UF Engineering Laptop

I am admitted to UF for Fall of 2016 and am wondering what laptop I should get for Mechanical Engineering. Will it need to be able to run programs like CAD and SolidWorks? Also I want to keep the weight of the laptop down so it’s not a pain to carry around campus. My current thoughts are either the Dell Precision 5510 or the Lenovo X1 Carbon (4th Gen). Any input would be greatly appreciated!

I’d suggest, if possible, not worrying about running CAD programs on a laptop. The graphics requirements required to make it run smoothly will end up making the laptop some combination of too big and/or have a short battery life. I’d suggest using a lab computer for CAD and getting a laptop that fulfills your own desires about size and portability and whatnot.

I can corroborate what @boneh3ad said. My son has a bad*ss laptop from @Xi that’s basically a beefed up, mil spec, MSI (most are bought by the military and remote working engineers). It’s Solidworks certified. The trade off is not only weight and battery life (he always carries his transformer), it’s price. You can do it, but you absolutely do not need to. After buying one for my wife, I’d even consider the complete opposite end of the spectrum, a Chromebook. They are cheap, featherweight, and boot up lightning fast. You can do your heavy lifting in the labs. I believe with a little geekery a Chromebook can even be used for remote access. With the money you save you could buy a more capable desktop than any laptop.

What I will say is that I fully intend for my next purchase to be a ThinkPad X1 Carbon. I’m in love with ThinkPads and the X1 gives portability with enough options in the power department to make it flexible for whatever your needs are. It’s just kind of pricey.

We had the same concerns last year for our son. He has run Matlab and is now running Solidworks OK on an HP Spectre x360 with i5, 8GB RAM. Hasn’t done a whole lot with Solidworks yet, but said it seems to run OK so far. Seems that you don’t have to get too fancy to get Solidworks running.

That depends on what you want to do in SolidWorks. If you want to just do basic things then you don’t need much in the way of specs. When you had multiparty assemblies it gets dicey in a hurry. In grad school I designed a rather complex machine that stretched my low-end desktop Quadro card to the limit. It would have melted my laptop.

DD is be holden to MacBooks so she will have to work around the limitations that they pose.

Mac is fine.

I think as far as Windoze laptops go, I’d just recommend avoiding the expensive middle. They are spendy and not fully capable for complex 3D rendering or running multiple monitors. So, either spend what it takes to get a fully certified Solidworks machine (which is WAY overkill and comes with some short comings, but is BA in its own way) or get a generic Windoze machine. For work I buy refurb enterprise class HPs. Lots of computer for the money.

Has anybody tried OnShape? (IT seems to be like Solid Works “on the cloud”… runs from browser). They have a fa ree Education plan for students, but not sure how useful that is for those that already have free Solid Works on campus.

https://www.onshape.com/edu

My kid has a Lenovo T450s with a solid state drive and we also bought the 9 cell extra battery from Amazon. It is light, runs cools, shreds through Solidworks like a breeze and it is made with Mil spec carbon fiber and the keyboard is a dream and resists spills unlike Macs which will get fried. If you are truly interested in productivity this is an excellent Windows based laptop that is light weight, energy efficient , runs cool and has about 13 hours on one charge with the optional 9 cell battery. We also bought her a Dell 23 inch ips display for her dorm room. She has had NO ISSUES with Solidworks and was certified with a perfect score on her exam and in the honors section of EML 2023.

We bought the Lenovo directly from Lenovo and outfitted it the way we wanted it.We use ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ and got a great discount. Here is a great review. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9G7TR5kJUg
If you want the complete specs we got, I can post them later. I made a mistake when I referred to the optional battery- it is a 6 cell battery and when combined with the internal battery it is 9 cell. Honestly this is a great computer!

The site that I referred to was student rate dot com. You sign up and follow the link directly to the Lenovo site and the prices are lower than if you went to Lenovo without the link. I think we saved about $350.00. Hope this helps.

Being able to run Solidworks and pass an intro class like EML 2023 doesn’t made it a good Solidworks machine. LOTS of computers can accomplish that. It’s when you tax them with advanced 3D renderings and drive multiple monitors that you need a decent Quadro a good processor and at least 16G of memory. Once you add all that you’ll be in the mid $2k to mid $3k or more depending on the brand and whether or not you spring for 17". That’s beyond the budget and needs of most students. There are no free lunches.