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trial versionHas a license*Recommendation may vary depending on size and complexity of CAD models.
**Quadro is a former name for NVIDIA graphics cards for heavy-duty applications (such as 3D CAD), but is now simply called RTX. Gaming cards in the GeForce (RTX) series also work, but do not provide the same performance and stability as RTX/Quadro cards.
Computer hardware is one of the most important parts of running IRONCAD smoothly. We have many examples where crashes, heavy files or other problems do not occur at all when using a computer with more "punch" in it. The fewer programs running at the same time, the better it is for IRONCAD! If you have the option, it is far superior to have a powerful desktop computer with only IRONCAD installed, then email and other stuff on a laptop next to it. Incidentally, this is true of any CAD system or other performance-demanding program.
Both desktop and laptop workstations from HP, Dell, Fujitsu and Lenovo are the most common in the CAD industry today and usually work excellently. These are also available on a second-hand market at a good price! A 3-4 year old used workstation can be a good investment.
You can also assemble your own desktop workstation in parts if you prefer. It can usually be more affordable, as you can pick from the best components at the best prices, but of course it requires that you know what you are doing when you build the computer.
The laptop workstations work incredibly well and have an impressive performance. Aim for a laptop workstation from around 15 - 20 000 SEK (~2000 € / £ / $) and you will have a good and stable computer.
It is also possible to add a few thousand SEK (i.e. a few hundred € / £ / $) to get a faster processor, graphics card and more RAM, e.g. if you often work with large heavy files and drawings, and perhaps FEA calculations as well.
Basically, though, you don't need an expensive supercomputer at all, IRONCAD works very well on most computers with today's standard hardware. But as soon as you start to get up in the number of parts or have more advanced parts with many features, you immediately notice if the computer can handle it or not. Then it's usually worth paying a few thousand SEK (a few hundred € / £ / $) extra for a better processor, more memory and a better graphics card. It's often good to start learning IRONCAD with a simpler, existing computer, and upgrade when you see the need.
There are ready-made workstations from companies such as Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens, HP and Lenovo that many people buy. They usually work very well and in addition to a ready "package" you usually get very good warranties and sometimes even on-site -support. You don't usually need to buy the most expensive model, as smaller to medium sized ones are good enough for many. Also check out Pedensia or Dustin.
Dustin, webshop
With a large and wide range, Dustin is a popular retailer of workstations etc.
Stationary workstations
Portable workstations
Pedensia, Mölndal
Pedensia specializes in workstations and accessories for companies that mostly work with CAD/FEM etc. They have a great knowledge of current hardware and especially HP's workstations. We highly recommend contacting them for more information on what is most affordable and suits you best for IRONCAD!
The fastest (at least dual-core) processor possible is preferable, and today's processors usually have lots of processor cores. But more than 1-2 cores are not really useful in large parts of the work with "3D CAD itself", but it is if you run a lot of programs at the same time or also use FEM or image rendering programs that are good at (and almost alone in) using more cores in the work itself. Some functions in IRONCAD utilize multiple cores, such as importing, image rendering, updating 2D drawings, Property Browser, etc.
Over the years, processor developers have also focused more on adding multiple parallel cores instead of developing faster cores, partly because a processor that starts to exceed 4-5 GHz draws a lot of power, which in turn requires more cooling. The downside is that most programs can only use 1 core and not several at the same time - so-called "multi-threading".
Intel Core i series
Intel has a series of processors called Core i3 (entry-level), Core i5 (mid-range), Core i7 (server/workstations), Core i9 (high-end). These also contain a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) and are also each available in several variants, with several different sets of processor cores (from a few single ones, 4 or 6, up to over 20 cores in the "worst"). For image rendering with e.g. KeyShot , Intel Core i9 is proven to be very fast, as we have heard several examples of.
Intel Core Ultra series
With the development of AI, more computing power is required to perform lots of simultaneous calculations. This has led to the development of an NPU (Neural Processing Unit). Thus, the Intel Core Ultra series of processors contains not only a CPU and GPU, but also an NPU for AI-specific processes. These also follow the same number series similar to the Core i series, such as Core Ultra 7 and Core Ultra 9.
Hereis a complete overview of Intel Core on Wikipedia.
