Jun 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Christian Choi
This feature-rich, jam-packed lighting, visualization, and drafting application has eluded my attention until now. It comes in two flavors: LD Assistant AC 08, with everything you need without having to purchase AutoCAD® 08; and LD Assistant PL 08, a plug-in for those who already own AutoCAD 08.
I did most of my evaluation on a MacBook Pro 2.4GHz Intel core 2 Duo with 4GB RAM, with a NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600M GT with 256MB VRAM. While the software is designed for Windows, I used VMware's Fusion and Windows XP Pro to see how it would fare on a Mac. I did comparisons with a PC running XP Pro, a true open GL card (NVIDIA Quadro® FX 3000g 256MB VRAM), dual Xeon 2.8GHz, 2GB RAM. My Mac was faster in all areas except visualization and recorded simulations that rely heavily on the GPU to run fast. The optimal suggested bang-for-buck configuration is WinXP running with an NVIDIA Quadro FX 1500. Click here to keep reading
