CostX® System Requirements

CostX® System Requirements

These system requirements apply to CostX® running either as a network client or standalone, as well
as CostX Viewer. CostX Server system requirements differ slightly and are covered in a separate
document.

Supported Operating Systems

32-bit vs 64-bit
CostX® installers automatically install the 32-bit version of CostX® on 32-bit (x86) computers and the
64-bit version of CostX® on 64-bit (x64) computers. When choosing an operating system for use with
CostX®, 64-bit operating systems are preferred particularly when working with large drawings. The
64-bit version of CostX® is required to load .SKP and .CPIXML files.

IMPORTANT NOTE: CostX® still supports both 32-bit and 64-bit, but in future, CostX® will transition to
only supporting 64-bit. It is therefore recommended that customers still running CostX® on 32-bit
computers start planning for the transition to 64-bit as soon as possible.

Windows Versions
· Windows 7 Service Pack 1
· Windows 8.1
· Windows 10 Anniversary Update (v1607) or later

Required Windows Updates

· KB2999226 (Required for Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1)
· KB2533623 (Required for Windows 7 SP1)

NOTE: To ensure compatibility and security, it is highly recommended that customers upgrade to the
latest Windows Service Pack and all Windows Updates are installed. Where the Windows Updates
above have been superseded by newer updates, only the newer updates are required.

Mac OS X
CostX® is currently not supported on the native Apple Mac operating system ‘OS X’, however it is
possible to run Windows on Apple Mac hardware using an Apple utility called Boot Camp or using
virtual machine software such as Parallels or VMWare. Please refer to the Apple website for details
about running Windows on a Mac (http://www.apple.com). As with a PC computer, the Mac hardware
and Windows operating system installed must meet the system requirements in this document.

Citrix and Cloud Support

CostX® can be deployed using Citrix and is certified as Citrix Ready. CostX® can also be deployed in
the cloud using various technologies and providers including Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure.
Please contact our support team for further information specific to your environment.

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CostX® System Requirements

Recommended Hardware
Processors
Working with 2D drawings and 3D / BIM drawings
· Recommended CPU speed is the equivalent of or faster than an Intel Core i7 3770 3.40GHz (or
equivalent AMD).
· Minimum required CPU speed is the equivalent of or faster than Intel Core i7 2600 3.40GHz (or
equivalent AMD).

Working with 2D drawings only

· Recommended CPU speed is the equivalent of or faster than an Intel Core i5 750 2.67 GHz (or
equivalent AMD).
· Minimum required CPU speed is the equivalent of or faster than an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400
3.00GHz (or equivalent AMD).

The following conditions increase the load on the CPU, requiring a higher CPU specification:
· Working with very large drawings including detailed PDFs and large scanned images.
· Working with 3D drawings.
· Importing BIM dimensions from Revit DWFs and other BIM formats.
· Using the Auto Count feature. Auto Count benefits significantly from additional cores
· Adding many dimensions or dimension groups.
· Using revisions or drawing comparisons.

TIP: Use a benchmarking website such as http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php to compare

your CPU speed to the recommended CPUs above.

Network
LAN and WAN connections are supported between CostX® and CostX Server.

Latency
· A low latency network connection is required.
· Wired LAN connections perform better than WAN or wireless LAN connections due to lower
latency and are therefore recommended.
· WAN connections must have low latency for adequate performance.

Bandwidth
· Network bandwidth of 1 GB or greater is highly recommended.
· Lower bandwidths such as 100 MB are also supported. For adequate performance, ensure the
network has sufficient capacity to avoid saturation.

The following conditions increase the bandwidth requirements:

· Many users working on the same shared project.
· Adding very large drawings which are located across the network.
· Importing and exporting large amounts of data across the network.

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CostX® System Requirements

Internet
An internet connection is required in order to activate the licenses online. To successfully activate,
please ensure your firewall does not block HTTP connections on port 80 to techweb.exactal.com.

An internet connection is required to connect to CostX® Benchmark and cloud storage providers.

