Engineering Computer

[Scotty]

At work we use Boxx. At home I run Solidworks on a $600 laptop from Costco.

[sonofeugene]

I'll post tomorrow what I use to run Solidworks. It's a Lenovo and yes it's not cheap. But it's highly capable and won't be obsolete any time soon.

[sonofeugene]

Sorry about the delay.

I use a Lenovo P71, 17.3" laptop with a 1 TB SSD drive, 64 GB of RAM, and an nVidia Quadro P4000 video card. It's running Windows 10 Pro for Workstations which is really the only OS to run as Solidworks is dropping support for earlier versions. 64 bit, of course.

It's running a Core i7 processor running at 3.0 GHz. It's an E3-1505M v6 which was the second most powerful processor at the time I ordered the computer.

The computer wasn't cheap, but I've learned through 20+ years of running Solidworks that buying lower end machines ends up biting you in the long run. And once you get into more complicated designs with large assemblies, the added processing and video power will pay off big dividends as you won't need to upgrade your computer nearly as often.

Also, a solid state drive is a huge plus. Don't get a convention drive.

If you order the computer with a lower amount of memory, make sure you don't fill all the slots. Get memory modules with the max amount of RAM that will fit and work and that way the other slots in the computer are freed up for future expansion.

If you're just starting out, less RAM and a slightly less powerful processor running at a slower speed will work as well as a somewhat lower end video card. FYI, you can go to the Solidworks site and they have a section where they list video cards that are certified by them to work with Solidworks. And I believe they also have recommendations for RAM, drive size, and processor type and speed as well.

Here's a good thread for you to read:

https://forum.solidworks.com/thread/185919

Search the Solidworks forums for other advice.

Oh, and I run an old 30" Apple Cinema Display using an adapter. A large screen is very helpful when running CAD. If you will be using a separate monitor most of the time, you may consider a 15" screen for the laptop. But if the laptop screen is to be used most of the time, I'd opt for the 17.3. Small screens are a pain with Solidworks.

Good luck!

[Satex]

If you google "solidworks computers" you will find a handful of shops offering computers optimized for Solidworks (3D CAD) work. Those computers tend to be heavy on the graphics cards and memory.

[sonofeugene]

If you google "solidworks computers" you will find a handful of shops offering computers optimized for Solidworks (3D CAD) work. Those computers tend to be heavy on the graphics cards and memory.

I also understand that Solidworks can't utilize multi-threading that many processors have. (I think I have that term correct.) I think things like video games and graphic processing programs are heavy users of multi-threading. But in any case, Solidworks will still run on those kinds of processors just fine.

An SSD is important as well as a powerful processor. That's why I went pretty much top of the line when I spec'd my Lenovo. I've not regretted it one bit. It even has a 4K screen when I use the laptop away from home and my 30" display.

[rero360]

Final update, I took possession of the new computer a few days ago, here are my thoughts on it.

First, for some reason, it came with a European power cord, thankfully the school bookstore gave me a replacement for free (I know they are only a few bucks)

It actually has a 9th gen i7, not the 8th as advertised (cool)

It came with one 512 GB SSD, not a 256 GB SSD and a 1 TB spinner. I'm not entirely sure if this is a plus or not, I suppose down the road I can always add another SSD to it to increase storage.

The RAM is as advertised, but I opened the case up and its super easy to replace the modules, money is tight at the moment so I'll probably get one stick of 32 GB Corsair Vengeance for now and maybe get another one down the road.

The battery life is not great at all, it's better than my HP, but I also always left that one plugged in so the battery is shot. The big pain with this one is that the battery is inside the case, so to replace it you have to open the computer up, I haven't looked yet beyond Dell's website, but they don't offer a larger battery for it. Not a deal breaker by far.

Overall I'm pleased with it, I'm slowly adding software and have moved all my files over, I'm bummed that it doesn't have a smart card reader built in but I have one that I can plug in so it's not an issue. I emailed the school IT department to try and get a copy of Solidworks to install, so I don't have to use it remotely thru citrix.