Solidworks Companion Program 1

[leeave96]

I use SW on my day job and Alibre (AD) on the side. While I like AD, my opinion is they are slow to implement enhancements that have been in SW for years. Recently, they dumped a nice file management system for something I regard as very complicated for a one man operation.

Another nice thing about AD is that it can run on a low cost laptop - not unlike one would buy at Bestbuy.

The way I use it as a companion to SW is for modeling. Lots of times I model solids at home in the evenings or weekends and bring the models into SW as a STEP file. I also export SW models as a STEP into AD. I have had good success going this route and when finished using SW's feature recon tools to complete the model in SW.

But I am ready to move to something a little more robust than AD, something that works with STEP files as mentioned above, something with a better feature set and file management set-up than AD.

What CAD program would you recommend as a companion to SW?

Thanks!
Bill

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

If you use SW in your main job 80% of the time, SW allows a second install at home. Talk with your bosses to see if they will allow you do so.

 

[leeave96]

I'd like to do the home install, but the $$$'s for a suitable PC (and in my case a laptop pc) is a show stopper. That's why I use AD now.

What I'd like is something with a richer set of features than AD, but with an AD price and will basically work on a gaming PC.

Thanks & have a great weekend!
Bill

 

[ShaggyPE]

How about an older version of SolidWorks? It should be less hardware intensive. And at least the file translation is non-existent in one direction.

-Dustin
Professional Engineer
Certified SolidWorks Professional
Certified COSMOSWorks Designer Specialist
Certified SolidWorks Advanced Sheet Metal Specialist

 

[rstupplebeen]

I have SW running on a $500 dollar dell which has the misfortune of having Vista on it and SW09 works but not great. If you need to you could remote connect to your workstation again with some lag. I hope this helps.

Rob Stupplebeen

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

leeave96 ... what are the specs of your laptop?

 

[mcgyvr]

I also have no issues with both SW and Autodesk Inventor running at home on a $600 dollar HP laptop w/Vista 32 (2G of RAM) for modeling parts. Large assemblies might be tough but part modeling/small assemblies are no problem.

 

[dogarila]

I am using SW2009 x64 at home on a CAD$ 600 HP Core2Quad refurbished, on Vista x64 Home Premium and with a 512MB nVidia gaming card that came with the PC. Also 4GB of RAM. Never had a problem or crash. It runs pretty fast.

 

[leeave96]

My computer is an HP Pavillion laptop with an AMD Turion 64 processor. It has 1 gig of ram, Windows XP media center edition and an ATI Radeon xpress 200 IGP graphics card with 128 MB video memory.

I've had it for just over 3 years and it has been a great computer.

We're getting ready to load SW2009 at work. Perhaps I'll try again with that version for the home install.

I think when I installed 2008, there were some video issues.

Thanks!
Bill

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

It's worth trying an install of SW, but you have two hits against you; the ATI Radeon and the XP media centre. Adding more RAM wouldn't hurt either.

 

[keepinitcool]

I would definitely say you could use more RAM (I get away with 2GB at home) and integrated graphics is not going to do very well (used graphics cards are available on ebay or Craigslist). However, it will run. People used to use much older systems to run the program. I use XP Media Center without any issues (that I could attribute to OS). It is reported as XP Pro in the System Information, and I understand it is XP Pro with media function added. SW2009 below SP3 seems to be unstable, after I went from 2 to 3, it is way better. So I would not try it without moving to 3.