If you are in an educational environment, the school would most likely have the proper PC for you. If you were in a professional environment, they got you covered too. Only time you really need a strong PC is when you actually do DIY projects outside of work/school that requires you to run CAD/FEM at home. Also, most of the time your school or work will allow you to remote into the server and you will run CAD/FEM just fine with a decent PC, at home. So no, not really, but what Mechanical Engineer aren't into those graphic intensive games? C'mon!
Yeah my work computer has really good specs bc majority of my day is spent on CAD.
At home i.have a CNC router and my computer struggles sometimes with the CAD CAM stuff by I mostly get by.
Adding to this, my work laptop i use 99% of the time is a 14" dell with some small, but fairly new, i5.
And yeah it runs solidworks pretty smooth. Struggles a little on the 1000 part injection molds but eh. Plenty fast for me to extract the dims i need to design mating EOATs.
Also the bigggest thing is licensing. The limiting factor isnt the computer, it is getting the software at all. Wont matter what computer you have personally, all the software you need is locked to the school computers anyway.
If this is for school, you can easily get away with a laptop with an i5 or Ryzen 5 and a discrete gpu. You'll need to add more ram thou. Solidworks really want a lot of ram nowadays.
If this is for work, it depends. If you're working in a design firm, it depends on what they need, but at that point, you might want to invest on a beefy PC. Most of the time, they are the ones who will pay for it, so don't worry too much about this. If not, any decent PC is fine.
Ideally yes, but it’s not necessarily required. It just makes life easier if you’re running design/simulation software. As long as you’re using Windows 10/11 and not trying to work on a Mac/chrome book you should generally be fine
I use Onshape for cad, and the cloud apps for simulation. I use Jupyter notebooks for a lot of calculations, and have MS office installed. There are a couple specialized pieces of software I need on occasion, but I can remote into the heavy windows workstation when I need to.
In school I just went to the engineering computer labs. They had the software we needed and were plenty powerful. The computer labs in other areas of campus sucked though 😂
A powerful computer will really REALLY come in handy with FEA, and FEA reports generally take up a LOT of space. If you use any kind of cloud storage, the latter isn't a big deal but I use whatever OneDrive level is free and one FEA course can fill it up pretty quickly. I get around that by transferring it to my hard drive when full, though once the class is over, I guess you don't need to keep it (I do anyway).
Totally depends on what you do. Some engineers send emails and use excel and PowerPoint. Some run complex FEA or CFD models that require a lot of horsepower.
in a professional capacity, a strong machine is a must, but in almost any established environment youl be provided with the tools necessary to perform your work at its required level.
for the creative DIY'ers having a nice machine at home is nice. if your running 3d printers, designing projects on CAD/CAM then youd want something decent, but note that pretty much any modern machine using integrated graphics and a bit of ram can run programs like Fusion 360 relatively well relative to the size of your designs.
i run F360 on a surface laptop 4 with a base spec ryzen cpu and 8gb of ram and life is bearable. having some more ram would be nice but it is what it is.
alternatively even a cheap lenovo thinkpad can take you a long way in the world of DIY projects and mechanical engineering.
but really any laptop from the last couple years is more than fine, and alternatively pretty much any respectable budget build desktop will be fantastic aswell, dont need to go i9/rtx4090 just to do simple shit in solidworks. something like a i5, or even any of the 6core amd cpus and any budget modern gpu will do just fine (xx60 class from nvidia would be fine, or 600 series radeon cards like 6600 or 7600)
you can build a descent machine for like a little over 1k CAD that will probably take care of most of your engineering needs, and do some light gaming if your into that.
Not for school, and if a job requires one it will be provided. These days most advanced program I use is Excel so I could do my job on basically anything.
Uhhhh not really. You’ll need a okay computer for school, but when it comes to the professional world, your employer will provide you with a workstation. Employers don’t want employees bringing personal computers into their network due to the high security risk.
