MechDesigner is a 3D application.  Ideally, you should have a fast CPU, lots of  RAM, and your video card and video card drivers should be 100% OpenGL compliant. MechDesigner is extremely efficient and can show your mechanisms faster than any other CAD with Kinematics software product - we believe, but prove us wrong. As such, you can run MechDesigner very effectively on 'low' performance systems.  However, it is mainly the appearance of some of the graphical representations where MechDesigner appears to be struggling.  This is where you might need to know about how graphic cards work and why you might consider getting a better one.

OpenGL is an industry-standard. Most Microsoft Windows operating systems come with a Software OpenGL driver.  Many video card manufacturers have cards that also support the OpenGL standard. These cards render and perform calculations using a chip called the Graphics Processing Unit or GPU.  This is instead of the main CPU. These chips significantly enhance OpenGL performance. This performance enhancement is known as Hardware OpenGL Acceleration.

Hardware Acceleration

MechDesigner uses the hardware acceleration if your computer has an OpenGL compatible video card. Some 3D drivers in the consumer video card market are 100% OpenGL compatible and can use this feature. However, incompatibility problems require a fix from the video card manufacturer.

MechDesigner cannot control the quality of the OpenGL driver on your computer system or whether MechDesigner will work with hardware acceleration on your system. After all, video card device drivers are proprietary to the manufacturer of the video card in your system.

We recommend you try MechDesigner as a Trial before you buy.  If only to ensure that the graphics work well with your PC system. We recommend a Driver better than version 3.5, version 4.0 is even better.