I need a budget laptop for some 3D CAD work (Solidworks & Inventor) any suggestions?

Got some extra-curricular work coming up and don’t want to spend too much incase it dry’s up before it pays off.

Ta

How big are the assemblies you’ll be doing?
My almost 4 year old Acer handles Solidworks fine, but I haven’t tried it with larger assemblies.
That is an i5 with 6gb ram, 750gb hard drive and integrated graphics.
I’d probably look at something with dedicated graphics card and as much RAM as you can. Perhaps look at one of those custom build websites?

SolidWorks just needs processor grunt and memory really. A faster outright processor speed is better for solidworks rather than something with loads of cores – the base modelling engine is a single-core only process at the moment.

Dedicated graphics cards helps, though you only need SW approved (Nvidia quadro and ati fire pro) cards if you want to use realview – i have that switched off most of the time anyway.

Dell’s outlet is great for this sort of thing, much reduced prices on their workstations…

To be honest, any of the 4800 or 6800 (or previous gen 4700 or 6700 if you’re lucky enough to find them) will cope more than happily. Get a decent screen res (Full HD at least) and you’re good to go.

The machine i’m typing on at the moment is a 6700 with i7 2.9GHz, 128Gb SSD (plus added extra 1Tb storage drive) FirePro m6000, with 16Gb RAM. It breezes SW stuff, which is what I use it for most of the time – I regularly work on large assemblies with great chunks of car body in them and it runs great. It cost 900 quid inc. vat from Dell Outlet…

http://outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/InventorySearch.aspx?brandid=6&c=uk&cs=ukdfb1&l=en&s=dfb

EDIT – stock gets update around 3pm Mon-Fri. You need to be on the ball, refreshing every minute or two around that time to get the bargains!

Tier1online sometimes have the Dell Precisions pretty cheap.
Big behemoths to lug around though.
Mine weighs a tonne.
If you don’t need to be mobile you could do a lot worse than THIS

I was wondering if I could get away with a consumer graphics card?
The assemblies will be pretty small 20-30 parts, with pretty simple geometry – my own project may get a bit bigger but, I can cope with the odd crash if it’s my own work.
Laptop would be easier, space is a bit tight at home and allows for local work with the client.

Yeah, consumer card will be fine for your use. Integrated graphics on a new i5 for example would also be fine for that.

Some amazing deals on the Dell outlet link that GD posted. I’d recommend a 4600 as (in true STW style) that’s what I’m on. It does really well and I can’t fault it. Wish I’d known about the site 2 years ago as I got mine 2nd hand for similar money to advertised. At times I do wish it had a slightly bigger screen when out and about but when it’s docked I don’t notice it and the lack of bulk (other than the weight) is welcome.

You may well find that a pretty cooking laptop will be fine – I’ve had a decent amount of luck in the past with nicely specced but nit specialist desktops but you won’t really know till you try.

Good luck

G

While we’re on the subject, is there any reason this RAM wouldn’t work with an i5 equipped Dell Precision M4600?

corsair-16gb–2x8gb–ddr3-1600mhz-cl10-vengeance-sodimm–performance-notebook-memory-kit

I’ve had very mixed results with laptops for SW with my last two work laptops. The Acer i3 4gb Ram was OK – not amazing but perfectly adequate (obviously no realview). This was replaced by a ‘better’ Dell (latitude e6540) with i5 with 8Gb ram which for everything else is an improvement but is bobbins for Solidworks – even the simplest of assemblies make rotating the object a laggy nightmare. The same file was fine on the Acer.

The IT network manager muttered something incoherent about differences between the graphic cards (both integrated) between them as the reason.

Anyway – I’ve vowed I’ll insist on trying the next one I get rather than letting them buy just on rough spec.