[Cory]

If you want to run solidworks with passable performance you don't need all that much.

At work I have a 3.2 ghz P4 with 4 gigs of RAM and an Nvidia 7600 GT. Drawing individual parts works just fine with no noticeable performance issues.

Small assemblies can be manipulated fairly well, though there is some delay in rendering.

Large assemblies (like the size of the robot) take awhile to load and can be manipulated, but require patience. The rendering delay can be annoying as can the general lagginess while rotating or zooming.

I would recommend higher specs, like Zholl listed, but you can certainly get away with less.