Well folks, I thought I'd take the time to mention some (legal) ways and where to get some of the popular professional CAD software available. ================ How to get AutoDesk Inventor: What you need: A valid .edu Email address (ie someone@somewhere.edu) Where to get it from: Autodesk Student Portal All you need to do is just register and activate your account. As a student, you can get access to pretty much all of the Auto Desk products, including: Autdesk Inventor Pro Autodesk Revit Autodesk Maya * Autodesk 3ds Max * AutoCAD etc. For the modder's the most useful will be Inventor for design and Maya/3DS for rendering. The software is fully functional for 15 months. How ever, the software denoted by an Astrix (*), are limited to a 6 month license. The only real limitation is that when printing stuff out, it will put in a watermark indicating it was generated by an Educational version of a product. How to Get SolidWorks: What you need: A valid email address. Where to get it: SolidWorks Engineering Stimulus Package What you get is a fully functional version of SolidWork's Student Design Kit. The software is fully functional for 90 days once activated. Like on the educational version of Autodesk products, print outs will have a watermark. How to Get Google SketchUp: All you have to do is head here: SketchUp 7 Download The free version has limited functions compared to the full version, however there is no expatiation date. =============== Here are my Recommended Minimum system to run Inventor/SolidWorks decently: A good Dual Core (or better) CPU At least 3GB of RAM At least a 120GB HDD A non IGP graphics card from nVidia 8xxx series or a ATI 3xxx series with at least 256MB RAM A Windows OS (x86 or x64) Windows XP and up My Recommended System to run Inventor/SolidWorks Quad Core CPU or an overclocked Dual core from the Core 2 Duo or better era. 8GB of RAM (or more) 500GB HDD Windows x64 (Windows 7 x64 recommended) A good graphics card above a ATI 4650. OR a similar/better workstation card. Note: Workstation cards are recommended, but not necessary unless doing very complex stuff (as in 100+ part assembly with lots of complex features,patterns,etc). For normal modding related CAD work, not much use for a workstation card. Also, realize, if you have an old nVidia 8xxx card, you can softmod it in to a Quadro.
I can't speak to Inventor. But I and others in my dept. are using the full solidworks package with Pentium D's and C2D procs, with anywhere from 1 to 3 gig RAM with little to no problems... though we don't do to much rendering, mostly just unfolding fairly complex parts for OEM. (Radeon X1300/X1550 series video cards)
lol. And yes, I see why you'd think this was spam. I do hope this helps some one now or down the road. What version of SolidWorks? Also, which OS? Depending on version and OS, you need quite a bit of RAM to do work under Win 7 with SolidWorks 2009. Same for Inventor. I tried running Inventor 2010 on XP x64 with 3GB RAM and it was painful lol. GPU, depends on what you'd doing (esp. if rendering). Btw, I run Inventor 2010 and SolidWorks 2009 on my PCs.
Nice post Shadow (+rep) EDIT: (Ah, missed the Quadro part in the first post, silly me) Regarding the recommended video card, Nvidia users can soft-mod their GPU's profile through Riva Tuner to report to the drivers as the equivalent Quadro (workstation) variant (i.e. My GeForce 8800GTX is modded to report as a Quadro FX4600). As far as I know, this trick will work on the G80 and (I think) G92 card series, but I'm foggy on the details regarding the GTX200 cards or any newer series. For many CAD suites, this will unlock 'premium' features such as RealView in Solidworks and will give better performance in certain viewing modes such as wireframe/hidden wireframe. Reportedly Quadro drivers are less optimized for gaming (which is true), but I have yet to see any noticeable performance differences for any games so far. Performance in Solidworks 2009 has been very smooth for me with my current setup (Q6600 @ 3.6GHz, 4GB RAM, soft-modded 8800GTX to FX4600, and Windows 7 64-bit). I get a constant 55-60fps on 99% of parts and assemblies I view, with the other 1% being the rare one where I need a ton of parts details (for renders) and then my fps may drop to the low-50s/mid-40s.
GPU has nothing to do with rendering, only view port acceleration. With in Solidworks there is realview which is a sort of rendered image as it applies a basic surface to the part depending on material selected. Solidworks isn't a pig like inventor, i still run it on a single core Pentium M 1.8Ghz with 2GB of ram under Win7 on my laptop. Although when in complex modelling or when the feature tree gets a little full, then my workstation is extremely helpful! lol! Only use the laptop when mobile which is getting rare. Last night whilst stumbling around the internet i found Alibre Design, its about as close to solidworks i have found on a budget. You can sign up and download it for free. The trial is fully unlocked, if you dont sign up it lasts for 30 days, if you sign up its unlocked forever, all you have to give is a phone number and email, and just expect some sales hassle getting you to upgrade no doubt. Seriously consider this guys!
The G92s can't be directly converted to Quadro's via RivaTuner,etc. You have to do a BIOS mod for ID before doing the softmodding for the G92 (this is AFAIK). Haven't seen ANY Quaddro mods for the G2xx cards or the ATI 4xxx/5xxx cards either. If any one can find them mind linking to me?
True that about SolidWorks not needing too much. Main reason I’m using Inventor is due to the Algore Simulation suite (no pun intended), which imo, is better than the COSMOS suite for SolidWorks. ( I am designing waterblocks). Thanks for letting me know about Alibre. Last time I checked, they had taken off Alibre Express, which used to be the free version. I will do some looking in to Alibre and will edit my original post as needed.
