Laptop for CAD

[Quilby7]

@Nemo1

I’ve loaded step files from Robotnauts and such with 8 GB of RAM and done fine.

But at what cost?

[Billfred]

@ClayTownR

Since nobody else has mentioned it yet: I strongly recommend looking into refurbished laptops, typically a generation or two old. If you buy ones with the right specs, they’ll work fine for any sort of CAD work, and you’re likely to save a pretty penny compared to buying brand new.

Will confirm this. Pandamaniacs tend to use a lab of iMacs for heavy duty CAD because Onshape, but for many other tasks (programming, scouting, driver station) we have a small armada of ThinkPad T-series laptops that have been amassed from eBay over the years. A little heavy, but they’ve been workhorses and incredibly cheap compared to buying new.

[Sunny_Leveson]

If you don’t mind very bulky laptops and used hardware you can pickup very well equipped HP Zbooks in either 15 or 17 either G2 or G3 editions for very good prices. If you find the right one you can usually get a 256 gb+ sata ssd, 16gb of ram a 4th or 5th gen I7 and a K or M series quadro, for a screaming deal.
Not sure on your price range so ill post a few options but really these get cleared out by companies fairly often so there always more popping up
299

HP ZBook 15 G1, Core i7-4610m 3.0Ghz, 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD, NVIDIA Quadro K1100M...

599

(Workstation)HP ZBook 15 G3 15" M1000M (Intel i7 6th) 32GB RAM, 512gb M.2...

899

HP ZBOOK 15 G5 i7-8750H 2.20GHz 32GB 1TB SSD QUADRO P2000 15.6" WIN10 | eBay

Not endorsing any specific models and there are tons of other offers that may be better just trying to show you the market for these.

[troy_dietz]

@Nemo1

I use Inventor, not SolidWorks, but I doubt the hardware requirements are wildly different.

Weirdly enough, they often are. On every machine I’ve ran both Solidworks and Inventor on, SW either basically refuses to open, or is hogging more resources for an equivalent part/assembly. It’s pretty widely accepted that Inventor runs “lighter”.

@Mr.R_2

Do not automatically assume you can save some money by upgrading it yourself.

On that note as well, RAM prices can fluctuate quite a bit while laptop prices stay essentially the same if you’re buying new. Do a little math first using the price of an equivalent size and speed ram dimm vs the price increase to a model with more RAM. Dell was doing something weird when I bought my machine and I ended up saving ~$100 by buying more ram separately and got a better screen out of the deal.

Laptop hunting is incredibly time consuming, but there’s no time like the present.

[tkchan]

This is for either Solidworks or Autodesk’s Fusion:

Desktop -

• i5+ class (6th gen or later)
• 16GB RAM min, 32GB prefer
• Win 10 Pro (or Enterprise/Workstation works too - the later if you don’t want all the Win App games auto loaded).
• for ‘FRC’ work, a gaming class video cards is fine (min like a GTX 1050/1650+ with min of 4G DDS5)
• for ‘Professional’ work, you really need to get a workstation class video cards like the P1000 (current class is P, last gen is M and then K before that. Think before that is no prefix on the Quadro line). AMD is under the FirePro line usually (not as familiar).

Laptop -

• i7+ class
• 16GB Min, 32GB recommended
• Quadro P/M video card.
  i.e. Lenovo P- lines are great, HP’s Z line (with the discrete video card options) are also good. You can get a used P50 with M1000M i7 (6th gen) 16G for around 350-500 on eBay. HP Z15 with similar configuration is around same price range too.
  This works great for any college student going into ME/CE/etc.

[JOClarke]

Hey if you are still looking for a laptop and don’t mind a refurbished one. Try this Dell Refurbished Computer Workstations from Dell Refurbished Official Dell Store
Coupon code: LOVE4MOM35
Granted this is only 35% but Dell has done as mush as 45% - 50% for other coupons

[Tyson]

I’m still using my 8 year old HP 8470w (Intel Core i5 3360M, AMD FirePro M2000) for solidworks and inventor. relatively low specced for processor and graphics other than a SSD and whatever the max RAM is. no complaints.

i think having ANY workstation graphics card is critical component for a CAD machine. the firepro m2000 is about as low as it gets.

self destructs when trying to load a graphical RPG tho. lol. likely not enough heat capacity for a 14" laptop. wasnt meant for that anyway.

[Happycowdance]

i think having ANY workstation graphics card is critical component for a CAD machine. the firepro m2000 is about as low as it gets.

This is false plenty of non workstation cards that are better than m2000
it really depends what you are doing in cad and what program you are using
often times you can get away with an i5/r3 integrated graphics and 8gb of ram + ssd for quicker loading

If your doing bigger assemblies a gpu will certainly help however it doesnt need to be a workstation card
workstation cards are generally better value but aren’t able to do non work related items as well

[Tyson]

lol. FALSE!

ok, take it as a recommendation.

i know a intel integrated graphics chip “works”, in fact ive suggested it before (not going to bother searching again on what i’ve said previously) as to not stop anyone from trying to load CAD, but really, if you want decent performance, get the right card.