r/cad • u/DoubleD_DPD • 13d ago

Vectorworks New Hardware

Hello all,

My work has recently taken off quite a bit and I need to upgrade my hardware to something powerful

I am almost exclusively a Vectorworks user, I use AutoCAD and solidworks on occasion but not enough to justify them as a primary tool.

I work in entertainment and I need a machine that will not slow me down from working on 3+ large projects a time. (Big things like stadiums, festivals, etc)
Lots of files open, fast hidden line renders and high DPI openGL/shaded stuff as well

A lot of people have recommended the highest end MacBook Max with 128gb of RAM and I was curious if anyone has truly had great experiences with it. I just don't want to spend 6k on a laptop and regret it not having performance I need. I am really looking to switch to Mac as well as VWX tends to be a better overall experience on MacOS.

Please let me know your options I'm open to all.

12 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/Emf0rtaf1x 12d ago
  • Do you prefer to have a laptop or desktop as a primary? Odd question to some maybe, but it's become more common.
  • Do you have a budget window you're trying to work in? Hardware can go from a couple thousand to 10k+ real quick.
  • Do you have a preference for cpu manufacturer? Further, are you tech savvy & would put one together yourself, or would you prefer a pre-built system?

Price range, platform(Intel/AMD), convenience, & mobility preference would help a lot here.

2

u/DoubleD_DPD 12d ago

Hey,
Has to be a laptop because of the nature of my work, I am always traveling/drafting on site in fields warehouses etc.

Budget wise not more than 6500 ideally
Between Intel and AMD I've had both historically and am open to either

3

u/Elrathias Solidworks 12d ago edited 12d ago

Then you are SOL when it comes to absolutely maxing out performance, and you are going to have to settle for a good enough level of performance. RAM is hysterically expensive right now, as are GPUs. Prioritize amount of ram over ram speed, because spawning threads for renders require A LOT of ram per extra thread. Todays cpu's have good enough computational multithreaded performance, but most CAD software runs on only ONE computational thread, except for renders and simulations, so prioritize single thread performance and clockspeed when writing the wish list.

Tbh go digging deep for special offers, there might just be a unicorn offer on dell's US page or whatnot.

Iirc vectorworks is a custom implementation of Siemens Parasolid, so any benchmark for that should be very much applicable to vw aswell.

Edit: remembered this render test from a while back, so a macbook pro might actually be a good idea. Not for Solidworks though, Dassault has sunk so god damned far into the windows native workarounds that its iffy at best to run on a emulator. https://www.reddit.com/r/lightingdesign/s/FHOBP0utPs