Hi there Afterdawn guys, My father in-law is leaving his company designing car parts and is branching off on his own. He has asked me to find him a laptop computer that he can use to continue his CAD work. Heres what he needs to run - its a CAD programme called CATIA V5 r19 http://www.3ds.com/products/catia/portfolio/catia-v5r19/ It needs to run this programme easily and have a tidy memory/hard drive on it. here are the requirements for XP, but i think it also runs on vista http://www-01.ibm.com/software/applications/plm/catiav5/sysreq/hwsysreq.html#winhard - it must be a laptop, not a mac book. - preferrably with XP not Vista. what sort of prices are we looking at, could you guys link me to the sort of specs i should be looking for. Thanks in advance guys, you're always a great hep on here! Adam
1.) Does he need any employees? I have a degree in automotive technology as well as experience in SolidWorks, a product made by the same company that makes Catia. (PM me if yes) 2.) He is going to want a system with 8GB of ram and Vista64. If the book does not come with 8GB of ram, then it should at least be upgradable to this...and the upgrade should be done immediately. 3.) CPU should be dual-core at least, but quad-core would be better. 4.) Should have a dedicated video device with at least 512MB of dedicated memory...something like the Mobility Radeon 4570(or higher) 5.) Screen size=bigger is better when it comes to CAD. 6.) He is going to tear his hair out if he tries to do CAD with a touchpad; strongly advise getting a mouse and a hard mouse pad. 7.) A 320GB hard drive should be enough to get the job done, a 500 would be better. If you find a system that is both affordable & good in all other ways, but has a small hard drive, a replacement 500GB is cheap. Given that he is going to be designing important things with this laptop, he might consider getting a RAID-1 capable laptop with twin 500GB drives. This will ensure that he does not loose anything if one of the hard drives burns up. HP offers a wide line of RAID-1 capable laptops.
thank you for your quick reply, great info already. I'm sorry but i dont think he needs employees as he's freelance, and will be working from home for other companys etc.. could you possibly give me a couple of links to set-ups already out there with this similar rig? what sort of price is he looking at here, in £? thanks so much, you've been a great help already!
You do realize 8gb in a laptop is gonna be super hard/impossible to find? 6gb is the norm in all the VERY high end laptops right now with quad cores. Look here at newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...escription=&Ntk=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc= Tigerdirect dosent even offer more than 4gb starter laptops. No choice on vista for ram over 4gb, sol there. Why a laptop and not a desktop?
again unless someone knows else where i think thats the range your looking at. look at sager: http://www.sagernotebook.com/category.php Hp does quad core 1tb laptops with 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon(TM) HD 4650 Graphics and vista 64 for like 2.5k.
dell precision should fit the needs. uses the nvidia quadro card, can be upgraded to 8gigs, and has xp downgrade option.
HP: HP HDX18t - about $3000USD for the configuration I mentioned in my post. Based on XE.com's currency numbers, that is less than 2,000 GBP. Aleinware & sager do not have anything with a 18.4" screen...
