How Much Ram Do You Need For Solidworks? [2022 Update]

How much ram is required for Solidworks? What are the requirements of the laptop for Solidworks? These are the questions of every laptop user who is using or going to use Solidworks on their laptop.

If you want to know how much ram is required to run Solidworks smoothly and what are the system requirements for Solidworks then stop searching anymore.

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In this article, we will discuss how much ram is sufficient for Solidworks and all the other details of Solidworks that you should know as a Solidworks user.

But before we tell you how much ram is required for Solidworks let’s first discuss what is Solidworks actually and for which purpose it is used.

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What is SolidWorks Used For?

Solidwork is a software that is used for designing 3d modeling, Mostly designers and companies choose Solidworks for designing their products because it has a lot of features that every product designing and modeling software should have. If you are known the term 3D cad then you must be aware of the solid works software. 

It has a large number of users even more than the AutoCAD which is primarily used for 2d drawing and drafting. It is literally used and liked in the fashion sports and automobile industries to design the products in a professional way.

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As SolidWorks is a heavy software for designing the products so every laptop is not compatible to use this because it requires a specific capacity of ram and processor.

Solidworks 2021 System Requirements:

As SolidWorks is a heavy software that is used for 3d modeling and product designing so it has some requirements for laptops.

Here are the system requirements for the solid work 2021-2022:

Operating System Requirements for SolidWorks:

  • Windows 10 or 11, 64 bit
  • Windows Server 2019
  • MAC OS Mojave (10..14 or 10.15)

RAM Requirements for SolidWorks:

  • For Basic SolidWorks work 8GB is recommended
  • For larger SolidWorks work, 16GB or more is recommended

Video Card Requirements for SolidWorks:

  • AMD Radeon or AMD FirePro or Pro Nvidia Quadro.
  • The certified graphics card is important because SolidWorks is a CPU-based application, you can see more power performance faster CPU.

CPU Requirements for SolidWorks:

  • 3.3 GHz or higher than this.
  • Current generation Intel or AMD with SSE2 sports processor.
  • Up to 4 cores are recommended for multi-core & multi CPU architectures.

Disk Space Requirments for SolidWorks:

  •     8GB or more than this is required for PDM Controller
  •     6GB or more than this is required for PDM Web Client
  •     PDM Web Client or Web Server: 6 GB or more
  •     ECC RAMs recommended

How Much Ram Do You Need for Running SolidWorks:

As we have mentioned above Solidworks is a heavy software that consumes much ram for running smoothly so it’s finalized that low ram laptops will not be able to run Solidworks smoothly.

The system must have at least enough RAM to accommodate the size and complexity of open SolidWorks parts, assemblies, and drawings, and the types of operations used in such models.

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If we run the Solidworks in a lower ram laptop then it consumes the whole ram and the performance of the system is ultimately unstable.

On average 8GB of ram is sufficient for running Solidworks, smoothly. But if you want to get better performance then you can go with the 16GB ram but 8GB ram is enough for running Solidworks.

Is 4GB RAM Enough for Solidworks:

Well, it totally depends on your design, if you have 4GB RAM on your laptop and your design is high level then you may face the legacy in the system when you have an integrated GPU.

According to the Solidworks website minimum, of 8GB ram is required to run it in a smooth way, But that also depends on which version you are using and how extensive your use is. You must have an extensive configuration system for the assembly work, but for modeling and small tasks, 4GB RAM is enough as long as you don’t design higher-level designs.

Does 8GB RAM Enough for Solidworks:

The answer is absolutely yes, 8GB ram works better than 4GB ram, but in a mean way, it also depends on your design and system configuration. If you have a budget and want to run Solidworks professionally on your laptop, then we recommend you go for 16GB.

Is 16GB Ram Enough For Running Solidworks:

Initially, 8GB was sufficient for all basic rendering, simulation, modeling, drawing, and analysis operations. However, if your kits are flawed and grow in good faith in size with more complex prototypes, you may want to consider expanding them.

You will not face any problems in running Solidworks. 16GB is recommended for all types of heavy work.