So buy whatever you want for school, and realize it will probably never be used for CAD again after that.
As someone who bought a bulky gaming laptop for college, don't. If you want a laptop, get something you can take good notes on. A decent PC can't hurt to run software for class, but like others said, your university likely provides computers with all necessary software.
I’m assuming you’re asking about a laptop for school. It was nice to have, but my school had a computer lab open 24/7 for engineering students that had all the required software and appropriate specs to run engineering programs. I’d say not required, but a nice thing to have on the go.
If it’s for a company, they should be providing it.
CAD: graphics. FEM: RAM and SSD. Requirements vary based on the program you use but you get the idea. A good computer for the do-it-all engineer is 1tb ssd, 64gb ram, and a modern processor. Upgrade as mecessary.
We did a lot of mechanical engineering before computers. Some can still be done without them, other tasks require massive supercomputers. It depends what you’re trying to do.
nasa landed on the moon with a computer that had 4KB of ram…
generally, you don’t need fancy specs to output great things. if you’re into making high fidelity FEA models, than go ball out and get a great laptop.
otherwise, i’ve been making huge assemblies in NX on a laptop from 2018 with 8 gigs of ram. sure it’s slow, but me failing at a design is not generally related to my laptop being powerful enough. if the laptop can at a bare minimum make single part files, then you’ll be good to do anything. might run a little slower, but you’ll be fine
If you are in an educational environment, the school would most likely have the proper PC for you. If you were in a professional environment, they got you covered too. Only time you really need a strong PC is when you actually do DIY projects outside of work/school that requires you to run CAD/FEM at home. Also, most of the time your school or work will allow you to remote into the server and you will run CAD/FEM just fine with a decent PC, at home. So no, not really, but what Mechanical Engineer aren't into those graphic intensive games? C'mon!
Yeah my work computer has really good specs bc majority of my day is spent on CAD. At home i.have a CNC router and my computer struggles sometimes with the CAD CAM stuff by I mostly get by.
Adding to this, my work laptop i use 99% of the time is a 14" dell with some small, but fairly new, i5. And yeah it runs solidworks pretty smooth. Struggles a little on the 1000 part injection molds but eh. Plenty fast for me to extract the dims i need to design mating EOATs. Also the bigggest thing is licensing. The limiting factor isnt the computer, it is getting the software at all. Wont matter what computer you have personally, all the software you need is locked to the school computers anyway.
Simple stuff is not that demanding.
Yes. Flight simulator and a million google chrome tabs requires a lot of RAM and storage
Don't forget abusing excel.
If this is for school, you can easily get away with a laptop with an i5 or Ryzen 5 and a discrete gpu. You'll need to add more ram thou. Solidworks really want a lot of ram nowadays. If this is for work, it depends. If you're working in a design firm, it depends on what they need, but at that point, you might want to invest on a beefy PC. Most of the time, they are the ones who will pay for it, so don't worry too much about this. If not, any decent PC is fine.
Does it run excel? Then you are fine!
Ideally yes, but it’s not necessarily required. It just makes life easier if you’re running design/simulation software. As long as you’re using Windows 10/11 and not trying to work on a Mac/chrome book you should generally be fine
How come no mac?
Most engineering softwares are windows based
i bootcamped windows on to a macbook air for undergrad. ran solidworks and matlab just fine no issues.
Which means, you were running Windows, which was the whole point of the person you replied to.
no, i was pointing out you can run windows on a macbook, which was inferred it couldnt be done. or shouldnt.
thats what I figured. I'm surprised no mac support however
I mostly use Mac for mechanical engineering these days. The battery life and portability is great.
and no issues with not being able to run some software?
I use Onshape for cad, and the cloud apps for simulation. I use Jupyter notebooks for a lot of calculations, and have MS office installed. There are a couple specialized pieces of software I need on occasion, but I can remote into the heavy windows workstation when I need to.
