When viewing a Lumion-rendered model, it may come as a surprise to some that they aren't watching real-life video. The visuals are so realistic, textured and smoothly animated that it makes interacting with Lumion almost like playing a high-end PC game. Indeed, like those games, Lumion works best with a graphics card posting a PassMark score of 6000 or higher (e.g. NVIDIA GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 GeForce).

But graphics cards aren't the only hardware components AEC professionals need to optimize. They also need a Lumion workstation that's configured to support single-threaded workflows and high viewport frame rates that enable such realistic visuals. As opposed to multi-threaded tasks that benefit from more CPU cores, Lumion workflows benefit from increased CPU frequency.

A Lumion workstation to consider is the 5.1GHz APEXX S3 featuring eight CPU cores and support for up to three professional GPUs.

Because Lumion can be effectively used alongside a number of other CAD modeling applications, AEC professionals can simultaneously edit Lumion visualizations as they make changes in BIM software, even after they've spent time adding textures and materials.

Of course, when using applications side by side, it's important to remain aware of the potential compute bottlenecks that may result from such a configured workstation. Both Lumion workflows and BIM workflows are single-threaded, and thus frequency bound - meaning the number of CPU cores doesn’t affect performance. AEC users can address these needs by looking at the overclocked, six-core APEXX S3, a system designed to accelerate both creative workflows.

Lumion makes it easy to change visualizations on the fly, which is how many AEC professionals often work. Mobility is highly desired for any task, whether making a presentation to various stakeholders or working with a client across the country. When looking for a mobile Lumion workstation, users have to pay attention to the same criteria that enable peak desktop Lumion performance

Our GoBOXX mobile line has a number of workstations that fit functional and computing needs. The 2.6GHz GoBOXX SLM VR features six CPU cores and is the lightest, thinnest Lumion workstation available, while the 3.7GHz GoBOXX MXL VR (with an Intel® Core® i7 processor and 64 GB of storage) is the perfect desktop replacement.