Can i work with 3d modelling softwares in system having no graphic card?

[vinaykumar1]

Hello i am a civil engineer ,As my laptop having no graphic card , I heard that i can't work in 3d modelling without graphic card ,now my question is that can i use softwares like 3ds max and rivit other BIM softwares without graphic card,and if its possible what are the limitations. Or if there any chances to upgrade my system with graphic card or any correspond, what will be the cost and etc.............please help me,,,,

[Scott Schroeder]

Yes, but barely. Internal graphic cards are very poor with any sort of 3d program. Your program will be so slow it will take you days to simply draw a straight wall or you won't be able to display more than 2 objects on the screen at the same time. It' will be a very awkward and painful experience.

 

Laptops in general are horrible for modeling. They just don't have the power, system cooling capabilities, etc for long term modeling solutions.

 

Set aside some cash, there are more than enough links here at CGArchitect about building a system so I won't go into it, and buy yourself a decent mid range tower. Don't waste your time and money trying to upgrade a laptop.

[Dimitris Tolios]

As Scott said, it is nearly impossible to upgrade a laptop as far as GPU goes - even if it had a dedicated GPU, most of the times this is limited to a custom design and custom cooling solution - very few laptops have "serviceable" standardized PCIe slots for you or a technician to play with. Yours almost definitely is not one of those.

 

Depending on your laptop, some 3D work can be done...2nd and 3rd Gen i5/i7 laptops have bearable graphics performance for basic stuff, and if you have an AMD APU, like an A6 or A8, you technically have a low end desktop GPU build in (3-4x faster than the aforementioned intel solutions, still weak - to put you in perspective of how "weaker" the average laptop is in graphics).

As far as CPU goes, things are not that bad: last 1-2 generations of mobile CPUs is pretty fast by any standard as far as single threaded performance goes. I take it you are pretty new in the field, so I doubt you will be attempting advanced stuff thus I am encouraging you to try.

 

So, if you are after basic stuff (especially if you had access to older 3DS versions) you can "play" with 3DS.

Revit is in general more cumbersome and slow (imho), but again, you can do stuff - it is just frustrating when you try to model complex models (we are not talking 1 object, but a building).

[matthewspencer]

As someone who used a 4cm thick Compaq with onboard graphics and 512mb of RAM for most of college, I can assure you it is possible to get plenty of work done without a dedicated GPU. As Dimitris siad, do give it a try first. Don't buy a new computer until you know you will need it, and then don't get a laptop at all, get a desktop.

[Dimitris Tolios]

One of the prime reasons I find it difficult for students starting out with older hardware, is that Autodesk and other software houses are happily giving you educational licences for their products, but that goes for the latest and shiniest of them. So you can easily get a 3DS Max 2012-13 licence, but (as far as I know) it is nearly impossible to get a 2005-2006 licence. I am mentioning 2006, as back then I do remember borrowing all the PCs I could from friends and relatives for rendering tasks, and I would run 3DS on Centrino 1.7GHz/512MB RAM/onboard chipset graphics rendering with Vray for literally days per image...

 

It was hard then ofc, but current Viewports etc are even harder, with no option to roll back to a less intensive UI.

[vinaykumar1]

thank u