Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

  • Congratulations waross on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Solidworks compatibility 1

Status
Not open for further replies.

sams

Mechanical
Mar 13, 2000
34
0
0
US
Hello Forum Readers,
This forum has always been helpful.
I am wondering if Solidworks program will work on a New Laptop computer with an integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000 and ICore
I7 processor? Thanks for taking time to help. Sams
 
Replies continue below

Recommended for you

SolidWorks has a list of certified Graphics Card on their website:


The only certified Intel card is the Intel HD Graphics P3000. I am not really into the Intel graphics cards, but I believe that the P3000 and the 3000 are different cards, which would mean that your card isn't certified. This actually doesn't mean SolidWorks won't run on the 3000, but weird things >can< happen.

NVIDIA's Quadro range or ATI's FireGL range are the card to look for.
 
I suspect you'll have graphics issues which will probably effect your overall performance. Also, you need to be sure that your operating system is up to snuff as well. We tried running Win7 Home here with poor results.

Jeff Mirisola
Director of Engineering
M9 Defense
My Blog
 
Thanks all very much
JMirisola, kellnerp , Eltron ,Jwouters ,steinmini
Eltron, To answer your question,
The specs of this HP Laptop are
2nd generation Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM Processor 2.20GHz with
Turbo Boost Technology up to 3.10GHz12
17.3-inch diagonal HD+4 BrightView LED-backlit display (1600 x 900)
MEMORY (RAM): 8GB DDR3
Intel HD Graphics 3000.

Now I have come to believe that on board integrated Intel Graphics may cause large Solidworks assembly display problems so I am considering
HPLaptop with
2nd generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2670QM (2.2 GHz, 6MB L3 Cache)
with Turbo Boost up to 3.1 GHz
1GB AMD Radeon(TM) HD 7470M GDDR5 Discrete Graphics(TM) [HDMI, VGA]
8GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
750GB 5400 rpm Hard Drive

What do you think of AMD Radeon Graphics?
 
Radeon is nothing better than Intel GPU when it comes to CAD applications. Either buy a laptop with a dedicated CAD GPU or buy one of these you listed, but expect to have some problems sooner or later with a non-workstation GPU. Jwouters gave the link you should check.

 
Bear in mind that you need to run Win7 Professional or Premium as well. An approved graphics card and an approved OS will greatly increase your performance. While you may have some success not using them on small parts/assemblies, you're bound to have major degradation, if not complete failure, on larger assemblies and/or complex parts. On top of that, if you call in to tech support, they'll be less likely to be able to help you troubleshoot because of non-standard equipment and software.

Jeff Mirisola
Director of Engineering
M9 Defense
My Blog
 
Real View is really just a marketing Gimmick used by SolidWorks to make it's software and your designed products look better. It has no true Engineering Value and is a waste of time in my opinion. There are curvature analysis tools that can be used in SolidWorks whether you have a High End over a Gig of RAM Graphics Card or not.

If you disagree with this statement then all the power to you but who really cares.

Happy spending on those Graphics Cards. I'd recommend the ATI FirePro Series and not buying a Graphics Card that has a ton of ram be cause it will take away from the RAM power your system has to dedicate to using SolidWorks for actual Work. If you are doing Renderings then by all means get a higher end card but don't let SolidWorks scare you into buying a more expensive card by saying they won't offer you technical support if your system isn't on their predefined lists. I'd say they receive kickbacks from ATI and NVidia for recommending consumers to buy super high end cards they don't really need. Maybe if SolidWorks starts respecting Windows color settings for text and window background colors Right now no matter what colors you've set in Display Properties > Appearance off the Right Click +R dialog you can access from your desktop, SolidWorks puts all status bar text and measure dialog text as Black. and forces a stupid gradient on all your toolbar areas. These all used to be customizable by the user in pre 2008 settings but you are now given only what they choose for you.

Your system will run better if you use an approved card and system but it will also run pretty smooth on a CRAY Supercomputer as well :)


"It's not the size of the Forum that matters, It's the Quality of the Posts"

Michael Cole
Boston, MA
CSWP, CSWI, CSWTS
Follow me on !w¡#$%
@ TrajPar - @ Shweep
= ProE = SolidWorks
 
"Real View is really just a marketing Gimmick" ... for most people. that's probably true.
"It has no true Engineering Value" ... very much agree.
"... and is a waste of time in my opinion" ... very much disagree.

Probably 75% of my companies product concept bids have had the balance scale tipped in our favour by submitting simple RV renders with the design details. RV renders are also 'usually' good enough for marketing flyers at exhibitions and websites.

SolidWorks puts all status bar text and measure dialog text as Black. and forces a stupid gradient on all your toolbar areas. These all used to be customizable by the user in pre 2008 settings
And how did that add Engineering Value?
 

Hello,
CorBlimeyLimey, mjcole , JMirisola , steinmini. Thank you very much for your input. Now my turn to take an action. sams
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top