“What are the minimum system requirements?” It is an increasingly common question being posed to CAD managers and tech support specialists. It’s a question of more than just the quantification of computer's processing power. It’s a question of a company’s return on investment (RoI) and infrastructure. Here at Kung Fu Drafter we are asked this question quite often. Whether it comes from outside clients or our own management, system requirements is a topic on the minds of lots of people.

One might think that the matter of minimum system requirements is a pretty simple one. Almost every CAD product plainly lists minimum system requirements on a webpage and in the software packaging. Yet recommendations and preferences for workstation specifications vary widely and are often far from the developer’s recommendations. These variations almost seem to lead users to believe that the developer’s recommendations are somehow misleading. Nothing could be further from the truth.

What these individuals and groups should be asking themselves is not “what are the minimum system requirements?” They should ask themselves “what is the limit we can invest in computer hardware to run this software?” This is the question we pose to those asking for system recommendations.

Configuring workstations on specifications outlined by “minimum system requirements” does nothing but create an office full of workstations that have minimum system performance. With CAD applications becoming more and more complex hardware demands have become commonplace. Any user who has worked on a “minimum” workstation with an application such as Civil 3D can tell you that it is a daunting task. Some will tell you that it is something closer to impossible.

Common symptoms that haunt “minimum” workstations include, but are not limited to:

• Delayed command execution
• Application crash
• Systems crash
• Out of RAM errors
• Unhandled exceptions

This is a difficult situation to have in any office. Should the office be in a transition period where new software is being introduced, these artificial hardware limits could make acceptance of the new software difficult. New users sometimes simply will not work with the new software and report that it “just doesn’t work” to management.

Let’s reexamine the alternate question that we here at Kung Fu Drafter recommend. “What is the limit we can invest in computer hardware to run this software?”

In the world of business all decisions have a bottom line in the accounting ledger. New hardware and software are always nice to have but the viability of such investments hinges on the limit to which a company or contractor is able to invest in such capital expenditures without jeopardizing other business operations. So having said that, it is easy to see how there is definitely a limit the amount that any company is able to invest in new software and hardware. Defining that limit is a job that can only be undertaken by an individual business or contractor. Specifications for hardware upgrades and new workstations should, of course, operate within the limitation of the hardware budget. But where does a one begin when specifying hardware to accommodate certain software?

The answer is simple, if not obvious. The specification should start at the “minimum system requirements” stated by the application’s developers. These are, after all, the “minimum” system requirements under which the software developer feels the application will operate correctly. Nothing less will do. An assessment of the current workstations will quickly determine which workstations meet these requirements and which do not. Workstations not meeting the “minimum system requirements” are candidates for replacement or upgrade.

In part two we will discuss actual system recommendations we give our clients and coworkers for current Autodesk software and the logic we’ve used to arrive at these conclusions ...

- KFD -