Best products from r/SolidWorks

Solidworks runs well on pretty much anything, and thanks to Visualize replacing photoview 360, it renders pretty well on "pretty much anything" too. Simulations however, is where laptops differ on a major level from a dekstop workstation; a mobile class cpu just does not have the core number and frequency to even be in the same ballpark as the equal desktop cpu.


That being said,

Get an i7, a discrete graphics card, and a ssd.

Don't worry about screen size, its a super cheap upgrade if you find yourself in need of more screen space to get an external monitor, keyboard and mouse to set it up as a workstation at home.


Something like this would probably be ideal, see if you can scroung up a deal online, Extremetech has their weekly deals posted if you hawk that, i dont really know what timeframe you're on but we've got black friday coming up in one month too so...



Its common knowledge that gaming gfx dont perform well in solidworks, but, at this price range, assuming you cant find a 2nd hand och hand me down quadro/fireblade equipped laptop, its better than the build in intel cards.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Why-you-should-use-a-Quadro-video-card-in-Solidworks-2016-751/

Copy-pasting my post from a similar question in /r/CAD:

>Pretty much any quality Intel-Based laptop will be fine. Most engineering stuff (outside of FEA/rendering) runs better on intel processors due to the higher single-threaded demand, and intel mobile offerings are a bit more widespread and better than comparably priced AMD options.
>
>I recommend a 13" Ultrabook for carrying around/going to class. Ideally, pair with a Thunderbolt dock at your desk that is hooked to a desktop-sized monitor/mouse/keyboard. Or have an Ultrabook/nice tablet + a desktop machine.
>
>https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/the-best-windows-ultrabook/
>
>A dell XPS 13 or 15 is a good quality option. Get at least an i5 and ideally 16GB of RAM.

Regarding GPU: A quadro is nice to have, but not necessary for small assemblies/single parts. IF you get into more complicated stuff (unlikely for a student laptop), they can make a huge difference, though. If you're playing games, though you probably want to get a gaming laptop. This ASUS ROG Strix is a good laptop but boy it looks extremely "gamer"

I needed to learn surfacing for some product design work and found that the Solidworks Surfacing Bible. Not exactly a tutorial, but I found it pretty useful for getting into the workflow. I'd imagine the other books in the series are good as well.

My main rig has a 3.3ghz i5 in it and my beast PC uses a 3.5ghz i7

Processing and memory tend to mostly affect simulations. The graphics card handles most of the processing done during modeling and rendering. Getting the best graphics card you can afford is generally the best solution


Here's what I like:

Video Card

Mobo

CPU

Memory

Of course you still need case, power supply, hard drive, dvd drive, etc. But all the above rings in at £767. So you might consider going to a Quadro 4000 series

Hi sHoRtBuss

First off - thats nice that you are setting up a computer for your fiance.

Secondly - a quadro P600 is listed as fully supported on this site:

https://www.solidworks.com/sw/support/videocardtesting.html

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And is priced at 170$ on this site:

https://www.amazon.com/PNY-VCQP600-PB-NVIDIA-Quadro-P600/dp/B06X9DWQM6/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=quadro+P2000&qid=1554293790&s=gateway&sr=8-4

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so that's the route I would take (or a similar route - a supported Quadro card thats within your price range).

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Just be sure to get the adapters to get from that card to your monitor(s).

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Hope this helps,

Toby

Logitech MX Master.

It's basically a toned down gaming mouse. Three re-programable buttons (per application) on the left and probably the best scroll wheel combo ever designed. The main traditional scroll wheel will release the ratchet mechanism if it's spun fast enough, great on long specification documents. Then they added a separate horizontal scroll wheel on the thumb, which is a awesome on excel.

I personally don't really see the point of putting all my common functions on buttons, the Solidworks right-click/drag menu is where I put all of those.

I'm constantly flipping between Matlab/Excel, which is why I prefer a mouse more setup for those applications. Solidworks has a ton of shortcut options that just don't exist in other programs.

