Architectural work, fine. What about 3D parametric CAD - which is NOT architectural? NX, Pro/E, Solidworks - you know, programs used to design things like cell phones, cars, motors? That's hardcore engineering, and it's dominated by Solidworks and Pro/E (now called CREO).
If you live in the world of DXF and DWG, then you're doing 2D work - those are 2D formats. 3D formats would be things like STEP or IGES, but those break all parts trees, assembly constraints, etc. So you see a lot of SLDASM and SLDPRT files, ASM, PRT, etc. 3D parametric data is much more complex than basic 2D DXF/DWG files.
How about those same folks who said I don't need 128 GB of RAM, and that if I was "serious" about it I should just pack an iMac Pro around... Sound familiar?
I am curious about the accuracy of gravimetry, now that we know there is an active magma chamber under Western Antarctica. Given the density of molten rock is ~2.3 times that of water, it would take very little shifts in the magma chamber to create much larger, apparent changes in the ice levels.
If you look at the list of references for this Nature article, they ignored the NASA paper. And I still wonder how anyone can take the Nature paper seriously when you have a 100% tolerance range (2720 +/- 1390).
But the AC makes a good point - when their tolerance levels are literally 100% of the estimate, how do they first get to any confidence about a one hundredth of a percent change in the measurement? Think about it. They are measuring the overall change in mass of the entire thing. They are stating that they can accurately measure the ice to 0.01%. So their measurement, in effect, is "it has lost 0.01% +/- 0.01%". Which is, in fact, a measurement of nothing.
That is a good point, but I usually have Carbonite running on my laptop, so the files tend to get backed up overnight or on the weekends. Pulling data down can be excruciatingly slow. And some have said use a thin client and run CAD back on the server, but hundreds of milliseconds of lag in mouse motion makes that essentially unusable. You'll always miss what you wanted, selections will be incorrect, etc.
Why, because I actually want something that works, has the connectors pretty much needed (no dongle hell!), and lasts for a day? Are you so fragile that an extra 6 pounds will hurt you?
Now go and see who does what with NX, or Vectorworks. You'll find that 95% of the industry is either Solidworks or Pro/E. You've locked yourself out from interoperability with your vendors, CMs, and technical consultants. It's like saying you're working with a Mac in a world dominated by Windows. It's a shackled ball to your ankle...
The NY Times article has this big graph showing an accelerating downward trend starting in 1994. Yet NASA says that Antarctica has been gaining ice from 1979 to 2015. So which is it?
And when you look at the confidence intervals (2720 +/- 1390 - the window is LARGER than the estimate!) you start to get an idea that this is a "well, we don't know but... FLOODING!". I'm sorry, if any engineer or researcher working on my team came and said "I believe the correct value is 50, with a tolerance range from 0 to 100" I'd send them back to the bench after a good chewing out or they'd be sent out to the street...
Sure... Bring up the fact we're slooow... You RNA types are all so high and mighty with your "evolved to replicate in 500 million years". You had it easy! You didn't have to deal with getting TWO strands lined up... Leave the hard work to us, while you go and rest after a pittance of time! Pikers, all!
Check the Lenovo P71. A great keyboard (with around 8mm of actual travel), and REAL BUTTONS on the trackpad. And it has a bigger 17.3" screen that you can do actual work on.
Between 1 and 10 hours for the P71, a bigger version of this. In real-world use, I see about 5-8 hours on a charge, doing a mix of CAD, surfing, and e-mail. Apparently you can watch around 14 hours of video on a charge... So plenty of battery life. Of course, it's not "courageously" thin, but then this is a real man's computer, not something for a limp-wristed pantywaist who traipses around with skinny jeans raving about saving 0.1m thickness on the latest phone because COURAGE!
So if it doesn't work for you, and there isn't an Apple alternative, the case must not exist and be tiny? Do you realize that iPhones make up about 15% of the market, they must be tiny so should be ignored and dropped. After all, if 7 out of 8 people use Android, then why does iOS even exist? Clearly it's pretty rare...
Unusable for CAD. A space mouse is almost always . And even if you're working with a normal mouse, it's nice to have a LARGE area that you can do decent drag modes. Can you set up your touch pad to do click-and-drag over an entire screen width AND still have very fine resolution? I've tried it (yes, even on a Macbook) and it simply isn't realistic. It's really slow. Get at least a regular mouse...
