• Windows 2000 Professional with Service Pack 3 or later
• Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 1
  
• Intel Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium 4 or Pentium Xeon* cpus (see Important Notes below)

  * Newer Intel based Pentium 4 systems are now shipping with Hyper-ThreadingTM technology. With the exception of the PowerRenderers StudioTools will not take advantage of Hyper-Threading. In certain rare cases StudioTools may hang during startup which is likely due to a license containing multiple StudioTools products. If you encounter this problem it is recommended that you disable Hyper-Threading.

Windows NT 4.0 is no longer supported. You can continue to use StudioTools with Windows NT 4.0, however Alias will be unable to support you with any Operating System related issues pertaining to StudioTools 11.

Contents of this page:

• Qualified Workstations
• Qualified Graphics Cards and Driver Summary
• Wirefile compatibility chart
• StereoViewing Capable Graphics Cards
• AntiAliasing in StudioTools
• Running StudioTools on Ultra High Resolution Displays
• Running StudioTools on Dual Monitor Configurations
• Tablet Support
• Important Notes on Minimum Requirements
• Detailed Driver Notes and Settings

Dell Mobile Solutions: [1]

Precision M50, Nvidia Quadro4 500GoGL, 700GoGL

Precision M60, Nvidia Quadro FXGo700

Precision M60+, Nvidia Quadro FXGo1000

X1000/2000/4000
XW4100/5000/6000/8000

HP NW8000,
ATI Mobile FireGL T2

Intellistation M Pro (6829, 6850, 6219, 6230) 
Intellistation Z Pro (6221)

IBM Mobile Solutions: [1]

[2] The CELSIUS Mobile H computer ships with a removable keyboard using Bluetooth® technology. This keyboard will not work correctly with StudioTools when using any of the keyboard hotkey combinations that require simultaneous use of two or more keys e.g. Shift+Alt or Shift+ Ctrl. Please use one of the following workarounds:

1. Use PS/2 cable to connect the wireless keyboard to the computer (provided by Fujitsu-Siemens, USB mouse required with this configuration)
2. Use external keyboard using a standard PS/2 cable.

Using StudioTools with a Tablet:
StudioTools has been tested and confirmed to work with the Wacom Intuos and Intuos2 series of tablets using the 4.75-9 driver. Using the 4.76-4 driver is known to cause tablet dropouts and is not recommended for use with StudioTools.

Active Tablet Displays:
StudioTools has been tested and confirmed to work with the Wacom Cintiq 18SX Active tablet. At time of press Alias has confirmed stable and decent performance under Windows 2000 or Windows XP. A DVI compatible graphics card is required to use the Cintiq series of tablets. Driver version: 4.75-9 is required.

Note Regarding Dual Monitor Configurations: We have encountered a problem whereby a dual monitor configuration will cause incorrect cursor behavior when spanning multiple monitors. Alias is currently investigating this problem with Wacom. At this time there is no solution. Refer to Dual Monitor Support below for more information on running StudioTools with dual monitors.

StudioTools has been tested on the IBM T221 LCD monitor running at a resolution of 3840x2400 with the ATI FireGL 4 and FX2000/3000 graphics adapter. See Detailed Hardware Notes below for more information on each card.

Note: Running StudioTools at this resolution will result in menus and icons appearing extremely small. In some cases it is possible to enlarge the size of fonts and icons in the StudioTools Preferences. You will also notice a performance degradation when comparing a comparable graphics configuration at lower resolutions.

Display Mode One: Two Separate Displays (sometimes referred to as Clone view)

Limitations

• The Studio interface will only be displayed properly on the primary monitor.
• Drop down menus, marking menus and DirectRender windows will only display properly on the primary monitor.
• If you want to use Studio for modelling on the second display, open the Display properties again and set it as the primary display.

In this mode the graphics driver interprets the two displays as one virtual desktop, so if you run a single monitor at 1280x1024 then the display resolution in a spanned mode would be 2560x1024.

Limitations

When using Studio with two displays, where one display is the Wacom Cintiq, you cannot run in a spanned mode. To configure your system to use the Wacom Cintiq in a dual monitor configuration follow these steps:

• Uninstall the Wacom display driver (if you were previously using a regular Wacom tablet)
• Connect the Wacom Cintiq to either the first or second graphics port
• Open the Display Properties, select the Wacom display and set it as the primary monitor.
• Install the Wacom display driver
• Open Settings>Control Panel>Wacom Tablet Properties and select Calibrate to align the tablet to the Cintiq display.

Note: When using a 'spanned' desktop without the Cintiq, StudioTools runs properly on both displays.

Examples of Graphics cards without Hardware overlays include (but are not restricted to):

Display Properties> Appearance or Effects> Visual Effects> Use transition effects for menus and tooltips> OFF or Scroll Effect

Mouse Properties> Pointers> Enable Pointer Shadow> OFF

• Intel Pentium II processor or greater is required for StudioTools. Any CPU that fails to support the MMX instruction set will likely encounter problems running StudioTools.
• A three button mouse is required.
• A graphics tablet is recommended for use with the sketching functionality.
• At least 256MB of RAM is required and 512MB or more is recommended to run StudioTools for Windows.
• It may be possible to successfully use StudioTools for Windows with a non-qualified configuration, however, support and maintenance programs will be subject to the Alias Support services guidelines.
• At time of press Windows 2000 Server has not been tested in any way by Alias and cannot guarantee its performance or stability.
• The configurations shown are subject to change, and additional qualified configurations may be added after qualification testing has been carried out.
• Where Graphics Controllers are configurable, you must have at least 16MB of texture memory. Due to the differences in the manner in which hardware vendors approach display memory, we suggest that you consult your hardware vendor to ensure that your configuration will support your required resolution.
• The graphics drivers specified in this table are the drivers that were used for the qualification process. While it may be possible to use StudioTools for Windows successfully on earlier or later drivers, Alias cannot guarantee their performance.
• Alias will continue to explore new candidates for StudioTools for Windows qualification and will monitor the current configurations. For the most recent information on qualification, please refer to www.alias.com.

Windows XP Pro:
6.12.10.2088

SketchProject workflows may result in slow performance and high memory usage.

SketchProject workflows may result in slow performance and high memory usage.