If you have ever done a lot intense rendering within Inventor studio on large assemblies, you know how long the rendering process can take to create a lengthy animation. Even by breaking the animation into short segments and pasting them together later still can take hours for a few seconds of animation. One solution to the problem is to use multiple computers for your work consisting of a primary workstation for everyday work and a dedicated workstation to perform rendering and video composition.

I have found it to be nice to use two monitors on a primary workstation and at least one for the rendering workstation. This can start to pose a problem in a small work area with 2 computers, 3 monitors, 2 keyboards, 2 mice, and 2 space pilots. Along with this, the constant turning from one work area to the next isn’t the most ergonomically efficient working habit to follow.

An obvious solution to the issue would be to purchase a KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) switch to utilize 1 keyboard, mouse, and space pilot for both computers. You may need a separate USB hub to do this, depending on the number of USB connections the KVM switch you purchase has. The KVM switch basically allows you to manually switch which computer your input devices controls when you want.

The draw back is that a KVM switch usually has some delay in the actual switch over (a few seconds at least) and you have to remember to press the button each time.

A solution that seems to have the best results is a combination of hardware KVM and a software KVM switch. The software KVM switch I use is Inputer Director (http://www.inputdirector.com/). You basically set one of the computers as the master (the one that actually has the keyboard/mouse attached). The slave is then driven by the master workstation. The transition is seamless when your mouse crosses from the first computers monitor(s) to the second computers monitor(s). The connection is over your local LAN with no noticeable graphic issues or network performance hits.

The hardware KVM is then used to utilize your Space Pilot (or other device) on the second workstation.

So far it seems to be a good setup. If anyone else uses an method, post your configuration so we can compare.

Note: I wasn’t able to photograph my setup so I sourced this photo from a Google image search.