3D cad questions

Well I plan to become an architect and I want to start getting use to 3d cad. I was wondering if I need Quadro FX graphics or if I can stay with Nvidia geforce. Also I was wondering which 3d CAD is the best and which one is the cheapest and the best. Note this is for windows vista

 

Quadro FX have more bios and driver support for CAD....and cost more.

Are you looking for a laptop with Quadro?

 

No if I can I will get Geforce but with cad is SLI really important, will it make much of a difference from a single card confg?

 

You don't really need a Quadro card, it may help up bit, but it is by no means a necessity. I've run 3D solid modeling programs on both workstation and non-workstation cards without issues either way.

If you are doing really complex things, it may start to matter more, but for any school type related stuff, you will be fine.

As far as buying CAD software, it is pretty expensive. You can get student versions (sometimes 2 year versions) for reasonable prices, but that is assuming you are indeed a student.

As for as a particular cad package, I don't have a recommendation. As an mechanical engineer, I've used Pro-E 2001, Pro-E wildfire, and Solid Edge. Solid Edge is by far the best IMHO (a lot like Solid Works), but I am doing ME related stuff with the packages. I think someone doing architecture could be answer your question from that standpoint.

Anyway, hope this helps.

 

No SLI is not important (it may actually have adverse effects), if you are going to spend that type of money, you might as well spend more for the workstation card, it would probably help you more.

 

What is the Difference between Cinema 4D, versus Cinema 4D XL?

 

Quadro if possible but if not a good Geforce will suffice. The best CAD program to date is AutoCAD from AutoDESK products. I suggest an HP8510p.Its a bit Pricey though.

 

Yeah Autocad is a little pricey, what other options are there if any under $1500. Will like it to be under $1000.

 

Well, i use ADT on my computer and it is a simple mobile X1800, no FireGL or Quardo and its works perfektly. I would say that most of the computers now days can run CAD without any problem. In university we had Pentium4 computers with intel GMA that was running ADT and it worked well for school purpise.

 

I have narrowed down my notebooks to these Toshiba X205 SLI 3, Dell Precision M6300 when the quadro FX 3600m or the 2600m come out, or the HP 8710w/p which one is the best choice?

 

Bump!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I would go either with the Dell M6300(well, I have one) or with the HP... choose the one that you prefer, or the best deal from the two - for me that was the deal breaker... Dell had a promo on the M6300, and got it substancially cheaper than the HP (wich I prefered aesthetically )

 

I've used a lot of CAD programs and I have to say that CPU and RAM plays a bigger role than graphic cards.

 

I own and use all the 3d packages under the sun for VFX, post and animation, and to be perfectly honest - The mobile GeForce solutions have stripped down OpenGL feature sets.

My old old desktop with a 5200ultra has more OpenGL compatibility then my shiny new 8600m GT. Which is kind of disappointing considering the 8 series cards have a far newer OpenGL version.

But in real world scenarios, I doubt you need those special OpenGL 'features' because I'm managing just fine without them. It doesn't cripple the card any, just view port/editor view options. Basically there just more advanced ways of displaying textures and shaders and lighting - some optimization features as well.

But honestly both Quadro and Geforce perform pretty much the same in this department. We were using a 8800GTX for some of the scenes for Stargate Atlantis in Lightwave and it was pretty damn good for a consumer card. Although I think the Quadro 5500's would likely rip it apart..it should for a $5000 dollar card..

But that's desktops, in laptops theres no massive differences.

And if I remember correctly the XL package of Cinema 4D is eXtra Lite - I think it's the core, and a few of the modules/plug-ins. I can't remember, I just buy the core and all the modules and get to work. Great software by the way, I use it over maya and 3dmax all the time..

lifeflayer has a point though, but more and more that's becoming untrue. Because everything is slowly becoming more GPU dependate. Photoshop even calls on the GPU for processing things now. A dual/quad core CPU and 2 or so GB of ram will do you just fine.

 

Ah, I guess I am out of date now It was still the Pentium 4 days since I last used those kind of programs extensively.

 

It shocked me when I found out to.. lol - I didn't find out about it until using it for 4 months then seeing GPU processing features lmao.

 

Well, GPU did help and the performance increased from using a workstation GPU was indeed big. But the biggest performance boost we had was upgrading our CPU and RAM. That was using 3ds max, autocad, inventor, the autodesk house design thing... and photoshop.

 

Yup, don't get me wrong CPU and RAM are the A most important things in this department. GPU's just aid everything.

 

It all depends on which program you use. I'm not sure about other programs.. but i've been using autodesk products for about 3-4years now and i'll tell you from first hand experience that geforce cards suck with modeling. I'm currently a product designer/student.. I've been running a fx2500 on a laptop and a fx4500 desktop... and both of these cards struggle at times during intense modeling... I've tried running Alias studiotools on a x1600 and a 7600go... and it was totally crappy. If i were you... i would do it right the first time to save yourself time and money, I had to get rid of my GeForce notebooks.