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Computer requirements?

JohnMc45

Plastic
Joined
Jul 30, 2016
Computer requirements? Fusion vs. ???

I have been thinking of getting myself one of the free licenses to one of the Autodesk programs. Didn't give computer requirements any thought until I was talking to a friend the other day and he mentioned having to take his laptop in to be fixed. I told him just get a new one there under $500 He told me no this is his "special" engineering laptop to run CAD. So do I need anything special or will any relatively new PC/Laptop work if I am not trying to design the space shuttle and only talking about fairly simple parts?
 
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Look at the Boxx line of computers and you'll get an idea of what you need to run Solidworks or Inventor (or any serious CAD/CAM program) in a reasonably efficient manner.

My brand new $1,000 laptop at home is ok for a part or two, or a drawing or two, but falls on its face trying to do any real work. Big assemblies? Don't even bother.

You can get a pretty solid, refurbished desktop from Dell for around $1,200 bucks (around $2,000 stock) that will do an adequate job. The towers most Engineering companies run start around $3,000 a piece, and guys running heavy duty stuff (FEA, crazy complex geometry anything) are using machines in the $5,000 range...and still complain about how slow they are.
 
To add on to what Johnny said, you'll specifically want a discreet GPU as no on-board (IE Intel) graphics are going to perform well.

Check the system requirements on the product page (Autodesk is pretty open with that information) and realize that you'll want something better than the minimum because the minimum is going to really bog down, all while having many settings turned way down at the same time.

I have an i5 laptop with a GTX 480m GPU that does alright in Fusion, but it's certainly not ideal and I think I'd shoot myself if I had to use it for actual work.
 
One of the hardest daily tasks we can possibly face here is the requirement to design parts(anything for this matter) based on the rule of simplicity. That said, if the part does not compute on our fleet of Mobile Workstations (HP Zbook G2), there is a design problem, not the IT.

HP Zbook; forget very large assemblies, of course, but that's not the point to be able to make parts and be mobile at the same time ;)

You can get those Zbook cheap, second-hand, these days I think if budget is an issue. Get a minimum of a K2100M GPU and you'll be happy. We have one w/ K4000 and it doesn't bring in much advantages to be honest.

PS: Can't wait to hear one rumbling about his/her MS Surface Studio Youtube review. Man if it would be only me I'd get one of those tomorrow morning
 
A friendly note: Your thread is very likely to get locked with an uninformative title like you've given it. "Computer requirements for whatever..." is far more likely to survive.

This isn't just a whim of the website owner - it's to make the site searchable by topic.

George
 
A friendly note: Your thread is very likely to get locked with an uninformative title like you've given it. "Computer requirements for whatever..." is far more likely to survive.

This isn't just a whim of the website owner - it's to make the site searchable by topic.

George

I haven't really picked a program so that is why the title is kind of open ended. I will edit it to try and make it better.
 
Yeah, buy from Boxx if you want to overspend on a workstation. :nono:
Seriously, their prices are insane.

They used to be a great deal until Solidworks 'partnered' with them or something. But it's the easiest way I know how to communicate to someone what specs they should look for in a CAD/CAM PC (God knows I can't keep up with the pace of advances in PCs.) For the record, I did tell him to buy a refurbished Dell, and not a Boxx :)
 
You need ram and fast graphics card. AutoCAD publishes minimum hardware requirements for their current software versions. I work with large 2D files mostly so need the speed.
 
To add on to what Johnny said, you'll specifically want a discreet GPU as no on-board (IE Intel) graphics are going to perform well..

Depends what you need to do. I run AutoCAD all day long on a corei7 laptop with onboard Intel graphics. I also use Fusion 360. I have no problem at all.

Just curious-since it is a free license, why not just get the software, and try it? Then only upgrade your computer if you feel the need.
 
Depends what you need to do. I run AutoCAD all day long on a corei7 laptop with onboard Intel graphics. I also use Fusion 360. I have no problem at all.

Just curious-since it is a free license, why not just get the software, and try it? Then only upgrade your computer if you feel the need.

I've seen bugs pop up on the forum that are graphics related. To be sure, it doesn't happen to everyone, but it does happen.

FWIW I don't think any high end solution is needed. My RX480 (still not all that high end) handles SW, Inventor and Fusion just fine, and the latter better than my workstation at work does with a Quadro K2000.
 
I am just starting with Fusion 360. My current home use laptop is definitely strained using it. At minimum I would recommend a SSD (solid state drive), 8GB+ of DDR3 or greater, an i5 or greater processor, and a quality video card/GPU.

That said, I am able to do basic sketches and modelling with a sub <$500 laptop; however, I am just using it to learn and not as part of business operations.
 
One thing to remember for anyone using Fusion: it is 'Cloud Based' meaning the speed at which parts are saved and loaded will all be dependent on your network and internet speeds.

