Solidworks are the leader of professional CAD modeling software, and with each passing new year, it brings several new features and capabilities to its suite of products. Therefore, all the power that is added comes at a cost in system performance, most importantly when working on huge 3D assemblies and simulations. Therefore, the best laptops for 3D design software is necessary.
Perhaps! There are a few things that you can do to develop the system and speed up the laptop to make things better in your workflow.
Therefore, the best hardware will have a large and excellent impact on performance.
It will not only help the laptop to run smoothly while drawing large assemblies but will also help in analysis and animations.
You need plenty of memory, a super-fast processor to run solidworks.
A SOLIDWORKS certified graphic card (gaming cards work very efficiently and are heavily recommended), and a fast hard drive for file storage.
To get the best laptops for SolidWorks and 3D design software you need to follow these requirements.
Following are the minimum and recommended requirements based on testing for laptops for 3d design software
- CPU
Processor with many cores and threads have become very popular over the last few years, but it is awesome for the general users.
However, for modeling: SOLIDWORKS runs contrary to it.
It works more efficiently with a single-threaded Processor, which means it generally runs better with fewer fast cores than multiple one.
When the user is doing tasks other than modeling’s like renderings, analysis, and simulations, then the requirements are multiples cores.
Most laptops require multiple core processing systems in general and for a specific use, and the best suited is a 3.3 GHz or batter clock speed processor. Increasing the clock speed will fasten its performance.
The best-recommended processor for 3D designs is Intel and AMD Rzyen.
A laptop equipped with core i7 or i9 with at least six cores provides the best performance. Core i3 and i5 will also work if their clock speeds are 3.3 GHz or more; otherwise, you may face issues.
- Graphics Card:
Graphics play a major and import role in 3D designs. Whether you are a beginner or pro-Solidworks user, it’s important to make sure that you have a certified Graphic card to ensure the best possible performance and stability of your system.
Selecting the best graphic card will make sure your design looks great and help avoid any issues, including system crashes and other graphic problems. Those graphic cards that are best suited include NVIDIA Quadro, AMD FirePro, and AMD Radeon Pro WX series card.
As onboard graphic card memory, a 4GB card minimum for general use.
Recommended and minimum requirements:
- General assemblies:
NVIDIA Quadro P1000/2200
AMD Radeon PRO WX 3100/4100
- Large assemblies with basic parts:
NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000/5000
AMD Radeon PRO W5500/WX5100/WX6100
- Large assemblies with complex parts:
NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000/8000
AMD Radeon PRO W5700/WX8200/WX9100
- Storage (HDD/SSD):
When it comes to choosing the hard drive for Solidworks and other designing software, we recommend at least 512 GB, and working with the biggest size (1TB OR 2TB) will work more for you.
512 GB SSD ROM is At least recommended as 128 GB, or 256 GB will quickly fill due to large CAD file sizes, including renders.
For maximum performance, the recommendation is a primary solid-state drive (SSD) or M.2 drive and a secondary SSD or HDD; both are fine to ensure the models and assemblies load and save fast.
Make sure the HDD must have spinning at 7200 RPM or above to store your files.
A PCIe NVMe SSD drive offer even better performance than SATA SSD
- RAM:
Complex models, drawings, renderings, animation, and simulation require more RAM (Random access memory) in order to load effectively. If the machine runs out of memory, the load time for files may increase drastically.
Even the simulations will affect, and some time may result in crashing the software. Therefore, ensuring sufficient RAM is for the typical size of the datasets is very necessary. Minimum RAM that is recommended for 3design software’s are: 16 GB DDR4, DDR3
If running simulations and working with large assemblies and drawings, then we recommend you get at least: 32 GB. If affordable: 64 GB is highly recommended.
These are the minimum and recommended requirements that you must see before getting any laptop.
For getting the best laptops for SolidWorks 2022, you can check the review and get a suitable device for yourself.