Versus the option of not even being able to SEE the file because you do not have a suitable portable computer on site? I'll take "it's a bit small but workable on a 15.6 inch display for $200, Alex" any day...
Wow. I have a 14 GB Pro/E file for a mid-sized product I'm working on right now. Running that on a 16 GB machine is like running through frozen molasses. Having my 64 GB machine right now at least allows me to spin it as I'm working on surfaces, in something close to real time, rather than "move mouse and wait 5 seconds for first move; 5 seconds for second move; 5 seconds for 3rd move"... And don't even get me started on an FEA impact analysis of an ABS enclosure hitting a concrete floor from a 1.5 meter fall...
Yes. A Lenovo P71, fully loaded with 64 GB of RAM, 2 TB of SSD, and the 17.3" 4K screen, comes in at $4166. I wouldn't expect this new unit, with more memory, SSD, but a smaller screen, to be significantly more cost, certainly no more than $5000.
And of course an iMac Pro is by NO means a "portable" solution. I can toss my P71, power supply, mouse, 4 days of clothes, toiletries, and UE Boom 2 and cables into an Everki Titan backpack and go anywhere. I did just that last week, spending 8 days in Asia at 3 factories and 2 hotels. Can't do that with an iMac, no way no how. I can pick up my laptop and run between floors in buildings, hard to do that with an iMac Pro - even to move just a desk or two over.
Now, you CAN use an iMac (running Windows, of course, if you're doing any serious hardware engineering) Pro to do everything, and rely upon a second laptop to remote in to your iMac Pro. But I dare you to try to do 3D CAD with 100-200 msec of latency - good luck getting the right surfaces or reference points selected! And that is a LOW latency for many situations, such as a Starbucks, an airport lounge - or overseas.
Nope. CAD is almost always done on a single screen - you don't need dual screens. I have an extra one at home, it's nice to toss up Outlook and a music player on the laptop and use the bigger screen for CAD, but I'm essentially working in a single screen. Same as when I'm on the road.
Sucks when you're overseas... I'd hate to rely upon a VPN back to the US whilst working in Japan or China, and sit around waiting on a 2 Mbps connection. Or being told in an EU factory that I'm not allowed to connect to the local LAN/WIFI network because of security reasons.
What? You mean I can take my iMac Pro with me on the plane, and use it in the lounge? Or I can take it on BART as I spend a few hours at two different clients each day? Toss it in the top case on my motorcycle and ride on down to Orange County for a 3 hour meeting? Or move easily from upstairs in my office to out in my backyard where the sun is out and it's perfect? How about an actual laptop that is powerful enough on its own - one that will do what is needed.
Oh, and for those who do CAD, they are most likely running Windows anyway; there really is no 3D parametric CAD for OSX, nor any professional PCB/schematic capture software. So why by an iMac Pro and load Windows on it? Just get a better PC in the first place, for less money, that comes with Windows pre-loaded. Like a solid, workstation-class laptop.
Check the Lenovo P71. I have one of them... Lots of CPU, RAM, SSD, a great 17" screen (quite usable for CAD/CAM), and a 99Whr battery built in. I can get between 5 and 10 hours runtime on it, depending upon how much FEA and heavy-duty rendering I'm doing.
Nope. A 17", good quality screen is plenty for 90% of the time. I don't need to have lots of windows open; it can be more convenient to do so, but 90% of the time I'd be on one screen anyway. So why do I need a second monitor? And I would say this is pretty normal for most technical hardware consultants/engineers I know - you can do what you need really on a decent 17" screen. If I'm surfacing a new enclosure, or optimizing the curvature on a molded spring, why would I be bouncing between windows? I'm sitting in CAD. Likewise if I'm laying out a PCB - I'm in the PCB software, I'm not bouncing around to other windows, no need to do that at all.
Simply put: what YOU think works doesn't apply to lots of other people. There is a need for this kind of laptop - and I (and the 2 dozen or so other technical consulting engineers I know) are the market. There are hundreds of thousands of us out there - we're the market.
I currently use a P71, fully loaded, and it works well 80% of the time; some models bring it to a crawl, more RAM would help. And I love having a built-in PANTONE screen calibration, so when I am showing my client the current Keyshots of a concept, I can do it in true color - and with a 17" screen, it's actually possible to have two people looking at it as the same time at a desk.
