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Buying the best computer for Inventor

If you’re just beginning your career as an engineer, simulation or visualizer designer, or if you’re planning to upgrade your hardware it’s crucial to take into consideration some important aspects before buying a CAD-based workstation for Autodesk Inventor.

Autodesk Inventor provides professional-grade 3D mechanical design, documentation and simulation tools. It lets you work efficiently through an effective blend of direct, parametric freeform and rules-based design tools.

It has tools to navigate through assemblies using fast graphic rendering as well as high-quality graphics. So it is essential that you buy an CAD workstation that is able to meet the minimum requirements for your system. But how do you determine what hardware to pick given the numerous options to choose from?

Here are a few points to keep in mind when selecting the right CAD workstation for Inventor:

1. Understand your workloads

The first step to selecting the most suitable CAD system for you is to take into consideration the purpose you intend to use this software to do. For example, if you’ll use Inventor to design products or modelling, you’ll not require a CAD system that is as precise as one who is using Inventor to simulate or for visualisation.

It is also crucial to think about the number of part assemblies you are likely to handle. For instance, Complex Models, Complex Mold Assemblies and large Assemblies (typically over 1,000 pieces) need greater graphics, memory and CPU than 500-part assemblies.

2. Think about other programs and software that you might need to utilize

When Inventor is the program you utilize on a regular basis to design mechanical and product components and manufacturing, but you’ll also be using 3dsMax for instance, it’s crucial to search for the best computer for Inventor capable of running this software similarly.

3. Consider investing in a special graphics card

While consumer-grade graphics cards work together with Autodesk Inventor, they are not ISV certified for workstations that use CAD. Autodesk conducts extensive tests to verify the professional graphics card models to aid in developing highly optimized drivers that will improve speed of performance for the software. These cards do not have to be costly, but it is all dependent on your demands.

If you are working on smaller assemblies, then a less specific graphics card is suitable. Larger projects require an intermediate-level graphics card and more intensive projects require a more expensive graphics card. Particularly, if you’re using multiple than one monitor, or an ultra-high definition monitor, and carrying the visualisation task.

4. Pick the best CPU and specifications for RAM

When you are deciding on CPU and RAM specs, you have a lot of aspects to think about based on the program you’re employing as well as what you need from your tasks. Both are equally crucial. Both complement each other with regard to overall performance. The quantity of work the CPU is able to handle is mostly dependent on the amount of RAM available since it is where the data the CPU is processing and allow more programs to be running at the same time.

Autodesk tends to build the products they offer around Xeon CPU’s rather than i7’s or I9’s because of their larger caches and larger calculations. Autodesk Inventor is predominately a single-threaded program, so we suggest Xeons to increase stability and longevity of the system because it’s a high-end business processor.