solidworks on older laptop

leroi · Oct 12, 2004

I'm looking to get a used Panasonic toughbook to drag around in my truck and take to site and to location to do individual parts drawings. I'm trying to not spend more money than I have to on a laptop on account of the tendency of laptops to disappear from vehicles--truck broken into twice so far this year. I'm wondering if Solidworks 2000 or 2004--got access to either--would work OK if run on 350 MHZ processor 128meg ram. I'm not planning much if any animation, parts designs are fairly simple. Anybody got any firsthand knowledge on how well Solidworks works on anything other than multigig/multimhz machines?

MadMango · Oct 12, 2004

You might be able to get SW96 or 97 to run on something like that, but unsure of SW00 or newer.

My computer when running SW96 was a 333mhz, 128mb machine. I forget what exact graphics card it was, but I think it was only 8mb. I remember when my boss signed the requisition for the machine, "You should be able to do some damage with this!" To this day I keep a Dilbert clipping on my wall:

Ratbert- "The finance department has analyzed your computer needs and decided to give you a 286 PC."

Next frame, Ratbert- "That should be sufficient for the 3D-rendering you need to do."

Next frame, Ratbert- "Besides, how many times are you going to do 3D-rendering in your career?"

Dilbert- "Once, if I hurry."

[blue]"But what... is it good for?"[/blue]
Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
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SBaugh · Oct 12, 2004

I don't think SW 00 or 04 will run on that at all! I didn't even run SW95 on a 350 MHz with 128 Megs of Ram. You better look into something up to date with at least 512 RAM and a CPU of 1.5 GiGz.

The video card is going to make and even more of a problem. What video card is in there? I'm sure it's not going to be support in the least... so you will spend more time crashing then you ever will be showing a customer anything. Your customer is going to think SW is a bad piece of software when in fact its the Laptop. That's bad for business for anyone.

So look at getting a better laptop and FYI - When you leave your truck, take it with you. [wink]