How We Can Know How Much Ram Is In Use Of Solidworks:

Let’s look at how you can use Windows Performance Monitor to control SolidWorks memory usage. This is a very good tool that is installed on Windows and will give us a more accurate view of how much SolidWorks memory is being used and how much remaining memory has been created during our current session on  SolidWorks.

Keep in mind that when you open and close  SolidWorks documents, the remaining memory is recreated, and the only way to clear them all is to restart SolidWorks. 

Performance Monitor is a way to check if it’s time to start. The setup steps are quick and if you save the settings as shown at the end, you only need to do it once!

To know how much memory Solidworks is using you have to follow the below steps:

1: Solidworks must be running in order to know the memory usage.

2: Then go to the windows start menu.

3: In the Search box type “Perfmon / Sys” and press ENTER to open 

Performance Monitor monitoring with other data collector assemblies.

check solidworks used ram - step-1

4: When you open Performance Monitor, you should see the default counter “%Processor Time”, you can have as many counters as you want, but for clarity, I will delete it by highlighting it and pressing Delete.

check solidworks used ram - step-2

5: Now you have to add a SolidWorks counter, so click the green plus button on the toolbar or right-click and select Add Counters.

check solidworks used ram - step-3


6: Scroll up a little bit and then click the drop-down arrow next to “Process” in the counter box.

check solidworks used ram - step-4

7: Scroll down to the “Private Bytes” under the “Process” and then select it then it is the only highlighted counter there.

check solidworks used ram - step-5

8: Scroll down to Solidworks in the “Instances of selected object” box then select it and then click OK.

check solidworks used ram - step-6

9: Before saving this we have to adjust some properties. The properties can be opened with the shortcut of “CTRL + Q”.

10: In the properties, adjust the scale of counter to 0.00001 this will be the 5 steps down in the data tab.

check solidworks used ram - step-7

11: Now, go to the Graph tab and type the “Solidworks Memory” in the title tab and “Mb of Memory” in the vertical axis box. We will also set the maximum scale to “2000” and the minimum scale to “0”.

check solidworks used ram - step-8

12: Now our last step is to save it on our desired location, to do this go to File and then select Save Settings save it on the folder where you want, and click “Save”. Next time you want to check your Solidworks memory then you have to only double click on it.

check solidworks used ram - step-9

Here is a Quick video for Checking the memory usage of Solidworks.

Quick Video For Checking Ram Usage of SolidWorks

Bottom Line of How Much Ram Is Sufficient For SolidWorks:

We have discussed how much Ram is required to run the Solidworks, now it’s up to your requirements and budget from which one you are going.

If you want good performance then 16Gb is recommended.

4GB ram is not recommended for using SolidWorks because it is too much low ram for SolidWorks and also SolidWorks officially does not recommend the 4GB ram.

You can go with 8GB ram for better performance, 8GB is enough for running it smoothly. If you have a budget and can spend a few bucks more then you can go with 16GB ram as this is more than enough for running Solidworks smoothly. 

Using a laptop with 16GB ram will give you a better experience, not on SolidWorks but also on any other heavy software like Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. If you are a gaming lover then 16GB of ram is enough to run heavy games like Fortnite, Minecraft, etc.  

Frequently Asked Questions:

What are the Solidworks requirements for a laptop?

Solidworks is a 3D CAD software that allows you to create 3D models, drawings, and other files. It’s one of the most popular CAD systems out there and it’s used by many industries including automotive, aerospace, medical, and architecture.

Solidworks has several requirements for laptops to be able to run smoothly. Here are the main ones:

The minimum requirements for Solidworks are as follows:

  • Windows 7 (32/64 bit) recommended is Windows 10.
  • Minimum 4GB RAM, but recommended is 8GB.
  • Also, a graphic card that supports OpenGL 3.3 or higher than that.
  • A minimum of 5GB of free disk space on the C Drive (C:/) partition. If you have more than this, you can install an additional program from within your Solidworks account called “Add-ons” which allows you to view and edit other add-ons without ever leaving Solidworks.
  • Alternatively, you can also download these add-ons directly from within your Solidworks account if your computer doesn’t have enough space on its C Drive partition to install them directly into Windows

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