If you've ever try to run a heavy-duty CAD/CAM program through a VPN, or otherwise remotely, you'll understand the trepidation I have about using Fusion for any sort of real corporate/production environment. You could be on the fastest computer in the world, working smoothly even in large assemblies and simulations, but when you hit that 'Save' button, your life will grind to a halt. It's the equivalent of trying to upload and download a big file every time you hit the button.

So if you're going to be using Fusion regularly, I'd worry as much about Network/Internet speeds (Modems, Network Cards, Wi-Fi Routers if you're a real glutton for punishment) as the computer. The good news is that just about any decent computer comes with decent Network stuff already installed, and good modems aren't too expensive (although good internet access can be.) High-end wireless routers can be pretty costly though.
 
One of the hardest daily tasks we can possibly face here is the requirement to design parts(anything for this matter) based on the rule of simplicity. That said, if the part does not compute on our fleet of Mobile Workstations (HP Zbook G2), there is a design problem, not the IT.

HP Zbook; forget very large assemblies, of course, but that's not the point to be able to make parts and be mobile at the same time ;)

You can get those Zbook cheap, second-hand, these days I think if budget is an issue. Get a minimum of a K2100M GPU and you'll be happy. We have one w/ K4000 and it doesn't bring in much advantages to be honest.

PS: Can't wait to hear one rumbling about his/her MS Surface Studio Youtube review. Man if it would be only me I'd get one of those tomorrow morning

For perspective, I have a Z book with 32gb ram, Nvidia M2000m card, and an i7 @2.7ghz. It chugs way more than I would like. :( I tried to spec a system based on recommendations from NX, but my IT was having none of that. :angry:
 
My pc was designed with multiple roles in mind, I needed it to do cad, audio/video editing, and high end gaming from one build. You can get pretty close to a dedicated machine with pure overbuilding. A 980ti isn't as good as a quadro or a FirePro at pure cad, but it's powerful enough not to care. And my i7-5820k is just about 'pretty good' at everything. If your PC can handle modern games, it will run fusion. Your next question is "how long can I stand to wait for it to render?"
 
My pc was designed with multiple roles in mind, I needed it to do cad, audio/video editing, and high end gaming from one build. You can get pretty close to a dedicated machine with pure overbuilding. A 980ti isn't as good as a quadro or a FirePro at pure cad, but it's powerful enough not to care. And my i7-5820k is just about 'pretty good' at everything. If your PC can handle modern games, it will run fusion. Your next question is "how long can I stand to wait for it to render?"

That reminds me... I just got the Ryzen system up and running and need to do some rendering testing on that.
 
That reminds me... I just got the Ryzen system up and running and need to do some rendering testing on that.

I heard that you can't get the RAM to run at OC speeds on Ryzen motherboards, is that still true?
Last I knew it was running all RAM at 2133MHz. Even if you had 3200MHz sticks.
There is some (German?) guy I follow on YouTube that figured out how to overclock so he can run at 3200 and 3600 speeds, and his testing basically said that Ryzen LOVES fast ram. He was showing a pretty good increase in benchmark scores iirc.
 
I heard that you can't get the RAM to run at OC speeds on Ryzen motherboards, is that still true?
Last I knew it was running all RAM at 2133MHz. Even if you had 3200MHz sticks.
There is some (German?) guy I follow on YouTube that figured out how to overclock so he can run at 3200 and 3600 speeds, and his testing basically said that Ryzen LOVES fast ram. He was showing a pretty good increase in benchmark scores iirc.

Depends on the RAM and the motherboard updates. ASUS has a list of approved packages for instance (I was dumb and did not follow this, partly because it's damn hard to find that list until you know exactly where it is and Google is no help).

Edit: in fact I see there was a BIOS update posted a few days ago on ASUS' support site that increases memory compatibility, so I've got something to do this evening for sure (I'm running 0504 and the current version is 0515).

However as BIOS updates keep coming, I see more and more information about how people get getting their RAM up to speed.

Ryzen loves fast RAM because the Infinity Fabric (the signal-passing section of the chip between the CCX complexes) runs at the speed of the RAM. The faster your memory runs, the faster the CCX's communicate and the better all that multithreaded workload gets.
 
some software requires Windows Professional NOT the home edition often found on cheaper computers
.
i had mastercan demo software and couldnt run it. the fine print mentioned only running on Windows Professional version
 
I heard that you can't get the RAM to run at OC speeds on Ryzen motherboards, is that still true?
Last I knew it was running all RAM at 2133MHz. Even if you had 3200MHz sticks.
There is some (German?) guy I follow on YouTube that figured out how to overclock so he can run at 3200 and 3600 speeds, and his testing basically said that Ryzen LOVES fast ram. He was showing a pretty good increase in benchmark scores iirc.

I think I mentioned in the other thread, with the current firmware/microcode implementation the IMC is only fully compatible with dram built on single rank samsung b-die cofiguration, that can be clocked to whatever the ram is capable of. Everything else is max. 2666Mhz, at least for the time being.

I have mine (Corsair Dominator, Hynix dram, 3000Mhz C15) at 2733Mhz C14 (2666Mhz + base clock OC = 2733Mhz)
 








 
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