Intel Xeon series
For servers and workstations, Xeon processors have long been considered the most powerful and, above all, the most stable. Microsoft has also launched a special Windows 10 Pro for Workstations which previously only worked with Xeon processors, (but possibly no longer seems to be a requirement), with support for up to 6 TB of RAM (2 TB is otherwise the limit). According to some experts in the field, Intel Core i9 processors can now be considered at least as fast and stable, but several workstation computer vendors still distinguish packages with either Intel Core or Xeon processors.
Hereis a complete overview of Intel Xeon on Wikipedia.
IRONCAD supports multi-core processors to some extent, but it is mainly used for image rendering and to some extent when opening and importing files or updating 2D drawings. There is currently no 3D CAD system on the market that truly supports more than 1 core when working with the 3D model itself or updating the model/assembly structure. It is not easy to explain the principle, but it is clearly the next "CAD revolution"! There are some custom written CAD systems that have solved this to some extent in e.g. handling lines in the cross-section/sketch, but it is in updating the 3D model for general CAD work that it would really be useful.
Some of Intel's processors (both the old Pentium 4 and the newer Core i5, i7 and i9) support a feature called hyper-threading, which in short is the simulation of multiple cores. It is useful for running many small processes at the same time, but for single heavy processes (like CAD and FEM) it is counterproductive. It has in some cases affected update times from seconds to minutes and sometimes longer! The setting is controlled via the BIOS, so reboot your computer and go into the BIOS if you want to check if you are using hyper-threading. Some computer vendors also have automatic handling of this and should be able to control (turn off) the feature temporarily when a system requires more performance.
You can also see this by the Performance tab of the Task Manager showing twice as many "process boxes" for cores than actually exist, e.g. 8 boxes instead of 4 (if you have a 4-core processor). However, HP currently has an automatic handling of hyper-threading and therefore you should not have to turn off the feature manually. If an application requires more processing power at any given time, HP's computers should be able to control it so that the application has access to multiple cores working together as one.
At least 4-8 GB but preferably as much as you think you can afford. 32 GB, 64 GB or more is quite common in today's workstations. Windows 10/11 supports up to 2TB and the "workstation variant" up to 6 TB RAM.
The 3D CAD industry has previously talked about "1 MB RAM per part" which means 1 GB RAM per thousand parts in a 3D scene. We have noticed that this is sometimes, but not always, very accurate. One example model where it was quite accurate had 3050 parts and used 2.7 GB of RAM.
Below you will find a good configurator if you want to find out which memory is suitable for your computer and how much it costs:
The faster the hard disks, the faster it is to open and save files. It also affects the start-up time of Windows and of installed programs such as IRONCAD. Do not use your SSD as a "dump old files" disk, but rather make sure you have an extra mechanical hard disk of the larger kind in that case. The projects you are currently working on can of course be stored locally, to take advantage of the performance, but move old projects to the larger disk or to a NAS or file server instead. Larger portable workstations today often have space for 2 or more SSDs.
SSDs are virtually standard with new computers today and also come in a variety of flavors from more "traditional" form factors with SAS or SATA connectivity to "chip" variants with mSATA, M.2 or even PCI-E connectivity. They continue to evolve, gaining more space and becoming cheaper, although the best models are perhaps more static in price. They contain no moving parts, but are more similar in function to USB flash drives. The size of space and price is something that is constantly changing. It may be worth spending a little extra money and also doing some research on performance and reliability in the segment (size/price) you are looking for. The downside of SSDs is that, because they are entirely chip-based and therefore have no moving parts, they are usually not repairable if damaged or broken.
Are a bit special as they use technology from both mechanical hard drives as well as SSDs. Hybrid drives have spinning magnetic disks just like mechanical hard drives but they are also equipped with flash memory of the same type found in SSDs. The SSD part makes the computer faster and the mechanical part means that the hard disk still has plenty of storage space. This is a really good compromise if you only have room for one hard drive and want to get the best of both worlds. Otherwise, we suggest getting an SSD for the operating system and a mechanical hard drive for file storage. If you want a hybrid drive in your laptop, you'll want to buy a 2.5-inch drive, while if it's going to be mounted in a desktop, you'll want a 3.5-inch drive.
Hard disks with moving parts are no longer very common in new computers, but can be more affordable when you need a lot of space at a low price. They come in different rotational speeds such as 7,200 or 10,000 RPM with the SATA and SAS interfaces being the most common options. SAS is generally faster, more reliable and supports hot-swapping, making it ideal for servers and enterprise environments, while SATA is cheaper and has greater storage capacity. Of course, which one to buy and use ultimately depends on the connectivity capabilities of the motherboard.
