- Thread starter Welderpaul
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I run it on my laptop at home, a fairly new HP (No idea of spec) and it is a bit slow, but useable.
We run Solidworks on a couple of PC's at work and it's best to stick to equipment specified by Solidworks particularly graphics cards as our IT man found out when he bought the fastest (most expensive) cards then had to change them for ones spec'd by solidworks!
If you can get away with a Toughbook CF27 there are loads around as both BG and BT used them as field terminals. I used a CF27 for several years as a workshop CNC loading PC with no trouble. It must be tucked in a drawer somewhere if you're interested. I now use a CF50 in the workshop, but it's nothing like as robust as the CF27 which go for about £100 or less on eBay
I've got a CF27 sitting in my garage that you can have to try it out (and keep if it works), has XP on it as I recall, wifi card in a PC card slot, USB etc. Memory is upgraded so it works quicker, I used it with my track car for ECU diagnostics, but the screen resolution wasn't right for the software, and I could never get it to display in a usable way. The battery was also a bit weak, which isn't much use in the paddock at Cadwell park when you've got a misfire and the nearest mains socket is 100M away! You can have it for the cost of postage.
Jim
Jim
graffian
Seer unto the end of his beard
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I just remembered why I got rid of the CF27, mine didn't have usb. I ran a USB 2.0 card though.
I almost said about solidworks, my cf27 with 300mhz cpu and 384mb ram wouldn't run it at a usable pace, you could open stuff to check dimensions but it was slow, however it ran no problem on a remote desktop, you get occasional glitches but even over wireless it was usable[I used it like that for a few years].
As to what notebooks run Solidworks, I only know very low spec{read cheap} stuff, I went from the CF27 to an old dell precision M40, it ran Solidworks but an assembly like a gearbox or a land rover bulkhead slowed it down, my upgrade from the M40 was an M50. The M50 would animate a model of my gearbox. Those are laptops you should get for £50 on ebay on the right day.
Windy Miller
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Do you know what sort of RAM it takes? I have a few sticks of laptop RAM in my desk at work. If it's the same type Paul would be more than welcome to it...
Looks like it'll be PC66/PC100 SDRAM. It has a 256MB stick in there, not sure a bigger stick of RAM will work.
It looks to be a 300Mhz Pentium 2 CPU - my first PC had a 350 and was fast enough at the time, but the world has moved on a lot since then! Before I send it out it might be worth investigating if it will run the software you need Paul, saves paying postage for what might as well be a parcel of bricks if it won't run it (and it as as heavy as some bricks!)
Jim
It looks to be a 300Mhz Pentium 2 CPU - my first PC had a 350 and was fast enough at the time, but the world has moved on a lot since then! Before I send it out it might be worth investigating if it will run the software you need Paul, saves paying postage for what might as well be a parcel of bricks if it won't run it (and it as as heavy as some bricks!)
Jim
Windy Miller
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Fellas, thank you for your help/kind offers.
Just heard back from the software outfit, seems that 256MB will be ok.
Just heard back from the software outfit, seems that 256MB will be ok.
As long as 256Mb on a P2 300 will run the software I'll try to send it this weekend. Presumably it'll just open a file and send instructions to the cutting machine - trying to do anything more than that on a 300mhz CPU would be a strange sort of retro PC masochism!
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Yep, thats my understanding - it's a very basic programme that converts a DWG file to G code then sends it to the plasma.
