my mrs is considering going freelance doing CAD work from home

so would need to buy a licensed copy of Autocad

plus a high spec PC to run it

so – before we go to PC world and buy the quickest one they have, should we go somewhere else?

any recommendations?

Get a suitable graphics card. I don’t know what’s good for Autocad, but I’m sure that’s just a quick google away. Expect to pay a lot just for the graphics card, and not the sort of thing you’ll find in PC World (but I may be wrong, hence google. Cheaper, gaming cards may work but may not be as well supported.)
Two monitors are good, and some sort of 3d mouse well worth it.

Got some Dell laptops recently, and a custom workstation from Scan.

I use Solidworks and getting a graphics card on their approved list is advisable! You might get away with a decent gaming card with AUTOCAD (I have in the past with Abaqus). I prefer Nvidia; not overly impressed with my AMD Firepro :-s

Surely SolidWorks is where its at now?
Edit: too slow

+ nowadays an SSD is probably a must.

Unless you absolutely need full ACAD, go for LT, it’s much cheaper.

You don’t need a spectacular graphics card for basic Autocad, unless you are doing 3d work. In fact, look at Excitech: It is actually cheaper to get Revit LT suite (that comes with Acad LT) than it is to get Acad LT on it’s own.

I would look at small form factor options from Dell or HP, that’s what we use at work. 8gb of RAM is an absolute minimum, as is an i7 processor. A decent graphics card is necessary, you just don’t need to go overboard.

Also, get something that has a generic case and components that allow you to upgrade them in the future.

Edit: Oh, and as large a hard drive as you can afford.

Unless really needed, I’d get a desktop. Much easier to upgrade the graphic card, and the portable versions of good graphics cards never seem to work as well.

We get by on the best of the lower tier of nvida cards, got one cheap of ebay. Fx480 i think.

Iirc, gaming cards offer good speed and refresh rate, cad type czrds are for accuracy.

I bought myself an old Dell Precision t3400 and stuck an Nvidia Quadro Pro (5600?) 1.5gb graphics card in it for CAD and surveying software mainly. PC was less than £100, card was £70.

I think it’s got 6 gig of ram in it too. Can’t recall how much I spent on RAM.

Not massive spec but well more than adequate running dual screen monitors.

I use Draftsight for CAD work. It’s free but you wouldn’t think so!

Workstation Specialists [/url] have been really good for me at work.

2D CAD won’t need anything too special.

3D benefits from the best spec you can afford.
SSD will help on large complex assemblies as it acts and fast swap space.
AMD FirePro graphics cards have the best support from Autodesk, 2GB onboard memory would be a good start.
16GB Ram
Dual monitors makes work at lot easier too.
Spacenavigator 3D mice are nice to have also.

+1 on Graphics card… I find it is often the critical function much more than physical ram or hard disk size. Nvida Quadro for me but I wasn’t paying…

We use THESE

(Albeit new ones).
But they cost a lot more than £450.
A nice big screen helps.

The key question is surely what work is she expecting to do on it as that drives what sort of PC is required is she thinking of doing

Simple 2D drawings for small house extensions with a bit of sketch up for visualisation or More complex 2d drawings for larger projects with rendered visualisation or Fully blown BIM maturity level 4 Revit projects for an airport. They have very different needs.

Also don’t be sold on the thought that more cores = better. very few programs use multiple cores effectively, fewer cores at a faster speed are better for cad imho,

oh and RAM, RAM, RAM and More RAM. 32gig + as a starting point for a desktop

more like in the middle of those sort of jobs Akegata

more 2D drawings, schools, leisure centres etc, but not rendering

IF you are up for some hacking you can get a Quadro for cheap …

http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/hacking-nvidia-cards-into-their-professional-counterparts/

I got a budget base unit from Ebuyer for £199, its one of their own brand things. It runs AutoCAD with no problems plus Sketchup and so on. No need to go overboard on spec unless you are doing huge 3d cad renders but I’d use Sketchup for that anyhow!

Is she just using autocad for 2d drawings? If so, pretty much and new computer will happily run it.

If 3D then the world opens up a bit. I HIGHLY recommend Dell Precision laptops from the Dell outlet store. The m6700 is brilliant. I use one at work for heavy solidworks use with i7/128gb SSD/16Gb ram and an AMD m6000 grahics card. Large assemblies with complex imported surface models of car chassis and robots work absolutely fine on it.

FWIW I find the m6000 card in the laptop far better than the Quadro 4000 in my work desktop.

It cost about £900 inc. VAT from the refurb store.

more like in the middle of those sort of jobs Akegata

more 2D drawings, schools, leisure centres etc, but not rendering

if laptop just find one with a matte full hd screen. The spec of a laptop with that will be more than enough to cope.

If desktop, pretty much anything with an i3 processor or better will be good. two monitors is lovely for CAD. Not sure if autocad supports it, years since I used AC.

Also consider whether free programs like DraftSight will be OK for use. It’s great software, like a free version of AC, saving natively in DXF and DWG.

Does acad really need a high spec machine? I’m doing some Solidworks freelancing after being made redundant and 4 year old twin Xeon quad core Dell workstation with 4mb ram, windows 7 pro, 500mb graphics card cost me £180 from a eBay refurbisher. The windows 7 licence alone is worth over £100!
£100 more for a new £22 inch monitor.
Needs a bit more ram but it does the job fine if you’re not doing huge assemblies or renders.
Don’t get a laptop unless doing acad on the move is a must. A desktop workstation and cheap laptop will cost about the same and be better.

I run solidworkds, Nx 7.5, Nx 8.5, autodesk and matlab all from my 6gb laptop (with i5 processor) and dedicated graphics card (with an extra 1gb of ram) and they all work perfectly, a little slow but thats because its a laptop. cost me £500 new down from a grand but the equivalent tower would be better I imagine.

Just picked up a Dell T5600 workstation (64bit) for home (currently in the office)for a bargain price of £550. Got mine on the bay but take a look at the Dell Outlet. (10% off until the 24th Jan).

I currently use a Duo Core 3.0mhz (32bit) which is fine for ACAD but struggles a little with Revit.

Another plus for LT.

+1 for Nvida Quadro cards but interesting to hear good things about the AMD card.

2D CAD won’t need anything too special.

This

Get whatever approved gfx card for your software. I know if you run a gaming card (which you can soft mod to act like a workstation car) things like real view graphics are missing.

I run a 3.4ghz i7, 8gb ram, Quadro 600 on Win 7 64bit to run SolidWorks 2013. Runs it nicely to be honest.