Revit, AutoCAD and SolidWorks spend most of the day running on one core. We build for that first, then add the memory a federated model needs and the graphics a live walkthrough asks for. FOCUS PRO for a day spent authoring; FOCUS MAX when the models get federated; CREATOR MAX for simulation, VR review and scan data.
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ON-SITE SERVICINGLess downtime — we come to youFour machines on one ladder. FOCUS PRO handles the everyday professional 4K load. FOCUS MAX steps up to 8K, RAW and heavy grading. CREATOR MAX is that same top-end performance in a machine quiet enough to mix beside. CREATOR COMPACT puts Pro-level editing into fourteen litres. All four can be configured before we build them.
Authoring runs on one core. Simulation wants every core you have. So the same budget buys a very different machine depending on which one fills your day. Here is where each program puts the load, what it looks like when a machine is short of it, and which model we would start you on.
| Program | What it depends on | How it shows up | Start with |
|---|---|---|---|
 REVIT | One fast core. Model regeneration, worksharing and view opening are all largely serial. | A pause every time a view opens or a synchronise runs, on a machine with cores to spare. | Focus ProDaily BIM authoring |
 AUTOCAD | One fast core and fast storage. Xrefs are read from disk every time a sheet opens. | Sheet sets that take a minute to open, and regeneration that stalls on a dense drawing. | Creator Compact2D drafting, in a site office |
 SOLIDWORKS | Single-core speed for rebuilds, then memory and certified graphics for large assemblies. | Rebuild times that grow with the feature tree, and assemblies that stutter on rotation. | Focus MaxLarge assemblies and studies |
 RECAP PRO | Memory and storage above all. An indexed point cloud is read constantly and is very large. | A registration that will not fit in memory, and a drive filled by one site's scan data. | Focus MaxPoint clouds and scan-to-BIM |
 PIX4D | All available cores, plus memory and disk. Photogrammetry is the most parallel work on this page. | Processing runs measured in hours or days, and intermediate files that fill a drive. | Creator MaxLarge site reconstructions |
 ANSYS | Cores, memory and solver scratch. Licensing is often per core, so the spec and the licence are one decision. | FEA and CFD models that exceed memory, and solves that run overnight either way. | Creator MaxCheck your licensing first |
| Certified graphics drivers | Stability over peak frame rate. Autodesk and Dassault certify specific driver branches. | Display artefacts or crashes that track a driver version rather than the model itself. | Tell us the applicationsIt changes the card, not the CPU |
Where your recent jobs sit matters as much as which program you open. At the light end — 1080p to modest 4K, a handful of tracks, a look rather than a grade — camera H.264 plays without proxies on a mid-range Focus, and the rest of the budget is usually better spent on lenses. We will say so.
The daily professional load is long-GOP 4K from several cameras, a full Resolve grade with noise reduction on a node or two, and After Effects comps coming back into the cut. Above that — full-debayer RAW, heavy NR, optical flow, projects that stay open for months — proxies come back unless the machine is specified for it.
Five things decide how fast an edit feels. Here they are in the order that matters for post — what each one does, and what you notice when there is not enough of it.
Every scrub through long-GOP H.264 or HEVC is a decode job, and it lands here. The CPU also carries After Effects, which is still largely single-thread — so how fast one core runs matters as much as how many there are. Higher core counts shorten the export.
Resolve relies on the GPU far more heavily than Premiere does. Grading, noise reduction, optical flow and Magic Mask are all GPU work, and they run out of VRAM before they run out of speed. The card's encoder block is also what turns a long export into a short one.
Media belongs on one NVMe, cache and scratch on another, with the operating system on its own drive. That split is the least expensive effective upgrade in an edit suite, and it prevents the intermittent timeline hitches that are otherwise difficult to trace.
Memory covers streams, layers and RAM preview. Four angles of multicam with a couple of adjustment layers uses a large amount of it, and After Effects uses more again. Running short doesn't show up as slowness; it shows up as the application appearing to freeze.
An export is twenty minutes at full load, not a benchmark burst. Cooling determines whether the machine holds its clocks the whole way or begins throttling ten minutes in, and how much noise it makes over the full run.
On a fixed budget, this is the order of priority for CAD and BIM workloads. It is deliberately different from a gaming build, where the graphics card takes the first and largest slice.
The last two rows are the ones that move. A week with regular rendering, simulation or scan processing lifts core count to the top and brings the graphics card with it. For drawing and documentation work they stay where they are, and the difference is better spent on memory.
Weighting for day-to-day Revit, AutoCAD, Civil 3D and SolidWorks. Exact components are settled with you before the build is confirmed.
Focus Pro · Focus Max · Creator Max · Creator Compact
Almost everything that makes you wait in CAD runs on a single core — which makes choosing a processor far simpler than the spec sheets suggest.
