I'm going to call your bluff on this one because I don't think that the Mac Mini has a 'very limited' graphics capability. On the contrary, my Father's partner is a graphics designer, and she has just bought a Mac mini to compliment her existing G4 Aluminium Powerbook!

My wife has an iMac 17" with a core duo 2 processor, and it runs VC in my experience, better than this MBP! (same graphics card as the Mac Mini!!!)

Next year Apple will introduce Snow Leopard. This new OS will be optimised for Intel Macintosh's and that includes much improved graphics ability. If you buy a G5, you will not get this performance boost. In fact I bet that you will get frustrated with your G5's speed anyway, because the system buss on the G5 is only around 167MHz, the Mac Mini being a lot faster (667MHz?).

If you still want to upgrade, consider getting an iMac with a core duo 2 in it. These are exceptionally good bargains.

I don't know. I do agree with you to a point, because my old Compaq laptop displays VC slightly better, probably because it has a NVIDIA Geforce card, and yes I do think NVIDIA are better than ATI especially on performance,

But,

The proof in the pudding also very much depends on how well the software is written too and for example, many of the Cheetah 3D crowd use Mac Mini's and they swear by them. Personally I would recommend trying to get a better machine than the mac Mini, if you can, but going backwards, is ahem going backwards! I think it would be far wiser to stick with the current Intel processors, moving forward. Go beat up your bank manager a bit!! :D

I have a sales guy coming by today to demo CFDesign, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. I need it like a hole in the head, and I can't imagine that I'll have the money for another 9 months, but as in all analysis software, there's a whole lot of value added for my customers. What used to be my single customer in RF, and barely my bread and butter machining electronics housings, is expanding into a little bit more integration, so sheet metal, ECAD to MCAD and CFD capabilities could become useful.

The running joke with my friends is that I spend all of my time making housings and other items to pay for my software maintenance, and that I never have much time to use it because I'm making housings. Fortunately, I'm adding on some machining capacity (repairing a machine that has been down for quite awhile), so I'll be able to accomplish the same production in about half the time, or do what I'm doing now but add in the molds that I have been fitting in on a regular basis.

The interesting thing about this is that a model from ViaCAD/Shark will give the same result in analysis as a Pro/e or Solidworks model, albeit a native model has the advantage of ease of optimization. It would seem to me that an individual with such capabilities, the skills to use them, and modern hardware, would be able to provide basic engineering services to folks with modest MCAD capabilities and perhaps generate a bit of income.

I'm not that guy, at least until I get proficient at FEA and mechanism dynamics, but I did bring this up with Punch! sales that they should at some time in the future make an oline system available to connect users with those advanced users that can support native files and provide engineering/manufacturing/training services.

What's this have to do with Nehalem? Fast performance means quick turnaround, multiple iterations and optimization of parts and assemblies.

tom

FEA is probably one, if not the most important aspect of product design. Unfortunately FEA is also, as Ned Flanders puts it "One dilly of a pickle!" so to speak! They raced us through FEA on my course, and as a consequence, I studied how to mess things up big time in ANSYS software (I'm probably a better manager than I am an engineer :rolleyes: :( ). Actually ANSYS isn't that difficult to use, as long as you use the command window, instead of its awful GUI- which I emphasize, is dreadful.

I found that this is a very good place to start (plates with holes being a very common problem solving area- concerning Stress Concentration Factor cracks in the metal, plastic or wood as such);

http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/ansys/plate/index.htm

It also help swotting up on your bending moments (I) too... I = bd3/12 etc.
The reason for the maths is so you can double check the results in ANSYS against your findings.

R.E. Petersen's book "Stress Concentration Factors" is also really worth getting your mitts on too!

AND, don't forget the excellent GMSH software- which of course is freeware.

There $80 worth of free consultation! ;) :D

If you'd like to compare Mac machinery, check out this site. It hasn't been updated in the past few months, but you can compare an older iMac against certain G5 machines:

http://macreviewzone.com/html/o...r/comparisons/imac.shtml

In other words, I'd second the opinion of getting a used Intel iMac over the G5. If you have a monitor that you'd like to use, hence the G5, then be sure to get an iMac with DVI-out.

>>I understood CFD stands for Coloured F***ing Drawings

:)

In my earlier years we did a lot of work with CFD/FEA/CEM. Ultimately we would put protypes in a tunnel, stress it, or range test. But even in the early days we found these computational areas were very good for guiding delta designs decisions.


Tim

Okay, ya got me. What's CEM?

tom

CEM?

Computational Engineering Multiphysics?

Curtis Electronic Music?

Contraption Extusion Methods?

Conceptual Ergonomic Muppeteering?? :eek:

???

http://www.cadsoftusa.com/

Coincidence? I think not...

I found a few others after I posted so I figured as much.