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My son has just started studying engineering at University and he's asked for a new laptop for birthday / Christmas. His Mac wont run SolidWorks and he's suggested a Windows one.
Help...(I know nothing of the non-Mac world). Budget of £700ish?
Is he sure he wants a laptop? I've had a couple at work and they're big, with rubbish battery life.
There may be smaller options available now, but it will never be as good as a desktop.
Suggest he looks out for a refurbished Dell, but £700 isn't going to go far.
I've just ordered a new Solidworks laptop at work and it was £2400 + vat. It's a HP something or other.
But.....it depends what he's going to be doing in Solidworks. It can get quite resource hungry especially when doing large assemblies but if he's just doing simple component modelling of single items or small assemblies then lower spec machines will be fine.
Also consider the life span of a higher end machine - buying a higher specced machine upfront will mean it 'lasts' longer. My ancient (but high spec when new) Windows7 pc is still chugging along on SW2020.
Try and maximise the graphics card capabilities over screen size (get a pair of 24" or bigger monitors at a later date).
Check eBay for used 3D connexion (3d cad mouse). Mine was ex JCB when they upgraded - the function of the mouse puck itself is identical between the range. They can take a bit of getting used to so better off before going into industry.
Is this going to be his go to CAD machine or just a few bits and bobs when not in the lab? Bootcamp a copy of windows on to his existing Mac if it's just for occasional use. A lot of nobber design consultancies who insist on Mac go this way.
I'm assuming Solidworks is 100% needed and he can't use Fusion 360? 4 years ago I was wedded to Solidworks - these days I'm on Fusion and with the advances they have made with it in the last few years, it would take a very specialist use to get me to go back.
He's just started his first year so I don't think it'll be anything too taxing at the moment. He has access to Uni computers but wants to be able to practice in his room.
He only has a 2017 MacBook Air - so Im not certain running Parallels / Bootcamp would work.
The modelling engine in Solidworks is a single core process, it cannot run concurrently across multiple cores, it has to run sequentially on a single core. Therefore a fast clock speed is more important than multiple cores.
The only bit of Solidworks that really can make use of multiple cores is the 3d rendering bit for exporting rendered images of your models but really that's not part of the core functionality of Solidworks.
A fast processor (that can maintain clock speed not just for short bursts) and lots of fast ram (absolute minimum 16gb) is a priority. It will quite happily run on integrated graphics cards these days for part and assembly modelling.
My main machine at work is a Dell precision 5820 desktop with a Xeon processor, 32gb ram and an Nvidia p4000 graphics card. Still totally overkill for most modelling tbh.
I also run an 11 year old Dell precision m6700 laptop, i7 37xx series processor, 16gb ram, can't remember the graphics off the top of my head. It can still deal with importing 1gb STEP file models of car bodies ok. Bit creaky but it's ok.
479 gets a lot of desktop pc here
We use dell precision laptop workstations, they're not cheap or light, but they are robust and powerful. The one in my bag has been chucked about all over the world by me, (it's a 8th gen i9) and is still up to running our suite, which is databases, various CAD/3d applications and our own software, which is sometimes less optimized than it should be!
Re graphics- if you want to go all out on a cad beast, you really need a card which natively does opengl in hardware rather than software. Essentially gaming graphics cards do it in software whereas workstation cards do it natively in hardware. Stick with Nvidia cards, AMD cards do not play nicely/consistently with Solidworks despite what the 'certifications' might say.
So look for Nvidia quadro series and the newer RTX cards.
The easy, cheap option is to use remote desktop to log into one of the university machines. That's what I do when I WFH, and it works surprisingly well. Fairly standard laptop at home and good internet, but not sure if the university will allow it.
Eldest is 4th year of engineering/robotics.
He too asked for a laptop. Said laptop now makes notes in lectures and programming.
Either uni machines or the beast of a gaming/cad desktop for anything else. Not least because of big or dual screens, but also grunt.
Oh, and a subscription to Google 1 connected to his phone for huge backup ability...
You basically want a gaming laptop from the last few years. Doesn't have to be a mega one but they'll be closer to what you want rather than ordinary laptops.
Except gaming graphics cards may not be supported by Solidworks
No, you don’t want a gaming graphics card, it won’t be supported by solid works.