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Architectural work, fine. What about 3D parametric CAD - which is NOT architectural? NX, Pro/E, Solidworks - you know, programs used to design things like cell phones, cars, motors? That's hardcore engineering, and it's dominated by Solidworks and Pro/E (now called CREO).
If you live in the world of DXF and DWG, then you're doing 2D work - those are 2D formats. 3D formats would be things like STEP or IGES, but those break all parts trees, assembly constraints, etc. So you see a lot of SLDASM and SLDPRT files, ASM, PRT, etc. 3D parametric data is much more complex than basic 2D DXF/DWG files.
How about those same folks who said I don't need 128 GB of RAM, and that if I was "serious" about it I should just pack an iMac Pro around... Sound familiar?
I am curious about the accuracy of gravimetry, now that we know there is an active magma chamber under Western Antarctica. Given the density of molten rock is ~2.3 times that of water, it would take very little shifts in the magma chamber to create much larger, apparent changes in the ice levels.
If you look at the list of references for this Nature article, they ignored the NASA paper. And I still wonder how anyone can take the Nature paper seriously when you have a 100% tolerance range (2720 +/- 1390).
But the AC makes a good point - when their tolerance levels are literally 100% of the estimate, how do they first get to any confidence about a one hundredth of a percent change in the measurement? Think about it. They are measuring the overall change in mass of the entire thing. They are stating that they can accurately measure the ice to 0.01%. So their measurement, in effect, is "it has lost 0.01% +/- 0.01%". Which is, in fact, a measurement of nothing.
That is a good point, but I usually have Carbonite running on my laptop, so the files tend to get backed up overnight or on the weekends. Pulling data down can be excruciatingly slow. And some have said use a thin client and run CAD back on the server, but hundreds of milliseconds of lag in mouse motion makes that essentially unusable. You'll always miss what you wanted, selections will be incorrect, etc.
What CAD do you do? What mechanical team do you work with?
Why, because I actually want something that works, has the connectors pretty much needed (no dongle hell!), and lasts for a day? Are you so fragile that an extra 6 pounds will hurt you?
Now go and see who does what with NX, or Vectorworks. You'll find that 95% of the industry is either Solidworks or Pro/E. You've locked yourself out from interoperability with your vendors, CMs, and technical consultants. It's like saying you're working with a Mac in a world dominated by Windows. It's a shackled ball to your ankle...
The NY Times article has this big graph showing an accelerating downward trend starting in 1994. Yet NASA says that Antarctica has been gaining ice from 1979 to 2015. So which is it?
And when you look at the confidence intervals (2720 +/- 1390 - the window is LARGER than the estimate!) you start to get an idea that this is a "well, we don't know but... FLOODING!". I'm sorry, if any engineer or researcher working on my team came and said "I believe the correct value is 50, with a tolerance range from 0 to 100" I'd send them back to the bench after a good chewing out or they'd be sent out to the street...
Sure... Bring up the fact we're slooow... You RNA types are all so high and mighty with your "evolved to replicate in 500 million years". You had it easy! You didn't have to deal with getting TWO strands lined up... Leave the hard work to us, while you go and rest after a pittance of time! Pikers, all!
OK, what packages? Pro/E? Solidworks? Altium?
Check the Lenovo P71. A great keyboard (with around 8mm of actual travel), and REAL BUTTONS on the trackpad. And it has a bigger 17.3" screen that you can do actual work on.
Between 1 and 10 hours for the P71, a bigger version of this. In real-world use, I see about 5-8 hours on a charge, doing a mix of CAD, surfing, and e-mail. Apparently you can watch around 14 hours of video on a charge... So plenty of battery life. Of course, it's not "courageously" thin, but then this is a real man's computer, not something for a limp-wristed pantywaist who traipses around with skinny jeans raving about saving 0.1m thickness on the latest phone because COURAGE!
So if it doesn't work for you, and there isn't an Apple alternative, the case must not exist and be tiny? Do you realize that iPhones make up about 15% of the market, they must be tiny so should be ignored and dropped. After all, if 7 out of 8 people use Android, then why does iOS even exist? Clearly it's pretty rare...
Unusable for CAD. A space mouse is almost always . And even if you're working with a normal mouse, it's nice to have a LARGE area that you can do decent drag modes. Can you set up your touch pad to do click-and-drag over an entire screen width AND still have very fine resolution? I've tried it (yes, even on a Macbook) and it simply isn't realistic. It's really slow. Get at least a regular mouse...
