What's your CAD setup?

[agartner01]

With the build season quickly approaching, I'm looking for suggestions on how to set up our team computers to do CAD. This past year, I was pretty much the only one that did CAD, just because I was the only one with a good enough computer to do it. I'm hoping to get more people involved this year. What are your suggestions? Budget right now is about $600 to $800.

I was thinking of putting something like this:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...2&Sku=B69-1464

[joelg236]

http://pcpartpicker.com if you are up to assembling it yourself.

[Akash Rastogi]

I would highly suggest building your own machine from your own sourced parts, not a barebones kit. I usually source parts from Newegg, Fry's, and sometimes Tigerdirect. Tigerdirect has not been great to me in terms of returning rebates in a timely fashion. Also- don't hesitate to shop around on ebay for good deals on many of these items.

That i3 is really not what you want. It would be a bottleneck for your system. Ultra brand power supplies are also sub-par from what I've read and experienced. You may find yourself purchasing a new one within a few weeks/months. 8 gigs of RAM is good for now, this is something you can upgrade later if needed since RAM always gets cheaper quickly. I would definitely bump up the processor to the 3rd gen i5 at least, instead of that i3. If you plan on overclocking - you can get a 2nd gen i5 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...D=3938566&SID=

How many computers are you looking to build and is $800 the total budget or the budget for 1 machine? I do this as a side business so I'd be happy to help out with the sourcing of parts (as would many others, I'm sure).

Don't forget - Black Friday and Cyber Monday will get you some good deals. http://www.newegg.com/Cyber-Monday-D...ionStore/ID-56

Overall recommendations:
Better quality power supply
i5 CPU
8 gigs of quality RAM

[agartner01]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

How many computers are you looking to build and is $800 the total budget or the budget for 1 machine? I do this as a side business so I'd be happy to help out with the sourcing of parts (as would many others, I'm sure).

Overall recommendations:
Better quality power supply
i5 CPU
8 gigs of quality RAM

$800 for 1. However, I'd like to keep the cost down as much as possible. I'd hope to get 4 or 5, if the money does come through. I'd love it if you could look into it.

One thing I was considering to get the cost down was to get 2 computers pretty much like this, and getting two more powerful ones.

[NickE]

You probably don't need a crazy computer for FRC CAD. Our team's CAD models are likely larger than average and plenty of the computers at our lab with older processors and less than 2GB of RAM handle them fine. A nice graphics card, however, can make all the difference. A nice Quadro card can make an okay machine scream for CAD.

Search around on eBay for old workstations. You can get a great machine for a great price. We have at least one of these in our lab and it's great. Searching "workstation quadro" would probably be a good start. Listings change frequently so if you don't see what you want, look back soon. You can likely get a couple decent machines for sub $300 each.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by NickE

You probably don't need a crazy computer for FRC CAD. Our team's CAD models are likely larger than average and plenty of the computers at our lab with older processors and less than 2GB of RAM handle them fine. A nice graphics card, however, can make all the difference. A nice Quadro card can make an okay machine scream for CAD.

Search around on eBay for old workstations. You can get a great machine for a great price. We have at least one of these in our lab and it's great. Searching "workstation quadro" would probably be a good start. Listings change frequently so if you don't see what you want, look back soon. You can likely get a couple decent machines for sub $300 each.

Hmm this is true, I did not consider that it would be used for just CAD

I have a Pentium 4 sitting around that I can still run Solidworks on pretty well. I guess it just depends what settings you want to run your software at.

$800 is definitely quite a lot for 1 machine if it is solely running CAD software.

[agartner01]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

Hmm this is true, I did not consider that it would be used for just CAD

I have a Pentium 4 sitting around that I can still run Solidworks on pretty well. I guess it just depends what settings you want to run your software at.

$800 is definitely quite a lot for 1 machine if it is solely running CAD software.

