As an experiment I tried installing it on my son's Windows 8 laptop and it installed just fine.  This is a brand new computer and it cost under $300, so it is the ultimate bottom of the barrel laptop.

Solidworks Support worked with me to get Solidworks installed on the old HP Laptop running Windows XP Media Center (special version of XP Pro).  The support guy was obviously in India and it was morning there while it was nighttime here.  He setup an online meeting and I gave him remote control of the laptop.  He was able, after about an hour of continuous time, to determine that the Microsoft .NET Framework wasn't installing properly and that it was not a Solidworks issue.

He later emailed a set of procedures to manually uninstall all older .NET frameworks, download and run a .NET cleanup utility, uninstall Visual C++ redistibutable components, uninstall Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Application, reinstall C++ 2005 and 2008, and finally reinstall Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Application.  After doing all of this, Solidworks Student edition installed properly.

I was able to buy Solidworks Student edition 2012-2013 for only $95 delivered from Studica.com, and it is good for one year.  I've taken a semester course in Solidworks and my son has learned how to use Solidworks also.  This one year of Solidworks is kind of an experiment and we'll see if it is worth the annual cost.  If not, I might try the home versions of Alibre or Rhino next year.  Or maybe even Cubify Invent http://cubify.com/products/cubify_invent/index.aspx by 3DSystems, which is a $49 lower-end version of Alibre.  3D Systems bought Alibre back in July 2011.

Thanks for all of the ideas and help.

Titanium

I started with Pro/E about 12 years ago and moved on to Solidworks in 2008 (when I went to work for a company that used SW). The user interface of Creo has come a long way since the Pro/E days. That said, there's still a rather steep learning curve associated with Creo. From my experience, if you can learn Creo, you can pick up Solidworks pretty easily when the time calls for it.

Regarding a PC powerful enough to run these programs, the software manufacturers always release lists of "approved" hardware for their tools. Unfortunately the graphics cards on the approved list sometimes cost as much as an inexpensive PC. If you're building a system, the one component that makes or breaks 3D CAD is generally the graphics card. I've found some decent cards through newegg.

If you will pretty much only use the partition for SW, I might consider using an old copy of XP since it is dirt cheap. You could use VMware which would be quicker for switching over without getting a new drive, but I think it might be like $60. An old copy of XP and a small partition for Bootcamp should be  practically free.

Massive pain in the bum but a second partition with W7 for Solidworks?

Do you mean a W7 partition for a Windows 8 computer or a Mac?

Another complication is that Solidworks says Windows 7 Pro or Ultimate (or Vista Ultimate, Vista Business, or XP Pro) is officially supported.  I've seen users on the internet say that Windows 7 Home Premium is working with Solidworks for them, but that combo is not supported by Solidworks.

My engineering days are long past me as I'm retired, but my high school age boys are interested in 3D printing and designing items with Solidworks.  If I end up having to buy a separate copy of Windows 7, I'll definitely be looking to put it on a partition on a Mac.  Did you end up with Windows 7 Home Premium or Windows 7 Pro?

I'm confused - you got rid of your optical drive?  How did you deal with cd's or dvd's?

The spec requirement is for XP Pro, Vista Ultimate or Business, or Windows 7 Pro or Ultimate.  I have some HP abortion called Windows XP Media Center.  I think it is based on XP Pro, but I'm not completely certain.

Another spec requirement is a "tested OpenGL workstation graphics card and driver combination".  I KNOW I don't have that as all this laptop has is a lowly ATI Mobility Radeon Xpress 200 Series card.  The thing is that I installed a SDK version of Solidworks 2011 earlier this year and it worked.  Not screaming fast or anything, but it worked.

Why did the install fail?  I'm not sure as there were multiple errors during the install.

At about 14% complete, I got an error saying: The executable file "E:\PreReqs\dotnetfx3.5.exe'" /q /norestart did not install successfully. This was during the Microsoft .Net Framework 3.5 installation.

At 15% complete, I got an  error saying: Internal Error: The Windows Installer for this product component did not run as expected:  CA_BlockVSTAonFramework.3643236F_FC70_11D3_A536_0090278A1BB8.  This was during the Visual Studio Tools installation, whatever that is.

At 22% complete, I got an error saying:  Error 1304.  Error writing to file DwgDocumentMgrNET.dll.  Verify that you have access to that directory.

Still at 22% complete, I got another error saying: Internal Error.  The Windows Installer for this product component did not run as expected:  InstallExecute

I'm almost wishing I had gone with Alibris or Cubify  Invent at this point...

Titanium

Unless they have a spec *requirement*, then the install should not fail. It might merely be slow...

I run autodesk inventor (solidworks competitor) on my 4 year old ultraportable, which is probably on part in specs with the laptop.  Interesting enough I rarely have problems if I'm not dealing with an assembly (i.e, if I'm just doing a single part.) And if I do have problems, it's just a long hangup while the script is run.

I have an ancient HP Inspiron laptop and an ancient Dell laptop, both of which were pretty low end when bought in 2006.  The funny thing is that both ran the free classroom version of Solidworks 2011 last year.  Not very fast, but adequate for the Solidworks class I was in.  Of course this free classroom version (completely legit, by the way) timed out in late November.

Fast forward to now when I just received the 2012 Student Solidworks package.  Solidworks failed on the install. The Student Solidworks has all kind of goodies that the free classroom version didn't have, like the Toolbox, etc.

The problem is that all the computers out there are running Windows 8 (may a pox infect Microsoft), and Solidworks won't be compatible with Windows 8 until version 2013.  Solidworks 2012 is compatible with Windows XP Pro, Vista, and 7.

I'm tempted to run Solidworks under Mac OSX, but I'm finding that Windows 7 is running at least $140 from reputable vendors.

Ideas? Options?

Titanium

Are you still a student in engineering?  I would say, if you have the means, that it is more than worth it to have a drive devoted to windows on your mac if you plan on using that most of the time.  I just ran into so many times where having windows was useful with some of the programs used.  Also, it was a lot more convenient to keep most of my engineering programs on the same drive since it was easier to hop around from one to another.  At times, I would have Solidworks, Matlab, Arduino, 3ds max, all of the printing programs open and more since I needed to quickly see how changing a model would change the dynamics of a part, see how I would change the controls, see how long it would take to print, and so on...  Just my 2 cents, but the extra drive was more than worth it.  I replaced my optical drive with a small 80 GB SSD and installed BootCamp with a cheap version of windows 7 and it was the best move I made.  Hope this helps.

Fast forward to now when I just received the 2012 Student Solidworks package.  Solidworks failed on the install. The Student Solidworks has all kind of goodies that the free classroom version didn't have, like the Toolbox, etc.

The problem is that all the computers out there are running Windows 8 (may a pox infect Microsoft), and Solidworks won't be compatible with Windows 8 until version 2013.  Solidworks 2012 is compatible with Windows XP Pro, Vista, and 7.

I'm tempted to run Solidworks under Mac OSX, but I'm finding that Windows 7 is running at least $140 from reputable vendors.

Ideas? Options?

Titanium