Solidworks 2006 Video Card

The best thing is to contact Solidworks:

DS SolidWorks Headquarters

Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp.

300 Baker Avenue

Concord, MA 01742

1-800-693-9000 US and Canada

+1-978-371-5011 Outside the US and Canada

Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp.(West)

3000 Ocean Park Blvd.

Suite 2001

Santa Monica, CA 90405

1-800-469-7287

+1-310-309-2800

My gut tells me that the GeForce is not going to cut it. They are gaming cards, not CAD.

My bet is that you need a Quadro based card NVIDA card.

There are also many Solidworks support forums on the web that would be a good resource, but I would pick up the phone and dial one of those numbers first.

I have run a number of CAD programs on both GeForce and a quadro FX1400 cards and not had too much problem, but would recommend that if you want serious performance then like Anonymous Hero says....go for a Quadro

Quoting Dr.Moose from the thread "Downgrading to Windows 7", Post #88:

"A professional graphics card is designed for CAD/CAM. A video or gaming card is designed for home use and video gaming. In the real world though, these definitions can become very confused.

So, briefly. In CAD/CAM, we have huge numbers of polygons which don't move around a lot. In gaming, you have relatively few polygons which move about very rapidly indeed. So the two types have quite the opposite requirements, and graphics engines are designed to support these requirements. Thus, a top level video card will not do so well for high end CAD/CAM, nor will a top level pro graphics card do so well for high end gaming.

Professional graphics cards have nVidia Quadro or ATI Fire chips, whereas video cards will have the nVidia GeForce or ATI Radeon."

DrMoose appears quite knowledgeable in these matters...

Popcornwizard

What an Interesting question?

Is the soildworks for private or professional use?

and what are planning to do on solidworks?

Are you planning to do any photo realistic rendering for magazines and or catalogues?

If so you more than likely go for another graphics card and upgrade the Solidworks......

If its for private use then i think you will be perfectly fine...i have found that solidworks basically running on any system and with any graphics cards although it may be much slower on some systems........but that depends on your budget........i believe that the graphics card issues is an opportunity for the solidworks resellers to up sell to you an additional graphics card...where yours will works perfectly fine....the only way 2 fine out is to run it and fine out.......you can always upgrade your graphics latter anyway....

let us know how u get on

Anthony@ALNO

www.alnoproductservices.com.au

I cannot remember SolidWorks 2006 anymore, but certainly the later versions (2008 onwards) really want a Quadro type card.

However, all is not lost as one can "soft mod" a GeForce card into a Quadro card using Riva Tuner.

Also check this site for a good guide on how to do it

I run SolidWorks 2010 with a GeForce 8600GT which I have soft modded into a Quadro FX1700 with full Solidworks graphics functionality.

Brgds

I have Solidworks 2008 and my video card is Nvidia Quadro FX 3500.

Just to add:

Don't change any of the components until after you've installed the Solidworks program first and tried it out.

There's no need to change anything if the program works fine with the configuration that currently exists in your computer.

Solidworks with it's lisencing is expensive enough as it is, so why spend more for a video card if you don't need too.

If your program is running sluggishly or freezes up then consider the new video card but not until you've expanded the RAM first. RAM card is cheaper then a video card and often times will resolve a slow running computer issue.

Yes I understand that.

He's working with Solidworks 2006. If he's buying a new computer then chances are the hardware in that computerd will be more then what systems had available in 2006. If the video card he's asking about isn't showing up in the 2006 video requirements then maybe it wasn't around yet in 2006.

If he's using the computer for other applications like video games then he should go for the top of the line video card but if he's just using it for Solidworks, he can just get what works and stick with it and not spend money that he doesn't need too because most business applications don't require upgrading hardware like video games do.

The key is whether Solidworks 2006 supports opengl or directx, or both. If it requires opengl then you're probably stuck with what Solidworks recommends. If it allows directx (probably directx 9.0 in that timeframe) then go with the cheaper Geforce cards if you're not planning on doing any high resolution animations.

I'm currently running a bunch of Inventor 2010 64 bit systems on I7 computers using nVidia GTX-260's. We're happier than pigs in pooh with these machines, even if Autodesk doesn't have those cards on their recommended list. When Autodesk declared they were dropping support for opengl and focusing only on directx, then Geforce cards became fair game, IMO.

Dave G.