You’ve got a choice: professional workstation laptop certified for solidworks which will weigh a tonne and cost a tonne to maximise solidworks performance, or just a good solid business class laptop prioritising single thread performance and ram size.
I’d go with the latter for a student. A “gaming” laptop will, despite intuition, not help with solidworks.
Budget of £700ish?
Won’t be enough I’m afraid, just looked at the minimum requirements and plugged them into our catalogue at work (I work for a large IT reseller) and once you add VAT, retail margins etc, the cheapest you’ll get away with is circa £1300-1500 something like a Lenovo ThinkPad P16.
As above, the graphics requirements are quite specific, so it won’t be any old gaming laptop.
Solidworks is a monstrous bit of software.
With all the modules we have the installers alone are 40Gb.
I would presume the uni would have suite machines that run it or virtual desktops they can log into from a normal laptop?
SolidWorks specs are not my area of expertise but I am almost certainly selling my son's laptop in the next 2 weeks. Dell Precision 5520, 15.6" 4K Touchscreen, i7-7820HQ, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, and Nvidia Quadro (I think M1200) GPU. Battery life was never great on these though.
Would be well within budget though I've not really checked prices etc yet.
Ignore if I'm way off the mark re specs.
It's well worth taking on board those saying to remember he won't be doing massive assemblies on a uni course. 8 years ago now but I ran Creo on i3 and i5 standard £300 ish laptops totally fine for coursework purposes. I pivoted from CAD and am a simulink man nowadays so can't claim to be up to date; maybe the game has moved on but it can't have gone that far... I highly doubt the machines in the computer rooms are high end CAD monsters that's for sure!
Thanks for all the advice. I'll get him to see what others are using at college and ask in Engineering Department what would be needed.
It seems mad to me that the Uni would require a student to have something like what's being described here. Check actual requirements with them of course, but are you sure this isn't just the 21st Century equivalent of "yes mum, I totally want a ZX Spectrum to help with my homework" and he'd be better served by something more fun? "Gosh, I wish I could run Solidworks for my birthday" said no teenager ever.
Specs aren't unreasonable, which is why the uni will have a large room full of suitable PC's. The son just wants to use it at home. Maybe he lives away from campus.
I would look at remote desktop (what with COVID this should be an option, but may be security issues) or the cloud version of SW. Which is a pain to set up but is better than nothing.
Or that laptop offered above .
It seems mad to me that the Uni would require a student to have something like what’s being described here. Check actual requirements with them of course, but are you sure this isn’t just the 21st Century equivalent of “yes mum, I totally want a ZX Spectrum to help with my homework” and he’d be better served by something more fun? “Gosh, I wish I could run Solidworks for my birthday” said no teenager ever.
Having done a not dissimilar course many (many) moons ago I'd imagine there is no formal requirement but life would be a hell of a lot easier with it. Equivalent would be an art student wanting an easel for their digs (or I guess a computer capable of running Adobe creative suite).
Thinking about this again, SW on a laptop size screen is pretty useless even with young eyes. So given you are tied to a larger monitor and the existence or a Mac Air to carry around already, a desktop would seem the best solution. But take the recommended specs with a massive pinch of salt. They enable you to do everything SW can do at blazing speed. He'll barely be touching the sides of what it is capable of and not using the more computer demanding functionality. Even compatible graphic cards make next to no difference in a real world basic user's hands. You obviously don't want the something secondhand being lobbed out of an office because it can't handle Teams, but something mid spec will be fine.And a monitor.
This place was posted on her a few months ago. I think they sometimes have pretty powerful machines at lower prices
https://itzoo.co.uk/collections/refurbished-lenovo-laptops
Also there might be some uni funding if he asks the right people.
We have hp Zbooks at work for running CAD programmes if we are not tethered to a desk, otherwise the proper design engineers use high spec desktop machines to run Inventor.
I used to run an older version of inventor on an old i5 lenovo laptop which worked ok (until the machine broke) when working on personal projects just as long the part count was kept at a minimum.
The latest versions tend to need high spec machines to run on and at your budget, I'd be looking for a desktop.
As a daily user of solidworks I'd recommend they choose a different degree. It's a terrible bit of software that eats machines and the user's willpower to live.
No idea of the spec computer I have at work but I regularly spend 20 minutes waiting for step files to open and since the last update scrolling seems to require the fans on the computer to try and recreate the last storm we had.