“A graphic card from Nvidia and CAD software from SolidWorks let us present 3D CAD work in a clear and visually compelling way. It lets viewers immediately understand what they are looking at,” says Strategix Vision's Marty Albini.

The Strategix team redesigned the Embrace Heart Stabilizer using workstations with graphics cards from Nvidia Corp, Santa Clara, Calif., (nvidia.com) and running CAD software from SolidWorks Inc, Concord, Mass. (solidworks.com).

The real value of a graphic card is not just for producing stunning images, but in the speed at which designers can perform common CAD tasks. “Most design time is not spent making changes to geometry. It's spent rotating the part, zooming in on details, making sure a modification was what you wanted, and that it turned out as expected,” says Albini. “In operations as simple as filleting, you constantly zoom and pan to reach areas you want to add a fillet to. Zooming and panning can take longer than the actual operation, so the task is heavily video dependent. The faster the card, the faster you work.”