I know our sponsors say they pay over a $1000 dollars for theirs, so I thought my price range of $600 to $800 would be borderline at best. Isn't CAD the main reason you spend so much? I know I tried installing both solidworks and creo on my teammates i3 computer, and it couldn't handle even simple solids... I will take a look at what nickE said. I just don't want to by something, then have it not work. That would be great if we could get them for that cheap though!

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by agartner01

I know our sponsors say they pay over a $1000 dollars for theirs, so I thought my price range of $500 to $800 would be borderline at best. Isn't CAD the main reason you spend so much? I know I tried installing both solidworks and creo on my teammates i3 computer, and it couldn't handle even simple solids... I will take a look at what nickE said. I just don't want to by something, then have it not work.

With a formatted drive and a fresh install of Windows, you should be able to run SW on low settings. Most likely, other programs and such were eating up your friends' resources. This is the other reason why building your own PC is fun - no useless junk software.

I personally would still build with an i5, 8gigs of RAM, and a good graphics card. These are computers you want to last you a while and your team will probably do other things on them as well. Your sponsors most likely just buy from a retailer instead of building their own. Nick's suggestion is correct that you want a good graphics card if you are going bare minimum on the other components. I would stick to purchasing more up to date parts though so I wouldn't need to upgrade or worry for a long while.

[sanddrag]

$600 to $800 is plenty these days, so long as you aren't modeling every screw thread and always working with a rendered model with material and lighting styles.

Don't feel like you have to rush right out and buy a super expensive graphics card. Autodesk Inventor is certified on Intel HD3000 graphics and often performs rather nicely on the second-gen Core i_ chips with the on-die Intel HD3000 graphics, even with full robot assemblies.

My home setup built in July of 2011 - I had less than $800 into it at the time.
Antec One Hundred Case
500W power supply
Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3 Motherboard
Intel Core i5 2500K Overclocked to 4.0 GHz
Hyper TX3 cooler
Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB 32mb cache hard drive
Crucial 60 gig SSD caching drive.
G-Skill DDR3-1866 RAM, 8 Gigs
Running onboard graphics on the motherboard - no graphics card. Autodesk Inventor runs great, even while watching HD video on a second monitor through the onboard graphics.

My previous mobile unit was a Fujitsu LH531 Core i5 2510m with 8 gigs of RAM. Again, Autodesk Inventor worked just fine, even with full robot assemblies. In Inventor 2012, there was a minor issue with the graphics driver though on this machine.

My current mobile unit is an i7 Macbook Pro, currently with only 4 gigs of RAM, running Windows 7 x64 of course. Haven't done too much CAD work on it so far, but it seems to run Inventor 2013 just fine. Call me nuts, but honestly I liked the 14" Fujitsu better. The Macbook keyboard and trackpad annoys me.

At school, we have a few different systems, all running Windows 7 x64 of course.
-We have some small form factor HP machines with Core i5 2500 processors and 4 gigs of RAM, onboard graphics.
-We have some mid-tower HP Core 2 Quads with 8 gigs of DDR3 1333 RAM and ATI FirePro V3800 cards running 2 monitors
-We have some mid-tower HP i5 2500 machines with 6 gigs of DDR3 1333 RAM and ATI FirePro V3800 cards running 2 monitors
- And finally, one mid-tower HP i5 2500 machine with 6 gigs of DDR3 1333 RAM and ATI FirePro V4800 card running 3 displays at 1920x1080.

All systems run Autodesk Inventor just fine for most purposes. We generally avoid working on the full robot assembly on the small form factor machines with only 4 gigs of RAM. There is just a little bit of lag when working with the full robot assembly on the V3800 cards. The V4800 card is a significant step up, with noticably faster performance on big detailed models. It can work with a full robot CAD model fluidly while playing HD video on two other displays. Neither of these are anywhere close to the best cards out there, but we had to outfit a total of 13 machines, and it's what we could afford at the time, and it suits are needs fine, except for the fact that I hate ATI Catalyst software (it does work though).