Also, 3D mouse is a huge plus for Solidworks. Bit of a learning curve, but you won't regret it. Don't go for one of the crazy wrist support ones though, the basic puck is more than enough.

Just to give you an idea of what a class would be like, this is the textbook for my local college's SolidWorks classes (year adjusted). I would suggest starting with the included tutorials first as they are quite good, however. There's not much difference between the two, so unless you preview the book and prefer that style of writing, there's no compelling reason to buy any additional material at the beginner level. As I've progressed, I've found certain topic specific texts like The Solidworks Surfacing Bible to be helpful, but that's probably a ways down the road for you. There are tons of tutorial videos online as well, but be warned, the quality can vary from really good to terrible. I would suggest grabbing a beverage of your choice and watching a few of them to see which person makes the most sense to you. Besides those, many of the various Value Added Retailers usually make their webinars available online, and there are some nice tips and tricks in them once you get the basics down; just as an example, I really didn't spend a lot of time setting up the Shortcuts menu before, but having seen how much quicker it is when used by someone who has spent some time learning it, I've become a convert.

these are the normal ways to avoid undercuts with snap hooks.

Bump off tooling is also an option.

You can also use living hinges to get undercuts on parts from a straight pull tool.


Plastic Part Design for Injection Molding: An Introduction By Robert Malloy is a great intro to IM part design and gives a basic intro to snap fits.

[The First Snap Fit Handbook]
(https://www.amazon.com/First-Snap-Fit-Handbook-3E-Attachments/dp/1569905959) by Bonenburger goes into a lot more detail.

Check second hand book sites for cheaper used copies (Abebooks.com is good).

There are free design guides online (of varying quality...) which give a brief intro but are usually just a few pages so obviously don't have the detail the books above do. This guide by Bayer is OK. (pdf link).

I mentioned this in a similar thread here - one of my big projects in school was modeling a kids balance bike, pretty much this exact one:

https://www.amazon.com/Wooden-Balance-Toddlers-Toddler-Glider/dp/B0032JDTWC/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=wooden+balance+bike&psc=1&qid=1572458767&s=toys-and-games&sr=1-4

Most pieces are pretty simple and assembly is straightforward, but for newer users it's a good challenge. You can pull the hardware off of McMaster Carr.

Though not free but I can highly recommend this book "Mastering SolidWorks" by Matt Lombard

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This is a kind of book that you can keep using for many years :)

The Solidworks Bible is still a great reference, but it hasn't been updated since 2013. Solidworks changes so fast that it's not cost effective for the publishers to put out a new version every year. Check out YouTube, GrabCAD, or the Solidworks forums for more up to date info. Attending Solidworks World or training classes through your reseller could be helpful as well. When you take a class a manual is included that covers everything from the training.

I'd recommend this one. I bought this about 8 months ago and it's got great specs for the price. I bought another 8 GB Ram stick to upgrade it to 16 GB of RAM. You can also add in another HD if you want to dual boot with linux, which I also ended up doing (i'm a coder).
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01DT49XN8/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I'm just using my machine as a baseline. It cost $500 five years ago... at Best Buy. I am assuming if it can meet my current needs for Solidworks then a modern $500 laptop ordered off of Amazon will too. These were the two I had looked at so far:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B010SBAJDS/ref=cm_sw_su_dp

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0158XJGJ4/ref=psdc_565108_t2_B010SBAJDS

That first one has integrated graphics but everything I've read says for my purposes it should be OK.

In drafting class we use Engineering Graphics with SOLIDWORKS 2019: A Step-by-Step Project Based Approach (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1630572306/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_6H9FDbHWADY9N) and I have found it pretty useful so far.

This one will probably work.

It's not up to date, but there hasn't been that much change to the basics since 2015.

Get used, all of the examples can be downloaded for free online.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1585039160/ref=tmm_pap_used_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=used&qid=1572480938&sr=1-5

https://www.amazon.com/Machinerys-Handbook-Toolbox-Erik-Oberg/dp/0831130911/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1549374177&sr=8-1&keywords=machinery%27+handbook like the actual machinery handbook?

Here is the desktop version of your link