Hi guys,

here again asking for some advise. I'm doing some 3D models of buildings for our portfolio. I'm using Autocad 2012. At work I have a PC that is 5 years old: 2GHz, 2GB RAM, no graphic card (just accelerator). Obviously it is not very easy task when the models are neary finished, so I decided to use my laptop that has 2012 on it as well. It is an HP 1.6GHz Quad, 4GB RAM, 1GB Nvidia. Somehow there is no difference in the performance! I'm really surprised by this, but doing something like section thro the model is nearly impossible. Any idea why there is no difference in performance?thanks Karol

Well, neither one of those computers is really a good choice for 3D, so I'm not surprised you're having a lot of difficulty. You're barely scraping by with just the bare minimum specs. In fact, your work computer has no graphics card and your laptop processor is only 1.6GHz. That's just not going to get the job done. If you're planning on doing more 3D in the future, I would highly recommend upgrading to a 64 bit operating system, quad core processor 2.5GHz or higher, 8GB RAM and a mid to high end graphics card. These specs would be my idea of minimum requirements for working in 3D.

I understand that I'm not using the "best" technology, but still the laptop is quad core 1.6, 64bit (the autocad is 64 too) + 1GB graphic RAM - I have a feeling that the difference between these 2 computers should be visible. Even switching from model to paper is painful.

Autodesk recommends, for 3D work, that your processor be a minimum of 2GHz. Your laptop has a 1.6GHz processor. The fact that it's a quad core makes no difference. Autocad is not a multi core application. It can only utilize one core while working, and a second core during panning and zooming only. You really should upgrade your system if you want to work effectively and efficiently in 3D.But having said that, have you tried tweaking your 3D display performance? See here: Manual Performance Tuning