Rendering server for SolidWorks?

[dnilgreb]

My wife is using SolidWorks on her Windows 10 laptop, but since it doesn´t have a decent GPU the rendering is no good. I had a thought that maybe I could set up a server for SolidWorks rendering in a VM on my TrueNas Core somehow. Does anyone have any experience with this?
The simples idea, I guess would be to install a Windows VM with SolidWorks on, and use it via RDP.

But, Windows licenses are a bit costly and I´d rather spend money on a GPU, so if there is another way, I´d like to explore that.
Does anyone here have a great idea?

 

[dnilgreb]

Nobody?

*bump*

 

[jgreco]

But, Windows licenses are a bit costly

I don't know how well RDP will interact with a GPU.

I would note that Windows 10 will install and work mostly just fine without activation. There will be a watermark asking you to "activate windows" in the lower right hand corner of the screen. There are apparently ways to get rid of the watermark too. Of course, it is in violation of the EULA to do so. However, doing this to test hardware compatibility or strategy compatibility, with the intention of properly licensing it once you've tested it, may not be a terrible idea.

 

[dnilgreb]

OK, I created a new VM and installed Windows 10 on it. Seems to be working fine. I´m not gonna mess with the licensing part, if
I get this working I´ll get a real license.
Seems to be working fine, but the VM only has "Basic display adapter" for a video card under Device Manager. I´d like to be able to connect the real hardware GPU from the VM, and I read about doing it, but I mostly find how to do it in SCALE. Can it be done i Core? Does anyone know how? What am I missing?

 

[Ericloewe]

Overall, Core is not as good when you get into the weirder parts of VMs, including PCI passthrough.

That said, SolidWorks is rather picky and sometimes doesn’t like “consumer” GPUs because reasons. A few years back, it refused to use my GTX 980Ti and rendered in software, leading to the interesting experience of my Xeon E5-1650 v3 workstation being about as fast as my Surface Pro 3, whose iGPU Dassault did not have the gall to blacklist.