What's needed for Auto-CAD to run nicely?

Josh Weston

New member
So, my cousin wants me to build him a new pc to replace his broken laptop. He won't be playing games on it, he prefers consoles, and it shall be mostly for browsing the internet.

However, he's a mechanical engineer and wishes to use Auto-CAD software on his pc - an area of software I know nothing about.

So, for the software to run quickly, what's best?

Is a processor with many cores/threads preferred? Shall there need to be an abundance of RAM? Are graphics cards, or the Tesla kind of things, needed?

Thankyou.
 
autoCAD does NOT use threads

autoCAD is not for rendering or animating ANYTHING 3D

autoCAD is primarly a design application for 2D and 3D 'plans'. the plans, in DGW/DXF format, are then exported into OTHER apps, where a beefy PC would come to hand.

the most important bit of kit a CAD user needs is: a hi-res IPS monitor, a drawing tablet and a decent mouse (or trackball).

the 32bit and 64bit versions are identicle in performance.
 
hmmm... that honestly depends on the package, there are many autocads designed for each speficic reason.

the most important thing is a beast of a cpu and lots of fast ram. on top of that a very good high spec monitor and a good set of mouse and keyboard

it doesnt use much graphics so even IGP would handle it.

it will often require alot of disc space so a ssd boot and to keep the package in. and a tb or 2 for project storage etc.
 
hmmm... that honestly depends on the package, there are many autocads designed for each speficic reason.

the most important thing is a beast of a cpu and lots of fast ram. on top of that a very good high spec monitor and a good set of mouse and keyboard

it doesnt use much graphics so even IGP would handle it.

it will often require alot of disc space so a ssd boot and to keep the package in. and a tb or 2 for project storage etc.

you could not be more wrong!

autodesk is the company that make various modelling packages.

autocad, 3dsmax, maya, mudbox, inventor, etc...... are packages made by autoDESK

i know this, as I am a CAD assessor by trade, and also a beta tester for autodesk
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Well, he seems to mostly just use the 2D plans, and all they do at work is print the plans off straight from AutoCAD itself.

So...would an i3 do? Or am I missing something here?
 
yep - that would be fine

remember, as i said earlier... a CAD artist needs to see clear lines, and will be staring at a screen for a long time.... so the monitor is the most important bit.
 
I work with perspective and 3d animation, and I use mainly Autocad and 3DsMax, and Dugdiamond couldn't be more right, probably he has more knowledge than me, but I really don't see any diference in performance across any cpu, in my opinion the 3 most important things are a good mouse (I don't use drawing tablets or anything like that but he can use so think about it) a good monitor, some GPU (I had problem with the amd 6970 with strange lines, so nowadays I always go with Nvidia for my Workstations, specially know that I have money to buy quadros) if he can afford SSDs it will make his life much faster. To resume, I'm repeating Mr. Moderator
 
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