System Requirements

The tables below show the minimum, budget, and high-end system and hardware requirements for workstations and laptops necessary to achieve maximum performance with Autodesk Nastran In-CAD. There are no special hardware requirements for Autodesk Nastran In-CAD beyond those imposed by Windows.

Operating System: (desktop workstations or laptops)	Windows 7 SP1 64-bit (Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise editions), Windows 8 / 8.1 64-bit (Basic, Pro, or Enterprise editions), Windows 10 64-bit (Home, Pro, Enterprise, or Education editions) — NOTE: 32-bit (x86) versions of Windows are NOT supported.
Network Card	Required for network installation with FlexLM licensing for all workstations or laptops.

Desktop Workstation Specifications:

	Minimum Workstation	Budget Workstation	High-End Workstation
Computer, CPU	Intel Pentium or AMD based	Intel Core i5/i7 – Dual or Quad Core at high clock speed	Dual Intel Xeon Quad-core CPUs at high clock speed (3.5+GHz). or single Xeon 8-core CPU at high clock speed (2.8+GHz)
Memory, RAM	2GB	8GB	32GB+
Graphics Card	256MB workstation video card	1GB dedicated video card	2+GB NVIDIA Quadro K4000 or similar
Hard Disk	40GB free space	1TB SATA 7200RPM and 256GB SSD for temp files	2TB 7200 SATA for file storage and 512GB SSD for temp files Note: High write speed is critical (at least 400MB/sec is good)
Network Card

Laptop Specifications:

	Minimum Laptop	Budget Laptop	High-End Laptop
Computer, CPU	Intel Pentium or AMD based	Intel Core i5 – Dual or Quad Core at high clock speed	Intel Core i7 – Dual or Quad Core at high clock speed
Memory, RAM	2GB	4GB	16GB+
Graphics Card	256MB workstation video card	1GB dedicated video card	2+GB NVIDIA or equivalent ATI
Hard Disk	40GB free space	1TB SATA 7200RPM	512GB or 1TB SSD Note: High write speed is critical (at least 400MB/sec is good)
Network Card	Required for network installation with FlexLM licensing for all laptop levels (minimum through high-end).

There are many types of hardware that will allow you to use Autodesk Nastran In-CAD. Proper choice of hardware, however, can often make the difference between frustration and productivity. Here are a few suggestions:

• Add more memory (RAM) above the minimum configuration. This will allow you to specify more memory for the Autodesk Nastran In-CAD and reduce the likelihood of memory thrashing (excessive paging of virtual memory to disk).
• Required hard disk space is difficult to estimate, but in general you will never have enough. This is especially true when running large models. If you are continuously running out of disk space, you may want to invest in a larger and faster hard disk. Disk compression software may also help, but may also degrade performance.