Versus the option of not even being able to SEE the file because you do not have a suitable portable computer on site? I'll take "it's a bit small but workable on a 15.6 inch display for $200, Alex" any day...
Wow. I have a 14 GB Pro/E file for a mid-sized product I'm working on right now. Running that on a 16 GB machine is like running through frozen molasses. Having my 64 GB machine right now at least allows me to spin it as I'm working on surfaces, in something close to real time, rather than "move mouse and wait 5 seconds for first move; 5 seconds for second move; 5 seconds for 3rd move"... And don't even get me started on an FEA impact analysis of an ABS enclosure hitting a concrete floor from a 1.5 meter fall...
Yes. A Lenovo P71, fully loaded with 64 GB of RAM, 2 TB of SSD, and the 17.3" 4K screen, comes in at $4166. I wouldn't expect this new unit, with more memory, SSD, but a smaller screen, to be significantly more cost, certainly no more than $5000.
And of course an iMac Pro is by NO means a "portable" solution. I can toss my P71, power supply, mouse, 4 days of clothes, toiletries, and UE Boom 2 and cables into an Everki Titan backpack and go anywhere. I did just that last week, spending 8 days in Asia at 3 factories and 2 hotels. Can't do that with an iMac, no way no how. I can pick up my laptop and run between floors in buildings, hard to do that with an iMac Pro - even to move just a desk or two over.
Now, you CAN use an iMac (running Windows, of course, if you're doing any serious hardware engineering) Pro to do everything, and rely upon a second laptop to remote in to your iMac Pro. But I dare you to try to do 3D CAD with 100-200 msec of latency - good luck getting the right surfaces or reference points selected! And that is a LOW latency for many situations, such as a Starbucks, an airport lounge - or overseas.
Nope. CAD is almost always done on a single screen - you don't need dual screens. I have an extra one at home, it's nice to toss up Outlook and a music player on the laptop and use the bigger screen for CAD, but I'm essentially working in a single screen. Same as when I'm on the road.
You had a head? Pure luxury! Why we were still dealing with being one-celled organisms!
Sucks when you're overseas... I'd hate to rely upon a VPN back to the US whilst working in Japan or China, and sit around waiting on a 2 Mbps connection. Or being told in an EU factory that I'm not allowed to connect to the local LAN/WIFI network because of security reasons.
What? You mean I can take my iMac Pro with me on the plane, and use it in the lounge? Or I can take it on BART as I spend a few hours at two different clients each day? Toss it in the top case on my motorcycle and ride on down to Orange County for a 3 hour meeting? Or move easily from upstairs in my office to out in my backyard where the sun is out and it's perfect? How about an actual laptop that is powerful enough on its own - one that will do what is needed.
Oh, and for those who do CAD, they are most likely running Windows anyway; there really is no 3D parametric CAD for OSX, nor any professional PCB/schematic capture software. So why by an iMac Pro and load Windows on it? Just get a better PC in the first place, for less money, that comes with Windows pre-loaded. Like a solid, workstation-class laptop.
Check the Lenovo P71. I have one of them... Lots of CPU, RAM, SSD, a great 17" screen (quite usable for CAD/CAM), and a 99Whr battery built in. I can get between 5 and 10 hours runtime on it, depending upon how much FEA and heavy-duty rendering I'm doing.
Nope. A 17", good quality screen is plenty for 90% of the time. I don't need to have lots of windows open; it can be more convenient to do so, but 90% of the time I'd be on one screen anyway. So why do I need a second monitor? And I would say this is pretty normal for most technical hardware consultants/engineers I know - you can do what you need really on a decent 17" screen. If I'm surfacing a new enclosure, or optimizing the curvature on a molded spring, why would I be bouncing between windows? I'm sitting in CAD. Likewise if I'm laying out a PCB - I'm in the PCB software, I'm not bouncing around to other windows, no need to do that at all.
Simply put: what YOU think works doesn't apply to lots of other people. There is a need for this kind of laptop - and I (and the 2 dozen or so other technical consulting engineers I know) are the market. There are hundreds of thousands of us out there - we're the market.
I currently use a P71, fully loaded, and it works well 80% of the time; some models bring it to a crawl, more RAM would help. And I love having a built-in PANTONE screen calibration, so when I am showing my client the current Keyshots of a concept, I can do it in true color - and with a 17" screen, it's actually possible to have two people looking at it as the same time at a desk.