Really, if budget is a concern, I'd say you'd even be fine on a second-gen i3, so long as it was one of the better i3 processors with the HD3000 graphics. General CAD work, 4 gigs of RAM. Full robot assembly, 8 gigs. In terms of number of cores, it's only going to matter if you're animating and/or rendering. For most CAD design work, you're only running one thread on one core anyhow, so a dual core processor is fine.

One thing to keep in mind is that there's differences between gaming-oriented and "workstation"-oriented graphics cards. For CAD work, you want a "workstation" card and something that has been tested and certified with the CAD program you'll be using. Don't just assume that any card with good specs or reviews will be a good choice for CAD.

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by NickE

CAD. Our team's CAD models are likely larger than average and plenty of the computers at our lab with older processors and less than 2GB of RAM handle them fine.

I'm surprised to hear that you're doing fine with 2GB of RAM for a full robot CAD model. Perhaps in SolidWorks.... All I know is in Inventor, I'm typically pushing over 3 or 3.5 gigs of RAM in use with a full robot model open.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

I'm surprised to hear that you're doing fine with 2GB of RAM for a full robot CAD model. Perhaps in SolidWorks.... All I know is in Inventor, I'm typically pushing over 3 or 3.5 gigs of RAM in use with a full robot model open.

Fine is a relative term. It works, but it would probably drive you crazy if you used it 8 hours a day for work. For the students to use them for a couple hours a day it's not too bad.

[Nemo]

Here is what I'm using. It still works great, and the parts are cheaper now. Unless you're scared of putting a computer together (it's pretty easy compared to designing a robot), you should order parts online and assemble yourself.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...09&postcount=9

The most important part of the computer is the video card. Get a Quadro or FirePro card in the appropriate price range. They are both good. Spending more on the processor than you spend on the video card is a bit of a waste if you're only using it for CAD. I'm using an AMD Phenom II (several years old, $90), and it works great. It runs the most complex models I throw at it without annoying me, and I am easily annoyed by slow computers.

Here's a guess at what I would be planning to spend if I was buying a CAD computer again. Given how well this one is working for me, I wouldn't do anything differently.

Video card: $160
CPU: $100
Motherboard: $50-100
Hard drive: $50
8 GB of Memory: $40
Power Supply: $40
Keyboard: $8
DVD drive: $20
Mouse: $8
Tower/Case: $60

[BA SW]

I do not know if you already built your system or what CAD software you plan on using but if you were planning on just buying I would tell you to check out these sites:

http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/hom...0qe-Desktop-PC
- under $650 (the "cheap" option)
- 8gb ram @ 1600mhz
- nvidia gt 625 1gb gpu
- core i5 cpu

http://www.ibuypower.com/Store/Intel...5-Configurator
- under $750 (probably the best option in this price range*)
- can use a 2TB 7200rpm HDD or a 120gb SSD at this price
- liquid cooled
- 8gb ram @ 1866mhz
- amd r7 250 2gb or nvidia gt 640 2gb gpu
- core i5-4440 @ 3.1ghz

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/desktop...k-series/k450/
- under $800
- 2tb 7200rpm HDD
- core i7-4770 @ 3.4ghz
- 16gb ram @ 1600mhz

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/worksta...tion/e-series/
- $1000 (over budget)
- intel xeon cpu @ 3.5ghz
- nvidia quadro k600 (this gpu is supported by SolidWorks)

To check if SolidWorks supports gpu go to:
http://www.solidworks.com/sw/support...rdtesting.html

*you could build a pc for less or maybe get a refurbished model if you prefer.
just thought I would add a few options and a few comparisons.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by BA SW

I do not know if you already built your system or what CAD software you plan on using but if you were planning on just buying I would tell you to check out these sites:
[/snip]

Considering the thread is from 2012, I'm guessing they've built it or they're never going to. Checking thread dates is always a good idea when something turns up on search.