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CAD on a notebook?

Oakenfold

Oakenfold

Diamond Member
Anyone here do CAD on a notebook?
Looking for suggestions as my parent's friends are looking at buying their daughter a lappy for this.
Anyone have any knowledge on this as I am not into this sort of thing, I'm looking for real world opinions
I'm guessing it would require or recommend
centrino based
512MB ram
20-40 GB HD
Wireless connectivity and wired.

What about the video etc?
If you have a lappy that you use for this please lmk what kind you have and why you like it.

 
Although I couldn't tell you a single spec on the machine used, When we had MasterCam demo'ed to us last year at our shop, The demo guy was using a laptop.
 
One of our service clients, CH2M Hill, uses Toshiba Satellite Pro 6100's for their mobile CAD units. Another client bought Satellite 5005's (though we tried to talk them out of it). Basically, I would look for a laptop with a good video card and get as much ram on it as possible. Both clients loaded up on memory too, generally maxing out the machine. I guess I haven't noticed, but I would assume that they chose higher resolution screens as well.
 
Thanks for your input, keep it coming.
I always thought CAD used stuff like oxygen and fire gl cards myself.
 
I bought a centrino notebook about a month ago from this company for the express purpose of running AutoCAD applications on it. I LOVE THIS MACHINE. It is quite capable of handling large CAD drawings and the battery life is exceptional.

This link has a bit of info regarding the company:
http://www.net-spec.com/pages.cfm/strategery/5.htm

This link takes you to their web-store to see prices:
http://www.jstores.net/jstore/jetbookstore.asp?CUST_ID=4933885

The model I purchased is a Jetbook 9500 with the following options.
15.1" SXGA+ with 802.11 a+b
1.5 GHz centrino
512 MB RAM
30GB HD (5400 rpm)
DVD/CD-RW drive
Windows XP Pro

It comes standard with a Mobile Radeon 9000 which has proven quite powerful. There are also several expansion ports on the machine (3x USB 2.0, 1x Firewire, PCMCIA, etc) I also bought another battery and a 3 year service agreement. Let me know if you have other questions regarding my machine.
 
I always thought CAD used stuff like oxygen and fire gl cards myself.
Click to expand...
Yes, It is preffered as the drivers for these cards are specifically for the highest detail and frame rates for CAD. But, We have Mastercam running pretty good on an old Viper770 on one machine and Intel integrated graphics(845GE chipset) on another. Going with a gaming card for CAD will be a comprimise, But if you get the best you can get, you should be ok.
 
a modern, past 2 years, should give better results. the faster HDDs, processors and memory speeds and memory capacity is great.

i can do solidworks on a 900MHz p3 with 512 MB of ram, and no real 3d graphics support just fine.

there wont really be drivers optimized for the graphics chip (although that would PWN) unless you go with custom made systems (dont know if they do that anymore) optimized with drivers for cad. that is, nothing you will find in a store will give you the best results if you are a real CAD user.
 
Gotcha, she's doing her undergrad work so I doubt it's going to be anything very intense.
Thanks for all your help guys, I think I got them sold on a Centrino based system and it sounds like that should work just fine.
 
you mean stuff like AutoCAD? Who told you you needed deep specs for that? you can run that on an 800 Mhz cpu w/a cheap ATI card.
 
I just graduated as a mechanical engineer and I ran AutoCAD on my old computer as a freshman/sophmore on a PII 350, and it ran OK. I had a Voodoo 3000 in there. AutoCAD (at least with the parts you'll draw as a college student) doesn't require that much system resources.

Although maybe newer versions of AutoCAD require a little more muscle.
 
damn having to make a new login!!! *curses old firm for deleting email account*

i am a mechanical CAD draftsman, and you're wasting your time spec'ing such high end machines. i've got a laptop that absolutely blitzes AutoCAD 2004, standard off the shelp machine. my laptop and my desktop are both mainly standard machines.

laptop:
compaq evo n800v
p4 mobile 1.7ghz
512mb ram
ATI 64mb mobile radeon 7500 card
40gig hdd
wireless (in laptop lid)
15" UXGA LCD display (1600x1200)
etc etc

desktop:
p4 2.4mhz canterwood 800FSB
512mb RAM
128mb Geforce fx5200 card
80gig HDD
18" TFT digital monitor

they both power huge 3d autocad 2004 models and drawings at incredible speeds. my laptop is one of the best CAD machines i've ever seen or used (apart from $10k plus dedicated boxes...)

trust me - i've been doing this for over 7yrs and are the CAD manager for a large international consulting engineering firm. you'll easily do any autocad work on machines like that laptop spec or over. there's no need to go centrino. as long as you steer clear of Celeron and (from my experiences) AMD and go genuine Intel P4 with good mainboards and decent RAM and video cards (not built-in memory on mainboards), you'll (she'll) be more than happy.

i used my laptop at home and on-site and it never once let me down. the compaq had almost 4hrs worth of CAD work out of it's std battery. just make sure you get a nice mouse to go with it. touchpads + CAD = YUCK!

if you've got any more questions, i'm happy to answer them.
 
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