How to run SOLIDWORKS Visualize AI Denoiser on almost any computer

SOLIDWORKS Visualize 2018 SP3.0 onward includes an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Denoiser tool, which allows professional renderings to be made 10x faster.

When the Denoiser is enabled it helps in the significant reductions in render time for production-quality images.It produces better-looking renderings with fewer passes, which takes less time. So this means 150 passes with the Denoiser disabled is comparable to 15 passes with it enabled.

This tool does require:

• A minimum of 4gigs of VRAM (video ram)
• NVIDIA^® GPU (Kepler™ architecture or newer) with CUDA^® 9.0 support.

However, if you want to use it and don’t meet the minimum requirements, you can still force the software to enable the Denoiser.

Denoiser OFF and ON

Follow the steps below to enable the denoiser, if your machine meets or doesn’t meet  the requirements:

Step 1: Enable the Denoiser:

Enable the AI Denoiser through Tools > Options > 3D Viewport and Enable Denoiser. If it’s still not showing up then it could be the VRAM issue, then follow Step 2.

Toggle Denoiser ON

Step 2: Forcefully enable Denoiser even if hardware requirement isn’t met:

1. To force the Denoiser Open Windows Explorer and navigate to:

%localappdata%\Dassault_Systèmes\SLDWORKSVisualize.exe_StrongName_m1hrhdwyiihwvztj1jjjmmmt1uiqebob\27.0.0.0\

2. Within this folder you will find the file “user.config”.Make sure you make a copy of this file before you edit it just in case you run into any issue.
3. Feel free to copy and paste the above path in the address bar of your windows explorer.

Note: In the above path, “28.0.0.0” is version dependent: 2020 is 28.0.0.0, 2019 is 27.0.0.0, and 2018 is 26.0.0.0

4. Now right-click on the file “user.config” > Open with > select Notepad
5. We will have to make a modification within this file. Press “Ctrl+F” to open up the find window and pasting the below string into the search field and Click “Find Next”.

MinimumGraphicsMemoryForDenoiser

Below this string is a value that needs to be adjusted, it should look like:

<value>4096</value>

6. The 4096 value will need to be adjusted to 1024, this will allow the Denoiser to run on any CUDA-based video card, Kepler technology and up, that has at least 1gig of VRAM.
7. Save the file through File > Save and Launch SOLIDWORKS Visualize, now you should see the enable denoiser option like explained in Step 1.