I thought i should reach out to the more experienced memebers of the 3D printing comunity here. What kind of laptop should i purchase that will be able to handle large stl files such as baby groot? Everytime i try to pull it up on my laptop it freezes and i cant do anything but look at it.
A macbook.
Really anything with a bunch of ram and an SSD should do ya. Once you go SSD, you’ll wonder how you survived on spinning disk. ESPECIALLY if all you’ve ever used is 5400rpm laptop drives.
Also, don’t go with anything Apple: https://youtu.be/NVAmnV65_zw
I personally dont like apple. And yeah ive only used spinning disk drives. Never been able to afford something fancy but ive heard all good things about SSD. Any suggestions to a specific laptop (not a mac) thats under $1K
Unlike most people I don’t wholeheartedly believe in ssds. Yes I have some and they are fast, but using an Enterprise hard drive properly should be fine for most things!
An i3 is all you need. Just watch cache sizes, there are cheap i3s and good i3s.
What matter is RAM and your graphics. Don’t get less than 8 GBS of ram, and dedicated graphics will be fine for a couple years if you get a good porcessor.
Good Luck!
If you are doing any professional cad work/ see yourself doing so stay away from Mac’s. Windows supports a hell of a lot more
Yeah i also design custom PCBs so i need something windows. More programs i can use lol
@Aaron_Spaulding I really don’t feel the need to argue spinning vs ssd; you’ll learn to love them over time as your enterprise disks fail and your ssds are still ticking. 
Upgrade the RAM to 8GB before going to SSD or it will swap out memory to the SSD and kill it. That is unless the SSD has RAM of its own to handle swap space or virtual RAM as Windows folk know it. After you have the 8GB of RAM and an SSD, try not to fill up your SSD more than 75% or it will wear out faster according to stuff that I read.
@Cristian_Martinez what is your current machine and how old is it?
@Cristian_Martinez Depends on how much money you want to spend. I use a Lenovo W520 with an i7 @ 2.6 Ghz, 32GB RAM, and an Nvidia Quadro 1000M (2GB variant) for home. Since I travel a lot I also have a Lenovo X220 with an i5 @ 3.3 Ghz and 16GB RAM. Both are equipped with SanDisk extreme pro ssd’s each 256GB. The W520 costs about 800€ and the X220 about 400€ here in Germany if they are used.
Since the graphics in the X220 isn’t too good, even though it plays nicely with s3d and fusion360, I am opting for an upgrade to X260/70. But the X270 is brand-new and too expensive. I have to over think this first.
A good option for a free CAD program is freecad. It has a steep learning curve (all CAD programs have this if you are new to CAD), but it can make almost everything ootb you will need for 3d printing. It’s also open source.
@Daniel_Stauffer thanx man. Have any of you guys heard of yoga computers?
@Cristian_Martinez your welcome. I think the yoga computers are also from Lenovo? I would always prefer a Lenovo over other computers.
Isn’t the original baby groot model made up of a bunch of parts and non-manifold? Maybe try running it through Netfabb or look for a repaired model before a new computer? Just a thought.
This is just a try to comprehend:
Why does everyone in the g+ communities talking about other people being shit and such stuff? You don’t even know each other enough to tell.
I ran into a number of files with internal structures too. Those internal structures can cause the files to be bigger than necessary. I think Cura is better at handling large files than Slic3r, but I may be wrong and my deal8ngs with large files was over 2 years ago so plenty may have changed.