I am looking for advice on buying myself a new laptop. My laptop is 15 years old and was just a basic machine for home emails and such.
What I would like is to get something with enough power to be able to purchase or demo various softwares for surveying and such.
Civil3d
TBC
TraversePC
Carlson Survey Intellicad/autocad
And other recommendations.?ÿ
I am very ignorant on computer tech so be gentle with me when stating such things please. Give me the tech requirements and maybe educate me a bit and possibly manufactures you like and screen size. I prefer desktops but the boss the wife said Laptop as I will also use this on farm business so it needs to be mobile when I am doing vaccinations tagging calves etc..
I am hoping to take some training classes in civil3d via computer internet and other platforms to get myself into the current market place drafting and testing on my own.
Thank You all for any help.
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I like the Dell Precision line of models. Here is a basic setup that will fill the bill.?ÿ
The important elements here are I7 processor,?ÿ NVIDIA Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), and 16Gb of RAM. More RAM is always better, but 16Gb is enough- it gets expensive, fast.?ÿ?ÿ
@mark-mayer Thank You. I will check this out for sure.
Yeah, the Dell mobile workstations are awesome as MM pointed out.
The important thing is RAM
Check the specs on the unit to insure you can upgrade later?ÿ
16G is inadequate. 32 barely works if you're doing anything 3D point cloud.
Buying ram at time of purchase is too pricey, but getting it later if you can upgrade based on motherboard configuration is the key.
i7 is the best priced heavy lifter, but if the budget Allows, i9 and newer can add future proof longevity (15 years?? Wow.) And productive life span.
Pick a budget, and the depreciation model and figure out if the profit and loss profile shows positive correlation for the pricier option.
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@jmcnicholspls Wow so I need to go back to college to understand most of this. I guess I will build me a spread sheet and put all possible programs specs and requirements in it and compare. I need to read up on all this language I understand ram and memory type stuff at a small level. But all this graphics cards and state drive i7 i9 processors etc. I have been locked away so long in a ops center that I have not kept up with all this new fangled technology language.
I can learn it. I remember going from windows ce to windows mobile and mobile 5.0 I believe with the old data collectors. Right when the TSC3 came out I went to work at the agency and I was so sick at looking at computers when I was not at work I didn't even want to have my flip cell phone on me when I got home. I would have that old motorolla e815 to this day if I had not dropped it in a post hole and filled with concrete. At least I believe that's where it ended up. So my wonderful bride gave me her old I phone and bought her a new one.?ÿ Thank you I have some edumacating myself to do.
@jitterboogie Thank you I will be studying up on this platform. I might have to send what MM sent to a friend that is a big computer geek from the USMC and see if he can help educate me on all this. He was mostly GIS and dealt with all the tech side when we served together. I would tell him what I wanted to do and show him the math and he would right some darn code stuff I think python some darn snake code. So I could speed up production. We were still doing all observations and calcs long hand. I programed the 5601 old CPU to record the raw data in a way when we spit it out his code stuff would fill out all the forms we had to use. Until I finally proved that Terramodel and a few other in house software was giving us the same answers. I sometimes wonder why Surveyors don't utilize some of the great GIS features and capabilities.?ÿ
I have been building a poor mans data set with excell and TBC onto google earth for a few counties monuments. I asked them to get me arc and we would connect everything up and whenever we go to a new job we can graphically see any jobs close by and pull that data as well. It is funny when you get on a job and find control next door from the company and they had forgot they had data in that area already.?ÿ
I'm Bipolar in GIS and Survey.
At this point they're inextricably connected.
It's the future.
