Specs for new Drafting computer

not sure what carlson requires performance wise as I run Autodesk Civil 3D (2018, 2019 & 2020). But back in early 2017 I was able to buy an "off the shelf" Dell Precision T5810 with 250GB of SSD storage, an NVIDIA Quadro M2000 4GB graphics card, 16GB of RAM & 3.5GHz Xeon processor (think its only a quad core though). Granted I bought it off Newegg at the time & paid like $1650 IIRC, but I needed a basic CAD machine quickly to start building GPS grading models & wasn't looking for the fanciest so this thing served the purpose for a modest home setup. Found some dual Acer 23" monitors on Amazon as well as a smaller HP T120 plotter (only 24" roll size) & it got me up & rolling for around $3,100 total (set up everything myself with some basic googling & youtube videos as I'm not tech savvy at all). Some people will say I overpaid, fine whatever you want to think, but it got me up & running despite my ignorance in most stuff IT related. Since the initial purchase I have added 500GB of Samsung SSD storage to the machine & am looking to up the RAM potentially to maybe 32 or 64GB. Still needs the OS upgraded to Windows 10 but I'm slacking at the moment as I have some more pressing expenses with a young family (work is slowing down) & I don't have the time to tackle it myself nor do I wish to pay somebody to do it either.?ÿ

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Side note, how do the solo guys on here back up their projects & data? I've got a sloppy way of just duplicating the information to three different 1TB external hard drives with the same data. Definitely not a sophisticated method but I've read horror stories of people trusting cloud based services. Rather rely on myself to keep everything in tact. Probably need to store one off site from the house; maybe a safety deposit box?

NVMe Solid State Drive of at least 1Tb,?ÿ 2Tb better.

16Gb Ram (2x8Gb sticks) is probably enough. Can be easily upgraded later, if not.

Graphics card with 4Gb of its own memory.

Plenty of USB ports.?ÿ?ÿ

Windows Pro, not home.

Built is better, but usually more expensive. Really good stuff can be bought off the shelf, so it's hard to go wrong.?ÿ The quality may be lower on off the shelf to cut costs. Not everybody who says they can build you one really knows what they are doing.?ÿ

The biggest difference between gaming computers and a good CAD machine are the fancy red and blue lights. It's the 21st century equivalent of racing stripes.

When I started in this business new computers were completely obsolete in 2 years or less. Now, a good new computer is an 8 year investment.?ÿ

Personally, I use a laptop and would consider being chained to a desktop a hardship. All these spec's are readily available in laptops. It does cost a little more, but not that much in the grand scheme of things. I've got a docking station and dual monitors both at home and at the office.?ÿ?ÿ

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Posted by: @ncsudirtman

Side note, how do the solo guys on here back up their projects & data? I've got a sloppy way of just duplicating the information to three different 1TB external hard drives with the same data. Definitely not a sophisticated method but I've read horror stories of people trusting cloud based services. Rather rely on myself to keep everything in tact. Probably need to store one off site from the house; maybe a safety deposit box?

You want something off-site, in case of disaster at your end. And you want something you fully control, in case that goes wrong. All 3 of your externals would be destroyed by the same fire, or be stolen by the same thief. The chances that both those things would happen at the same time are very small.

?ÿMaking copies is not the same as backing up. A million copies is of no value if the files are corrupt.?ÿ You want to be able to recover your files as they existed in the past when necessary.?ÿ ?ÿ

Carbonite

I recently retired my old desktop with Win 7 and LDD. ?ÿ

When I moved from my office to home to avoid people, I was disappointed to find my new HP 705G4 with SSD has no WIFI so I had to run a ethernet wire out the window. ?ÿ

I'm committed to Carlson Survey OEM, which is much better, but after over 30 years of DCA, Softdesk and LDD, it ain't so easy.?ÿ

As a side note on graphics cards, it is best to get cards designed for work stations, such as AMD FirePro or Nvidia Quadro, versus the gamer cards.

The more RAM the better.?ÿ ?ÿBoth for CPU and video.?ÿ ?ÿSSD is best for storage.?ÿ As for?ÿ backup, I use MSP360 for offsite to Amazon Cloud and the same software backups up to a portable drive.?ÿ ?ÿAlso have raid on the server where all the jobs are stored.?ÿ ?ÿTriple backup seems to be the best bet.?ÿ ?ÿGOod luck.

@scotland

IMHO shouldn't that be SSD is best for programs and working files?

We run Civil 3D fairly maxed out and I've noted before that the stock, state of the art "Civil 3D" computers that we use are 4-core but with AutoCAD and/or Civil 3D, 99% of the time its running on only 1 core, and I think the latest machines we have are 8 core, so Civil 3D sits at max 15%??. They also have dedicated 4GB graphics, but rarely does AutoCAD and Civil 3D dip into that. Things do max out re RAM and graphics when we run Adobe and some internet things at the same time, but the stock draft-person shouldn't be doing that. 

