Expert: J. B. Borge - 7/11/2008

Question
we are starting a High School AutoCAD class and are planning to upgrade our Servers. I am trying to estimate the storage requirements for class projects.  there will be approximately 10-12 students per class.  any help that you can provide will be greatly appreciated.

Leach

Answer
Mark, my apologies for the delay. Just to give you an idea on how big a typical project i produce in Autocad is around 50 mb (a 20 acre lot w/ 200,000 sf retail store) sans back-up files. This typical project is about the size of Target or Lowe's Center which includes all 2D plans, details, & calcs to produce/build the site. I implement use of std. blocks & xrefs in my plans in order to minimize file size & prevent duplicities, just fyi.
If you plan to build 3 projects per year, that equates to approx. 150 mb per student. I would recommend a minimum of 50 gb space since the students will probably want to experiment w/ the 3D features. Hope this points you to some direction...good luck & keep me posted!

Best regards,
J.B.