@jitterboogie Yes I love it when I hear Surveyors say the famous GIS means get it surveyed. Since I have played in both worlds I see the misconceptions and communication issues on both sides. I always tell surveyors they have been doing GIS before GIS folks have. I say it usually as I walk through there office and look at all the filing cabinates and plat drawers everywhere. Then I proceed with Saying how do you know where everything is. As they describe the methodology by city or block or county then address owner name etc. I say well you have a database manually and you have attributes of many diffrent things that helped you build that final plat. No difference. The measurements accuracy has what has propped surveying up and Law. But we all you analysis to represent something on a plat or map so similarities. Now on the opposite side for a gis person to say they can survey and measure on imagery just as good a surveyor on the ground is something they fail to understand. All imagery all has a ground survey as the foundation. Geodetic and this is where Geodesy comes in. Even GPS satellites are related to the ground through the monitoring stations. The fall around the earth and the wgs84 datum is centered on center of earth but all fixed to relate from the monitoring stations. And we even survey those in.. I believe we will continue to see more integration of the two. Even engineers are starting to see the benefit for exhibits and planning purposes. Thats a quick simple crude way of saying it though.?ÿ
I agree with Jitterboogie on RAM requirements for doing anything serious with point clouds. Same goes for photogrammetry. But for CAD, which is what you indicated, 16Gb is enough. RAM is a simple, if expensive, add. Replacing a hard drive isn't rocket science either. There are a million youtubes to guide.?ÿ?ÿ
If you are going to get into Point Clouds and or/ photogrammetry in a serious way you will probably want a bigger hard drive as well.?ÿ
I9 processors are another thing that may benefit some of these new tech uses, but won't do a lot for you with CAD.
@mark-mayer gotcha ya. I have use faro and other software for point clouds and some proprietary stuff doing lidar. Erdas and all in service and govt. work. I will go ahead and build for that as well probably on the laptop. But right now my main objective is to get my cad skills up so i can have a better chance at being marketable to a company. Seems it doesn??t matter what you know if you don??t know civil3d today. I have had a few folks reach out to me for opportunities as i get to know people in my area. But its either for field work or some gps project. I am trying to stay laser focused on getting my licensed and learning the drafting and state requirements. So I don??t want to be out back in the box of post processing and building control networks via static only. I have that down. I know i need the drafting and plat experience. It has been years since i have done anything like that. Some of the old cad commands came back to me when i play around with it. But thank you for the help for sure.?ÿ
gotcha ya. I have use faro and other software for point clouds and some proprietary stuff doing lidar...
Loading up a laptop to do point clouds and drone photogrammetry, etc., etc., will quickly run up the cost into the $4000 plus range. That's a lot of dough to be slinging around in a backpack. And just how much of that kind of work do you really expect to do that must be done on a laptop? Having the CAD capable laptop for carrying around plus a built desktop for the really heavy lifting may be a better approach.?ÿ ?ÿ?ÿ
@mark-mayer I totally agree on the financial side for sure. If this was for a survey business I would have a desktop hands down. And I will most definitely look at all the angles before purchasing for sure. ?ÿI don??t need much horsepower for quickbooks or my spreadsheets to keep up with my cattle and registration etc. for sure. But I thought if I am going to be buying a laptop i will go ahead and get one that I can use for getting my cad skills up as sell. I probably will not spend 4k for sure. I have processed scans with a laptop and that is no fun for sure. I am thankful for your knowledge and wisdom for sure.?ÿ
So I started out at a firm about 4 years ago that were purists about business machines for design work, swearing they'd gone the gaming route and were disappointed - said machines were also at least?ÿ 12-15yrs old or more from what I could tell. They sunk ~$10k into each Lenovo workstation setup (just hardware and smaller monitors). Those machines in my mind didn't perform much better than my cheaper home office Dell Precision T5810 workstation that I purchased for like $2k with my own money to run Civil 3D (16gb RAM, an earlier K quadro card if memory serves me correctly, quad core Xeon that wasn't overly fast and maybe 500gb of HDD). both the super high end Lenovos & and my Dell workstation were all purchased around the same time frame and I bought my own license of C3D and ran several of the heavier files from work here just to test the system - it's not a world beater but it will keep chewing through most any commands in C3D just as well as the rest
