Autocad on Laptop

kikel

Looking for a laptop for a mate. She'll be running Autocad in college. Beside the best CPU and RAM what else does she need. Would she need a good grahics card? Any recommendations?

RuggieBear

in theory an open gl graphics card...but they are horrifically expensive for laptops iirc

gandalf

You probably know it already but she needs as much dedicated Video Memory as possible. Watch out alot of lappy's share the system memory.

If she doesn't mind weight I would suggest a 17" Model, the only issue would be crap battery life.

Again most important DEDICATED VIDEO MEMORY!

JohnnieM

I use Autocad 2004with an IBm T43 and dont have any problems...

Nukem

Depends on the level of CAD - 3D certainly get a big whopper of a lappie but if its just 2D and basic college stuff even an integrated gfx will suffice but have its limitations on stuff like extreme hatching and large drawings.

If its 2006 becareful as that thing has loads of addons and they tend to grind laptops down. Didnt like 2006 so much went back to 2004

kikel

Cheers for the replies.

Will have to find out which version of autocad she will be running.

Dedicated video memory would probably be required from the post above. Unfortuantly that could be a little out of her budget.

b0bsquish

I run autodesk 2006 on an acer ferrai, runs not too bad. like everyone said the amount of graphics memory will make or break u on this.

pauln

I've run all number of new CAD packages (AutoCAD, Solidworks, Solid Edge, PRO Engineer) on a 4/5 year old Dell Latitude C610 PIII 1Ghz with 512mb of ram and a ATI graphics card with 128mb of dedicated video ram with little or no problems.

The dedicated video ram is a must though, if it doesn't say whether its dedicated or shared video ram look up the model of video card on the net before buying.

The laptop doesn't have to have monster spec for CAD, something around 1.6-2.0Ghz would be fine more so if it was dual core. Then 512mb+ of RAM and the best graphics card money can afford but a name brand such as ATI or NVIDIA with 128mb+ of dedicated video Ram should suffice, no need to go crazy as the really good ones are very expensive for laptops. Try and steer clear of Intel video cards as most (but not all) tend to have shared video ram.

I find the 15.4'' screen on the Inspiron 8500 I have now good for CAD, the widescreen is nice but the laptop is bigger then I'd like and the battery life is poor.

I'd tend to not go for anything bigger then 15.4' on the screen unless your willing to pay the big bucks for the 17' laptops that are still light enough to carry around college. Most 17' laptops that are at the cheaper end of the scale tend to be huge heavy machines and are not really practical to carry around college for any length of time. A machine around 3kg or less is good.

kikel

Cheers again.