Opening a view, regenerating the model, loading a link, rebuilding an assembly, plotting a sheet set — almost every action that makes you wait in Revit, AutoCAD, Civil 3D or SolidWorks runs on a single thread. However many cores sit idle beside it, the job finishes at the speed of one core.
That is why FOCUS PRO and FOCUS MAX are built around the highest core clocks we can get rather than the highest core count. The limit is in the software, not the silicon — which is why a big many-core processor bought for daily modelling usually gives you a slower Revit session at a higher price. We would rather tell you that before you buy it.
The reverse also holds. Rendering, structural and thermal solves and drone-dataset processing use every core you can give them. Those are different jobs with a different right answer — and they are the ones that justify CREATOR MAX or a Threadripper build.
You wait on view changes and model regeneration more than you wait on renders.
Your project has linked models from other consultants, and it opens slower every month.
You are asked for live walkthroughs of models that were authored for documentation rather than real-time display.
You are bringing scan or drone data into a coordination model.
You buy machines for a practice rather than a single seat, and IT standards apply.
Where the working day is spent
Opening views, regenerating the model, editing families, syncing to central and printing sheets — one thread at a time.
Pans, zooms, regens, Xref reloads and surface edits all depend on single-thread speed.
A part or assembly rebuild is single-threaded. Adding cores does not shorten it.
The highest sustained clock speed available, cooled well enough to hold it all afternoon.
Where core count matters
Autodesk Raytracer, V-Ray and Corona on CPU scale across the whole processor. This is the classic many-core job.
FEA, CFD and energy analysis solve in parallel. A solve that takes overnight on a desktop chip can finish within the same working day.
Pix4D, ReCap and RealityCapture push cores, memory, storage and the GPU at the same time, for hours.
Core count — once these jobs are a weekly part of the schedule rather than an occasional one.
Focus Pro · Focus Max · Creator Max · Creator Compact
Video editing and compositing performance for creators at every level. Whether you cut in Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, DaVinci Resolve or Avid Media Composer, there is a model built for it: FOCUS PRO for professional 4K, FOCUS MAX for 8K and RAW, CREATOR MAX when you want that performance to look and sound the part. Curated components, tested and benchmarked, so you can take on the heaviest projects with confidence.
Resolution gets the attention, but codec is what decides whether a timeline plays. 10-bit 4:2:2 H.265 from a mirrorless camera is compressed across long groups of frames, so every scrub backwards makes the machine rebuild frames it just threw away. ProRes, DNxHR, BRAW and R3D all behave differently on the same hardware. If playback falls over the moment you add a dissolve, the problem is decode — not raw power.
That is why we build around the media you actually shoot. A Sony A7S on HEVC needs a different machine to a Komodo on R3D, and both differ again from an Avid house pulling DNxHR off shared storage. Tell us the camera and the codec, and the answer stops being a guess.
Proxies exist because the hardware can't decode the camera media in real time. They cost you an ingest wait, a relink, and a grade you can't fully trust until you switch back to the original media. A configuration specified for the codec removes the need for them.
Hardware encode is what shortens exports. NVENC on the graphics card and Quick Sync on Intel chips do H.264 and HEVC in dedicated silicon instead of on general-purpose cores.
Cache and scratch on their own NVMe is the least expensive effective upgrade in an edit suite, and one that's often skipped.
Anyone can order the same parts. What you are really choosing is who builds the machine, who tests it before it ships, and who answers the phone when something goes wrong two years from now. That is where we are different.
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Every system is checked as it is built, then stress-tested and fully updated before it leaves us — so problems are found here, not at your desk. It arrives ready to work, hand-foamed for safe transit anywhere in Australia. Four years of national awards say we get that right.
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What we actually check before a machine is packed, how we specify one in the first place, what happens in year three, and an honest comparison against buying off the shelf or building it yourself.
Virtual production volumes, arena lighting shows and Epic’s own Unreal showcase. When a room full of screens has to stay in sync and nothing is allowed to drop a frame, this is the hardware behind it.
A Hyperfocus workstation used for advanced liquid particle simulation — modelling how dirt dams respond to real-world conditions, to help predict and prevent catastrophic structural failures before they occur.
We partnered with the Country Fire Authority to power their state-of-the-art aircraft firefighting simulators — giving crews the tools to train for the critical, high-pressure moments of flying difficult firefighting aircraft before they ever need to do it for real.
As the principal technology partner to BJR, our workstations and laptops power the entire team — engineers in the garage, driver sim systems, and real-time telemetry analysis in the pits on race day. Where performance and reliability matter most.
Some of these relationships now run to several years and multiple deployments. Others began with a single machine.
Curated configurations held in stock and dispatched fast. Professionally built, tested and backed by Aftershock PC — no configuration required.
Start with the machine built for your software, then change what you like. We build, test and optimise it before it leaves us.
Tell us the camera, the codec and how many seats. We'll come back with a spec and a price — written enquiries answered within one business day.