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For the last 3yrs since I launched my own business, I have been purchasing 15.6" Acer Predator Helios 300 gaming laptops - at first due to budget constraints but now I'm kinda sold on them to be honest & I have read a few reviews where other design professionals are starting to use them.?ÿDISCLAIMER - THIS ISN'T A PITCH FOR ACER BUT JUST MY EXPERIENCE. Yes, gaming stuff looks cheesier unfortunately but the guts of the machines are usually the same as what the "business" versions have except occasionally the manufacturers will stick intel Xeon processors into them or Quadro graphics cards (I don't understand the other brands' nor do I want to risk purchase of a couple grand machine with components that I don't know how autodesk will treat it so I stick to NVIDIA and intel for graphics cards and processors for now). Purchased both laptops directly thru Amazon but Newegg and others sell them too. As soon as I bought both machines I went into the bios to disable the cheesy lights and boot sound effects and then put my family's Christmas pic on the desktop background - I feel like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino but hey I'm happy with the normalcy now and clients who see the laptop in action won't judge me as harshly either haha. I will say at first I thought bringing a laptop to a business meeting with a client was too millennial in nature but being able to pull up a file of a survey or a site design has proven it's worth when I didn't have time beforehand to plot off a map or plan sheet - that's saved me paper & ink on my smaller home office 24" HP plotter
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The first Acer Predator laptop only had 16GB of RAM, a hex core i7-9750H processor, a simpler NVIDIA GTX 1660 card and I want to say 256GB of SSD storage - I bought the machine for like $1600 and doubled the RAM and filled the other two empty drive bays with 1TB drives for maybe $500 and it lasted great until I let the thing overheat accidentally one day - it still runs ok but the damage was done to the graphics card from what I can tell. Second Acer Predator Helios 300 I purchased for like $2100 with taxes & shipping which came installed with 64GB of RAM, octa core i7-11800h processor, NVIDIA RTX 3060 graphics card I believe & 3 drive bays with one pre-installed with 2TB of SSD - I filled up the other two drive bays with 2TB Samsung EVO drives in each for a grand total of 6TB in the whole laptop for only another $400 roughly (took some shopping to find them). I will never fill up those drives but it's peace of mind and I don't have to worry about opening up the machine ever again to swap them. Both machines have ran Civil 3D files that much larger than they should've been ~40 to 60MB each and some times multiple files too or 2 applications of C3D plus streaming music. Most of my heavier C3D files have anywhere from a half dozen to even 18 surfaces mixed with earthworks, pipe networks, alignments, profiles and corridors plus gradings and dozens upon dozens of feature lines (I do a lot of machine control models with surfaces in C3D). I also occasionally bring in DEM LiDAR topo surfaces with background aerial imagery for preliminary stuff which helps and the machines handle it just fine
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Some things to note for using laptops for engineering & surveying:
- buy a good wireless mouse that you like to work with that has additional side buttons built into it which you can program - I bought a simpler logitech 5 button mouse but a lot of people who draft full time buy the fancier gaming mice with track balls and they swear by them. I am kind of stuck in the past with simpler mice?ÿ
- make sure that if you buy a gaming laptop that it has a number pad if you do ANY data entry related tasks or excel spreadsheets at all - otherwise you'll want a wireless keyboard which kind of defeats the point of buying a laptop in my mind. a lot of laptops these days don't come with a number pad unless they're the larger sized 17.3" machines - the acer predators were some of the very few that offered number pads with all the other specs I wanted at a price I was willing to pay for a gaming laptop