Video Graphics
CostX® supports OpenGL 2.0 and Direct3D 9.0c for hardware rendering and therefore a video graphics
card that supports OpenGL 2.0 or Direct3D 9.0c with up-to-date drivers is required. Please see below
for recommendations on performance levels.

Working with large 3D / BIM drawings

· A powerful dedicated video graphics card is required (eg. AMD or NVidia).
· Recommended performance is the equivalent of or faster than an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 (or
equivalent AMD).
· Minimum performance is the equivalent of or faster than an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 (or
equivalent AMD).

Working with 2D drawings and small to medium 3D drawings

· A dedicated video graphics card is required (eg. AMD or NVidia ).
· Recommended performance is the equivalent of or faster than an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 (or
equivalent AMD).
· Minimum performance is the equivalent of or faster than an NVIDIA 9400GT (or equivalent
AMD).

Working with 2D drawings only

· A dedicated video graphics card is highly recommended (eg. NVIDIA or AMD, 512 MB or better).

Installing a dedicated OpenGL 2.0 or Direct3D 9.0c capable video graphics card with up-to-date drivers
is required as it has many benefits for 2D drawings as well such as allowing a higher resolution to be
set and therefore allowing more of the drawing to be seen on the screen at once. It also offers much
better performance with many aspects of drawings such as improved display quality, faster loading
time, and smoother zooming and panning amongst other things.

TIP: Use a benchmarking website such as http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php to

compare your video card performance to the recommended video cards above.

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CostX® System Requirements

RAM Capacity
CostX® 64-bit (recommended - especially when working with large 3D / BIM drawings)
· Recommended RAM capacity:
§ 16GB or greater for large 3D / BIM drawings, or opening multiple drawing tabs.
§ 8 GB or greater for general use.
· Minimum RAM capacity is 4 GB.

CostX® 32-bit
· Recommended RAM capacity is 4 GB.

The following conditions increase the memory size requirement:

· Opening many drawings concurrently.
· Working with BIM Models / 3D drawings.
· Working with detailed PDFs and large scanned images.
· Working with very large drawings.
· Adding many dimension groups and dimensions to the building.
· Using the Auto Count feature on large drawings.

Note that other programs also use RAM and allowances should be made for their requirements as
well.

Hard Disks
Standalone Configuration (Local Database)
· Recommended available (free) hard disk space is 50 GB or greater.
· Minimum required available (free) hard disk space is 20 GB or greater.

Network Configuration (No Local Database)

· Recommended available (free) hard disk space is 15 GB or greater.
· Minimum required available (free) hard disk space is 10 GB or greater.

The following conditions increase the disk space requirement:

· Using the local drawing cache.
· Using cloud storage providers (files are temporarily stored in the local drawing cache).
· Adding many drawings.
· Adding very large drawings.
· Adding many dimension groups.
· Creating many dimensions.
· Importing BIM dimensions.
· Adding many workbooks.
· Storing many projects in the database (archiving to EXF is recommended)

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CostX® System Requirements

Mouse
· A wheel mouse is highly recommended for panning and zooming operations.

Optional Hardware Upgrades

Some hardware upgrades will improve the experience of using CostX® however they are not
mandatory and may involve additional costs. The following list is not exhaustive, but provides some
suggested upgrades if the budget allows for it.
· Use a faster hard disk (e.g. SATA III 10000 RPM or a Solid State Drive (SSD)) for faster database
access. This will improve loading buildings, drawings etc., importing and exporting data as well
as saving data (such as buildings) amongst other things.
· Use a large widescreen monitor (e.g., Full HD LCD 24"+). With a larger monitor, it is more
feasible to run the computer at a higher resolution which allows drawings and workbooks to
display more information at once and provides a better picture making it easier to work with.
· Dual monitors may also provide improved productivity as it is possible to display multiple take-
off and estimating windows on separate screens at the same time.

Screen Resolution
· Recommended screen resolution is 1680 × 1050 or higher.
· Minimum screen resolution is 1280 × 800.
· Recommended DPI is 96.