Do not get a Quattro card for Carlson if your running Intellicad I donƒ??t know about AutoCad but read the recommended cards for Carlson I have a Quattro and itƒ??s not as smooth as a less powerful system running a GeForce card. It doesnƒ??t have major issues just choppy. Titan Pc has built our last few computers and we have been happy with them.

Posted by: @ncsudirtman

Side note, how do the solo guys on here back up their projects & data?

Dropbox.com

@larry-best Here's a solution for the lack of WiFi in the PC:  https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=wifi+pc+card

How are you liking the AMD processor and graphics chips with your new setup?

You might wish to check out Puget Systems: https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-Autodesk-AutoCAD-134

They have recommended system builds for various purposes, including CAD.

I ran across their web site in December when I was about to purchase yet-another-Dell, and ended up buying from Puget.

I am very glad I did. The system comes thoroughly tested and has worked out perfectly. And it's pretty!

@gromaticus

New Egg has 64GB DDR4 RAM card for $315. ???? 

@notsomuch   I'm no expert. I know I can see objects I'm dragging a lot better now.

In my last job we started a drone program. I picked uo an ASUS ROG. 64gb ram, 10gb nvidea card and 500gb nvme. It wasnt much more than most decent workstations and it SCREAMED... It ran Civil 3D smooth and quick. Digital surfsce model regen time went from tens of minutes to seconds. Ran about 2300 as I recall.

@ncsudirtman

I have a 2tb ssd plugged into my computer as a backup but I also use google drive. I like it because i can access all of my files on both my phone and my TSC7. So far it's worked great.

@larry-besti know how to run ldd on win 10 without longbow and no other extras. Let me know. No tricks. No hidden fees. I use LDD 3 in conjunction with civil 3d for when I need to do parcels or other calcs that Autodesk mucked up by adding unnecessary fluff for smaller jobs

I know gaming machines aren't perfectly suited for running CAD but if you're not overly tech savvy and don't want to build it yourself or spec a custom job they are a great solution.?ÿ I'm having a pretty serious love affair with with my AlienWare m15 right now.?ÿ I worked from home a lot even before the current issues we face so could never go back to a desktop setup again.?ÿ?ÿ

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As to your question about backups.?ÿ Check into Synology NAS devices.?ÿ They have a pretty extensive lineup that will do everything you need and you are in control of your data.?ÿ If you're concerned about offsite storage because of disaster recovery I would suggest buying 2 identical units.?ÿ One for your house/office where you keep your working files and one at a friend or family member's house as a backup.?ÿ Their DSM (Disk Station Manager) operating system is very user friendly and not overly complicated and you can remote into both onsite and offsite devices from anywhere with an internet connection.?ÿ I would recommend a model with a minimum of 2 drive bays so you can set them up in a RAID configuration for redundancy.?ÿ Cool thing with Synology is they have a hybrid RAID option which allows you to use drives of mismatched volume size so if you need more space you don't have to upgrade all the drives at the same time.?ÿ The site to site backup software is free (along with a great number of other useful add-ins) and can be configured to backup to a number of popular cloud services as well, like Google Drive, Box, DropBox, Amazon S3, ect.?ÿ?ÿ

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If I were strictly solo or I was the only one drafting I would probably just go the DropBox (or similar cloud service) route but with 2+ people accessing files at the same time some type of file server with offsite and/or cloud backup is pretty important.?ÿ?ÿ

I purchased an Acer Aspire A515-43 on Amazon a couple of months ago for under $350. I upgraded the RAM to 32GB and added a second SSD for $180. Using an old monitor via HDMI for two screens. Running Civil3D 2020 with no issues. Good luck buying a PC or parts now though.

Just finished building a new desktop system with open-architecture off the shelf components. Total cost (ie cost of parts) = $4741.48.

Do some Pix4dMapper/Agisoft Metashape/drone projects.

Never used AMD before, but went with the new AMD Ryzen 3rd generation ($2000) 32 core Threadripper CPU. Benchmarks show Intel CPU's are waayyy slower.

ASUS ROG Zenith II Extreme motherboard ($856). Also, three (total = $720) 4th generation NVME M.2 1TB sticks.

Decided against the very popular ($1300) Geforce 2180 ti GPU card, due to expectations that a new GPU is likely coming soon since the 2180 ti has been out about 18 months. So, went with a cheap Geforce GTX 1660 Super in the interim (cost $296.11).

Started out with ($279) 32Gb of G.SKILL 3200 ram.

Windows 10 Pro ($29 activation key).

First build ever for me. Watched enough Youtube videos to know what to do. Not hard at all. Seems to run very fast.