Nvidia
We recommend using an NVIDIA RTX (formerly known as Quadro) graphics card of some kind. They are available in different price ranges and work for both desktop and laptop computers.
There is also a series of "gaming graphics cards" from NVIDIA called GeForce GTX/RTX that has worked well for some, however, it is mainly developed for gaming graphics and not CAD graphics, which differs in a number of areas and is usually noticed mainly in larger compilations where it provides greater stability.
AMD
Graphics cards from AMD also work, but over the years we have seen some problems with these. For AMD, you should also preferably aim for their high-end product Radeon PRO.
It's important to stay up to date with the latest drivers. They are updated and released regularly. Here you can check if you have the latest driver for your graphics card;
Search for current drivers from NVIDIA.
Search for current drivers from AMD.
Also keep in mind that there may be vendor-specific drivers for many graphics cards. An older driver from e.g. HP can sometimes work better than the latest driver from NVIDIA in workstations from HP, or the equivalent for Dell, Lenovo etc.
The more screens you have and the bigger they are, the better you can see the content of the programs on your computer. A simple rule. With two monitors you are guaranteed to be more efficient and with e.g. 2 x 32" 4K monitors(Ultra HD at 3840x2160 pixels) you can not only read emails and run IRONCAD at the same time - you can have several windows of different programs up at the same time!
A more affordable alternative might be to have, for example, two 27" screens with Full HD (1920x1080 pixels) next to each other. You may not have the same possibility of many windows on the same screen, but you can see very well with appropriately sized icons on the screen.
Windows window management
Windows 11 has new possibilities for faster and better window placement with multiple windows open at the same time on a screen, by dragging a window to the top of the screen and choosing the type of window sizes and positions with Snap Layouts.
The disadvantage of having a large screen resolution is that it results in smaller icons and you sometimes need to compensate for this by "increasing DPI" in the form of scaling up the icons by e.g. 125% or 200% DPI or more. Not all programs can handle this compensation, which results in poor sharpness of the icons or other graphical problems such as displaced text/image in windows.
Since v2020, all icons and menus in IRONCAD are vectorized and therefore scalable, which provides good support for high resolution screens.
IRONCAD on two screens
From version 2026 there is support for dividing the program into two parallel windows (so-called Multiple Window) where you can, for example, see the 3D scene on one screen and the 2D drawing (with all tabs and command icons) on the other screen. Switching between windows is seamless and all icons are displayed "in the right place".
Connections
Preferably use HDMI or DisplayPort cables. They can also transmit sound, if you have a built-in speaker in the screen. Some monitors also have built-in USB ports, so the monitor acts as a USB hub too! However, this requires a USB cable between the computer/docking station and the screen. In case of graphics problems, it may be worth trying to replace the cable as well.
Wider 4K with 21:9 aspect ratio or more?
There are wider screens such as Ultra-Widescreen with an aspect ratio of 21:9 with 5120x1440 pixels. In simple terms, it can be seen as "two screens in one". These wider screens are oftencurved, as the two ends of the oblong screen would otherwise be relatively far from your eyes.
There is also Super (Ultra) Widescreen with a 32:9 aspect ratio of 3840x1080 pixels.
We (still) mainly recommend Windows 10 Pro x64.
NOTE! Please note that Microsoft will stop updating Windows 10 from October 14, 2025.
Windows Home versions are not officially supported by IronCAD LLC, so if you encounter problems, it may be due to a built-in limitation of the operating system that is not caused or resolved by IronCAD LLC.
Windows 11 - officially supported as of IronCAD DCS 2022.
Windows 10 - still supported, officially as of IronCAD DCS 2016.
Windows 8.1 - still supported, officially as of IronCAD DCS 2014.
Windows 8 - no longer supported, as of IronCAD DCS 2017.
Windows 7 - no longer supported, as of IronCAD DCS 2023.
Read more at ironcad.com
Earlier versions of IronCAD DCS may be fine to install on Windows 10 (but not guaranteed) as the latest Windows versions from Windows 7, 8, 10 and 11 still have a lot in common*.
If you are unsure which version of IronCAD DCS you have, contact us!
*Windows 10/11 are both "really" Windows NT v10.*, while Win Vista/7/8 all three were Windows NT v6.* and Win 2000/XP were both Windows NT 5.*. NT originally stood for New Technology, but this was removed in connection with Win 2000. Source - Wikipedia.
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