Lower screen resolutions such as 1024 x 768 will still work, however screens are not optimized at
resolutions below 1280 × 800.

Software Requirements
Supported Drawing File Formats
2D formats supported are .PDF, .DWG, .DWF, .DWFx, .DGN, .DXF, .BMP, .GIF, .JPG, .PNG, and .TIF.

3D / BIM formats supported are .IFC, .IFCZIP .DWF, .DWFx, .PDF, .SKP (64-bit only), .CPIXML (64-bit
only), .DWG, .DGN, .4DA, .12DAZ and .12DA.

User-Defined BIM Properties

In order to add external user-defined BIM properties to BIM Models, a program that can work with
.XLSX files such as Microsoft Excel is required.

Exported Data
Dimension and costing data can be exported using .XLSX format. To view these files, Microsoft Excel is
required. In addition, reports may be saved in a wide variety of formats such as .PDF format. To view
these files, the appropriate program for the file type is required. E.g. .PDF format requires Adobe
Reader.

CostX® Benchmark
Internet Explorer 11 is required for interoperability with CostX® Benchmark.

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CostX® System Requirements

Installation Prerequisites
Administrator
The person installing CostX® must have administrative privileges (be able to log on as an
administrator) on the computer to which CostX® will be installed.

Runtime Libraries
Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable Update 3 runtime libraries are required and can be
downloaded from here (for 64-bit, choose vc_redist.x64.exe and for 32-bit, choose vc_redist.x86.exe):
· https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/download/details.aspx?id=53840

To load CPI drawings (.CPIXML files) (supported in the 64-bit version of CostX® only), Microsoft .Net
Framework 4.5 is also required. It can be downloaded and installed from here:
· https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30653

Serial Number
You must have one or more valid Serial Numbers in order to successfully activate CostX®. In the case
of upgrades, if licenses are a rental or a purchase under maintenance, re-activation is not required,
and the existing serial numbers are automatically detected.

Date and Time Settings

Check the date, time and time zone are set correctly on the server to ensure that the software
expiration date (if applicable) is set correctly.

NOTE: All clients and servers including the licensing server must be within a 2 hour time zone range.

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CostX® System Requirements

CostXL (Excel Add-in)

The CostXL Add-in for Microsoft Excel supports Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016 and 2019.
Hardware and operating system requirements are the same as those listed above for CostX.
32-bit Support 64-bit Support
Excel 2007 ü N/A
Excel 2010 ü ü
Excel 2013 ü ü
Excel 2016 ü ü
Excel 2019 ü ü

The installer will automatically match the correct version of CostXL to the version of Excel. In other
words, the installer will install the 32-bit (x86) version of CostXL if the version of Excel on the
computer is 32-bit and the 64-bit (x64) version of CostXL if Excel is 64-bit.

Excel 2007
Excel 2007 is available in 32-bit only.

Excel 2010
Excel 2010 is available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions however Microsoft does not recommend the 64-bit
version for use with Add-ins. CostXL supports both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Excel 2010,
however in line with Microsoft recommendations, 32-bit is recommended.
Note that in Excel 2010 there is a Starter Edition which does not support Add-ins and therefore cannot
be used with CostXL. The ‘Click-to-Run’(streaming) version of Excel 2010 is also not supported.

Excel 2013
Excel 2013 is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit, and both versions are supported by CostXL.
CostXL does not support Excel Web App (part of Office Web Apps), Excel 2013 on Demand installation
(part of Office on Demand), Excel 2013 RT (part of Office RT on Windows RT), or Excel 2013 Mobile
(part of the Office Mobile suite). The ‘Click-to-Run’ (streaming) version of Excel 2013 is also not
supported.

Excel 2016
Excel 2016 is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit, and both versions are supported by CostXL. CostXL
does not support Excel Online (part of Office Online) and Excel 2016 Mobile (part of the Office Mobile
suite).

Excel 2019
Excel 2019 is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit, and both versions are supported by CostXL. CostXL
does not support Excel Online (part of Office Online).

Restricted - Not to be reproduced without the express written authority of Exactal Technologies Pty Ltd
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