scene or becomes too weak to have an effect. The term also applies to the reverse method: tracing the path of every ray of light from the camera back to the light source.

PowerBoost (available only with SOLIDWORKS Visualize Professional) provides a render mode that streams ray tracing directly to your Visualize Viewport. An Internet connection is required, and a multi-GPU machine for a Visualize Boost computer or an NVIDIA Quadro VCA is recommended for the best performance.

To adjust PowerBoost settings for ray tracing:

  1. In SOLIDWORKS Visualize, click Tools > Options and select the Boost tab.
  2. In the Profiles list, select a cluster profile with a high performance machine or an NVIDIA Quadro® VCA.
  3. The default settings for PowerBoost are acceptable for most networks. You can adjust the following settings as needed:

    • Transmission Mode: Streaming is the default and applies to network connections with low bandwidth and high latency. Select Synchronous if the network connection has very high bandwidth and low latency, which is common in local area networks.
    • Transmission Format: H.264 is the default and uses relatively little bandwidth, which increases performance. Lossless provides slightly higher image quality, but consumes much more bandwidth and reduces performance.
    • Streaming Bitrate: Higher values increase image quality but consume more network bandwidth. Lower values save bandwidth but reduce image quality.
    • Maximum Framerate: Higher values increase image quality but make the application less responsive. Lower values increase responsiveness but reduce image quality.
    • Latency: Higher values increase image quality but make the software less responsive to user input (such as camera movement). Lower values increase responsiveness but reduce image quality.