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. There are no special hardware requirements for Autodesk Nastran beyond those imposed by Windows.

Workstations:

	Minimum Workstation	Budget Workstation	High-End Workstation
Operating System	Windows 7 SP1 64-bit	Windows 7 SP1 Professional 64-bit, or Windows 8 Professional 64-bit	Windows 7 SP1 Professional 64-bit, Windows 8 Professional 64-bit, Windows 8.1 Professional 64-bit, or Windows 10 Professional 64-bit.
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	Required for network installation with FlexLM licensing	Required for network installation with FlexLM licensing	Required for network installation with FlexLM licensing

Laptops:

	Minimum Laptop	Budget Laptop	High-End Laptop
Operating System	Windows 7 SP1 64-bit	Windows 7 SP1 Professional 64-bit, or Windows 8 Professional 64-bit	Windows 7 SP1 Professional 64-bit, Windows 8 Professional 64-bit, Windows 8.1 Professional 64-bit, or Windows 10 Professional 64-bit.
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	Required for network installation with FlexLM licensing	Required for network installation with FlexLM licensing

There are many types of hardware that will allow you to use Autodesk Nastran. 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 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.
• Purchase or upgrade to the latest versions of Windows. The improvements in performance and reliability will more than outweigh the initial cost - even if you only use Autodesk Nastran occasionally.