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I work with a group of engineers that use high end CAD/CAM software. The software really taxes the hardware so the engineers often spend a lot of time waiting on the computer. I was asked if it would be possible to track how much time a typical engineer spends waiting on the computer. If we find out that it is a lot of time, we might be able to use this data to justify better hardware. I was thinking that I could somehow track how much time the computer has the hour glass displayed but I can't find a windows function for this. Does anyone have any other ideas?

Thanks,
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[no name] 30-Mar-12 23:05pm    
5! to question

Hello

1. Create a WinService.
Creating a Windows Service Application

2. Use Timer control in your WinService and have a period time (For example 1 min)
Using Timers in a Windows Service

3. Store (Insert) Starting Service Time in database Set the Timer to Store and update the Counter time. Then the database has the last usage time in the CounterTime Column.

4. Do not forget that you can indicate User in the table.
ID
User_ID
StartDate
CounterTime



http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.environment.username.aspx[^]
 
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It's not the computer that is waiting. It's the application window.

The cursor shape is controlled be each window, not by the overall load on Windows itself.

So, no. There's no way to detect how much the user is "waiting" as cursor shape changes when you move the mouse from window to window and even over which part of a window the mouse is over.
 
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I don't know any method to count the time which engineers waiting on the computer, but i've found interesting article: Build Your Own Render Farm[^], where you can find solution...

Building "render farm" you can expect the following profits:
A local render on one of the school’s 2-GHz Dell workstations, which are equipped with nVidia Quadro4 XGL cards and 512MB of RAM, draws out the 800-frame piece in 52 hours. Using a one-worker farm, our time shoots up to 104 hours-unsurprising, considering the age of the machine. But after adding six more workers to the farm, the same render clocks in at just over 13 hours, more than three times as fast as in pre-farm days.<br />


[EDIT] The second look at the problem... [/EDIT]
Here[^] you can find information that you can programm AutoCAD 14, 2000-2010 software, for example writing custom function which can count time which is neccessary to render project.
 
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