Find my buddy a CAD laptop

[LittleLebowski]

On a budget, $500-ish (sorry). From what I can tell, CAD is GPU intensive, so one with a good video card.

[RJ]

Mrs. RJ just got an HP laptop. Iirc it was a bit over $500, but they had some smoking deals on pre-configured computers. Might be worth looking into.

They issue us HPs at work. They are pretty reliable, as far as I know, as a corporate user.


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[spinmove_]

Unfortunately you’re not going to find one with a good video card for $500 and the screen is going to be mediocre at best. Need to save up close to $1,000 before you’ll have the proper horsepower and screen for such a task.


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[mmc45414]

2D or 3D is a big question. If he is going to be doing solid modeling for 3D mechanical design he will need some mojo. If he is doing 2D stuff for architectural type things he can probably live with something pretty basic.

[willie]

Might a refurbished model suffice?

[EricP]

I have to agree with spinmove. CAD and inexpensive laptop don’t really go together, although whether they need to manage large assemblies will have a dramatic effect on that.

These might help, see the certified hardware section:

https://www.solidworks.com/sw/suppor...uirements.html

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/suppo...-Products.html

I have Inventor on my personal laptop with 8gb ram and an AMD Radeon card and it almost useless.

[littlejerry]

Agree with the above.

Look at Dell professional certified refurbs. Get one with an Nvidia Quadro.

Video game performance is not the same as CAD performance.

[olstyn]

Does your friend absolutely need to be mobile? You can get a LOT more "oomph" in a desktop for any given budget.