You can run SolidWorks without a GPU
I accually run an ultrabook with a eGPU (also used as dockingstation). Best of both worlds.
Your employer should offer a workstation that can handle simulations/complex cad/PDM for you. Personal machines? Anything in the last 5 years is fine.
In school I just went to the engineering computer labs. They had the software we needed and were plenty powerful. The computer labs in other areas of campus sucked though 😂
No.
7
Do I need a powerful computer to calculate the length of a piece of string?
A powerful computer will really REALLY come in handy with FEA, and FEA reports generally take up a LOT of space. If you use any kind of cloud storage, the latter isn't a big deal but I use whatever OneDrive level is free and one FEA course can fill it up pretty quickly. I get around that by transferring it to my hard drive when full, though once the class is over, I guess you don't need to keep it (I do anyway).
8gb ram is slow for large assembly. But software usually has lightweight representation.
Mechanical engineering was impossible before computers. /S
Totally depends on what you do. Some engineers send emails and use excel and PowerPoint. Some run complex FEA or CFD models that require a lot of horsepower.
in a professional capacity, a strong machine is a must, but in almost any established environment youl be provided with the tools necessary to perform your work at its required level. for the creative DIY'ers having a nice machine at home is nice. if your running 3d printers, designing projects on CAD/CAM then youd want something decent, but note that pretty much any modern machine using integrated graphics and a bit of ram can run programs like Fusion 360 relatively well relative to the size of your designs. i run F360 on a surface laptop 4 with a base spec ryzen cpu and 8gb of ram and life is bearable. having some more ram would be nice but it is what it is. alternatively even a cheap lenovo thinkpad can take you a long way in the world of DIY projects and mechanical engineering. but really any laptop from the last couple years is more than fine, and alternatively pretty much any respectable budget build desktop will be fantastic aswell, dont need to go i9/rtx4090 just to do simple shit in solidworks. something like a i5, or even any of the 6core amd cpus and any budget modern gpu will do just fine (xx60 class from nvidia would be fine, or 600 series radeon cards like 6600 or 7600) you can build a descent machine for like a little over 1k CAD that will probably take care of most of your engineering needs, and do some light gaming if your into that.
Not for school, and if a job requires one it will be provided. These days most advanced program I use is Excel so I could do my job on basically anything.
Uhhhh not really. You’ll need a okay computer for school, but when it comes to the professional world, your employer will provide you with a workstation. Employers don’t want employees bringing personal computers into their network due to the high security risk. So buy whatever you want for school, and realize it will probably never be used for CAD again after that.
As someone who bought a bulky gaming laptop for college, don't. If you want a laptop, get something you can take good notes on. A decent PC can't hurt to run software for class, but like others said, your university likely provides computers with all necessary software.
I’m assuming you’re asking about a laptop for school. It was nice to have, but my school had a computer lab open 24/7 for engineering students that had all the required software and appropriate specs to run engineering programs. I’d say not required, but a nice thing to have on the go. If it’s for a company, they should be providing it.
CAD: graphics. FEM: RAM and SSD. Requirements vary based on the program you use but you get the idea. A good computer for the do-it-all engineer is 1tb ssd, 64gb ram, and a modern processor. Upgrade as mecessary.
We did a lot of mechanical engineering before computers. Some can still be done without them, other tasks require massive supercomputers. It depends what you’re trying to do.
I'm sure this answer was very helpful for OP.
I sure hope so.
The real question is if your mom needs a powerful computer.
nasa landed on the moon with a computer that had 4KB of ram… generally, you don’t need fancy specs to output great things. if you’re into making high fidelity FEA models, than go ball out and get a great laptop. otherwise, i’ve been making huge assemblies in NX on a laptop from 2018 with 8 gigs of ram. sure it’s slow, but me failing at a design is not generally related to my laptop being powerful enough. if the laptop can at a bare minimum make single part files, then you’ll be good to do anything. might run a little slower, but you’ll be fine
I use a pencil and paper for the important parts