- buy a very good cooling pad and the gaming laptop you pick will perform as good as any desktop for 95% of whatever you do. People think laptops can cool themselves but if you really think about it they have essentially the same components crammed into a space that's only 10-20% of the space of a conventional desktop which has multiple fans too. So I bought two IETS GT500 turbo fan pads from Amazon (one for each laptop) and while they're pretty noisy at mid speed they do keep my laptops about 20-30*F cooler from what I can tell which, has minimized Civil 3D crashes like the dreaded Fatal Error message from popping up as frequently. I have drowned out the noise with streaming music thanks to the lyrics of Sturgill Simpson and Cody Jinks over my smaller logitech computer speakers setup
- always have the laptop's fan speed set to a moderate or high setting if it is not on a cooling pad & I would advise not running it on hard tasks off the cooling pad for any length of more than 4 hours. These systems hold heat for quite a while it seems but after 4 straight hours I usually need more than just a bathroom break or phone call to help me unwind
- realize the battery life at peak fan speeds and screen brightness might be 1.5hrs max when off the charger - if you're taking them to the field then just have a good inverter that's meant for sensitive things like laptops and electronics
- purchase a decent monitor to pair with your laptop and make sure you buy the right cables to connect it - I had two older 24" Acer 1920x1080 monitors sitting in my home office connected to the old Dell of mine so I paired them to the laptops via HDMI cables and USB-C (gonna have to google the USB-C connections I think). I will run Civil 3D on the big monitors and have emails or design info on the laptop's screen off to the side. Enjoyed this so much I bought a 3rd of the same monitor for travels occasionally haha
- don't use a gaming laptop for processing point clouds or things like that - they're not meant for that sort of workload duration and heat - hence the cooling pad I mentioned earlier. let processes like that be handled by a dedicated desktop
- setup your other hardware items like plotters and printers via a network if possible and make sure you take the time to properly setup those connections - I've had a few times where either the ports changed or something was up with the addresses of each when I plugged into the ethernet cord vs just having a wireless connection (regular multifunction printer/scanner/copier and the 24" plotter)
- determine how you want to handle backups of data since a laptop's much more prone to damage or theft being that it's a laptop and transported frequently
I operated solely on a HP Laptop?ÿ with Windows 7 for several years. I had AutoCad 3D and Land Development Desktop on it. It generated contour maps from 2 - 3 thousand points instantly. No problem with High Res Google Earth backdrops. Plotted on any kind of printer or plotter. Then I got the bright idea to upgrade it to Windows 10. New 1T hard drive, NVIDIA graphic card, 16 MG of RAM.
Now it regularly locks up, my AutoCad, Acrobat PDF Editor, Word, Excel, and other expensive software is on monthly leases and my old files are incompatible formats.It generates huge files, that are too big to be emailed. The computer industry is now run by Scammers.
Don't get me started
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7 was awesome.?ÿ B10ated 10 was lots of security and other tracking software that was enveloped for sysad work for deployment and updates and for watching the users.
It requires tons of ram for the new list of hundreds of processes now running and then the whole pagfile versus Hiberfil.sys dealio using ridiculous amounts of ram to protect your computer in case the power drops .....yeah I wont get you started if you don't get me started...get off my lawn.
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Predator Helios 300 Gaming Laptop - PH315-54-74DE
The Nvidia graphics card in this will run any commercially available graphics software.?ÿ ?????ÿ
@jitterboogie sorry I got excited to share my experiences haha - but gaming laptops are definitely closing the gap between them and dedicated business laptops for this sort of work. I look at it too as if I can pay the machine off with cash in hand versus spending 3x and it pays itself off within the next couple of invoices then it's earning pure profit for me after that and I'm happy. keep the payoffs low/quick and the ROI high where I can cuz I'm bound to ruin my own margins hahaha
Predator Helios 300 Gaming Laptop - PH315-54-74DE
The Nvidia graphics card in this will run any commercially available graphics software.?ÿ ?????ÿ
that's essentially the setup my first machine had - only thing I'd recommend is that OP look to 32GB of RAM or more since he mentioned C3D and their new base requirements are 16GB if memory serves me correctly.
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Only downside to these laptop i7's is that their base clock speeds don't seem as high as the C3D recommendations so it's more wear on the processors. But gaming desktops with the fancier K series i7's and i9's will dominate those specs