Monthly Archives: May 2017

Realview and OpenGL in Solidworks in Parallels on the Hackintosh

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Those orange lines in a Solidworks drawing when mousing over a part… they were taking FOREVER to render! So, I did a lot of research, and this is what I found:

  • RealView was greyed out:
  • Solidworks was using Software OpenGL with no way of disabling it:

Now I have an Nvidia GForce GTX 770 graphics card in my Hackintosh. It’s not the best, but it’s also no slouch and it certainly is capable of doing the nice stuff with Solidworks… with a registry hack or two…

DISCLAIMER – I’m not sitting in front of your computer. You are. If anything stops working or breaks after following my instructions, it’s all your fault, not mine.

  1. Solidworks supports the really high-end Nvidia cards. This means the Quadro series mainly. The GTX 770 isn’t supported. However, it’s closely related to a Quadro. Over to Wikipedia, and we discover that it’s closest relative is the Quadro K5000:  This gives us some really usefull information. We’re going to make Solidworks think we’re running a Quadro K5000!
  2. Now we need to hack the registry. Open it using regedit and BACK UP YOUR REGISTRY!!! DO IT!!!
  3. Under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SolidWorks\SolidWorks <your Solidworks version>\Performance\Graphics\Hardware\Current, copy the value for the Renderer string:  in our case, it’s “Parallels using NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 OpenGL Engine”
  4. Under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SolidWorks\SolidWorks <your Solidworks version>\Performance\Graphics\Hardware\Gl2Shaders\NV40 find the Quadro K5000 key and note the value for the Workarounds DWord:In our case, it’s 40408
  5. Right click on the  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SolidWorks\SolidWorks <your Solidworks version>\Performance\Graphics\Hardware\GI2Shaders\Other and select “New” and “Key”. Paste the value that you copied from step 3, but remove reference to OpenGL. In our case it becomes “Parallels using NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770” (Without the quots)
  6. Right click in the right window and select “New” and “DWORD (32-bit) Value”. Name the new DWord “Workarounds” (without the quotes) and set its value to the value found in step 4 (in our case, 40408):
  7. Now select HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SolidWorks\SolidWorks <your Solidworks version>\Performance\Graphics\Hardware\Parallels and NVIDIA Corporation and set the “Workarounds” DWord value to the value found in step 4 (Again, in our case, 40408):
  8. Now select HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SolidWorks\SolidWorks <your Solidworks version>\Performance\Graphics\Hardware\Parallels Inc. and NVIDIA Corporation and set the “Workarounds” DWord” value to the value found in step 4 (Again, in our case, 40408):
  9. Exit Regedit. This saves the registry

You now have working hardware OpenGL:and working RealView:This should work for other card models too, provided you select the correct Workarounds value

Why NZ Businesses are Trying to Lower the Import Tax Threshold

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I need a few parts for my car to renew the suspension. Usually one would be able to just press out the bushes and ball joints and replace them, and while it’s possible to do the bushes, the ball joints are not replaceable and require new upper and lower control arms.

I sourced a kit of parts a few months back from the US, but haven’t yet got around to installing them, From memory the entire kit, which consisted of two lower control arms, two upper control arms, two tie rods, two stabiliser bar linkages and two rear stabiliser linkages cot me a total of around NZ$400. Local prices had just ONE lower control arm costing more than the entire kit cost.

I also decided to renew the stabiliser bar bushes. Four are required as each one is effectively half a bushing. I sourced these from Ireland, Febi parts which are OEM. Each one cost me about NZ$ 5.00. The price at a local dealer is around NZ$ 30.00 each.

On reading up the manufacturers procedures for replacing the suspension components I realised I would have to fit some new bolts as they are Torque-To-Yield, not Torque-To-Spec, and new nuts as they are one-shot lock nuts. I’d also need to replace the clamps for the tie rod boots, and I decided to replace the boots as well due to the mileage of the car (One of the “clunk” culprits is a badly worn inner tie rod ball joint). I got all the part numbers and contacted the local dealers for prices. NZ$ 342 was the total. I got on to an overseas dealer to get a quote and wasn’t too surprised to found out that all of the same parts, plus shipping was immensely cheaper – NZ$ 265.

The long and short of it is that we are being ripped off on a daily basis by importers who have almost no domestic competition, so they cream huge markups. They are crying because the internet has opened up a literal world of possibilities to the NZ consumer. I am quite happy to bypass them and order whatever I need from overseas, and screw them.

I’ll document the replacement of the suspension components here when the last parts arrive and I get the job done