System requirements for Windows

Autodesk certifies certain system configurations as meeting the requirements to work with Alias software. Check that your system meets the following minimum requirements.

You can examine your system capabilities using system diagnostic tools. Select Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Information.

Hardware requirements

Intel^® Pentium^® Core2Duo, AMD^® Opteron^® or higher (2 GHz or greater)
2 GB RAM (4 GB recommended)
A DVD-ROM drive on this machine or a shared DVD drive accessed via a networked mapped drive
A three-button mouse (with no custom button assignments) and mouse driver software. See Mouse requirements.
To license Alias, you need the following:
- for node-locked licenses: an Ethernet card with a valid MAC address on each machine.
- for floating licenses: an Ethernet card with a valid MAC address on the license server.
- Optionally, a hardware lock (dongle).
See License types and usage.

Graphics requirements

Supported Nvidia or ATI OpenGL-capable graphics card with 256 MB (full OpenGL 2.0 support is required). Refer to http://www.autodesk.com/qual-charts.
1280 x 1024 screen resolution

See Graphics card setup.

Operating system requirements

Microsoft ^®Windows XP Professional (SP2 or later)
Microsoft^® Windows XP Professional x64 Edition (SP2 or later)

Microsoft^® Windows Vista^® 32-bit and 64-bit (SP1 or later)

Refer to http://www.autodesk.com/qual-charts.

Disk space requirements

3 GB of hard drive space for installation

Other software

Adobe^® Acrobat^® Reader version 6 or higher, is required to view the PDF documentation available on the Alias Design Community Web site. You can download a free copy of Acrobat Reader from http://www.adobe.com.
Microsoft Internet Explorer^® 6 or later Web browser is required to view the online help.
Quicktime player to create and view QTVR files. The QuickTime player software is available at http://www.quicktime.com.
Flash plug-in to view animated tutorial sequences in your browser. Free plug-ins are available from http://www.flash.com.

Refer to http://www.autodesk.com/qual-charts.

Optional hardware

Wacom^™ tablet required for 2D paint tools. Make sure you install the latest Wacom driver software (http://www.wacom.com).

Graphics card setup

The graphics display performance in Alias depends on the quality of your graphics card and on the option settings in the Display Properties window of your graphics card.

To learn the option settings for graphics cards that are certified for use with Alias, see the latest qualification chart, at http://www.autodesk.com/qual-charts.

If your graphics card is not certified, perform the following steps. These steps offer general guidelines only because each manufacturer has a unique set of display options.

To set up your graphics card

Right-click your desktop, select Properties, then select the Settings tab in the Display Properties window.
From the Color quality menu, select 24 or 32 bits of color for best color quality in displayed images.
Drag the Screen resolution slider to the best display resolution supported by your hardware. The higher you set the display resolution, the more graphics card main memory you need. This is called VRAM on some computers.

To set graphics performance options

When the driver software for your graphics card was installed, a tab named for the card was likely created in the Display Properties window. The tab has performance options that vary with the kind of card. On Windows, click the Settings tab and then the Advanced button and select the appropriate tab.

Here are some general suggestions for setting performance options:

In the Display Properties window, click the tab named for your graphics card, if there is one.
Turn on the overly plane feature (if available).
Alias takes advantage of the hardware overlay plane feature available with most mid- and high-quality OpenGL graphics cards. In brief, overlay planes enable programs to quickly display certain elements of a user interface that exist on top of other elements, without having to redraw the entire user interface. Overlay planes are called hardware overlays in some products.

Alias works with four-bit or greater overlay planes, whether they are single-buffered or double-buffered. For some graphics cards, overlay planes are available only if you turn off alpha planes operation.
Some graphics cards have an Alias OpenGL preset. Check the qualification charts at http://www.autodesk.com/qual-charts for information regarding setting up your video card.

Mouse requirements

Set the mouse buttons as follows:

: click
: middle mouse button
: contextual menu/right mouse button

To check or set the mouse buttons, go to the Windows Start menu and choose Settings > Control Panel > Mouse. Use standard mouse driver option settings. Do not, for example, set the middle mouse button to work as a double-click of the left button.

Some vendors offer Windows enhancement software that lets you use your mouse to activate windows and panels in the same way as in UNIX operating systems. For example, you can download an XMouse productivity tool from microsoft.com to simulate UNIX mouse-window activation. However, we have not tested such software for use with Alias for Windows.

A wheel mouse (such as Microsoft Intellimouse) should operate as a 3-button mouse. If not, reconfigure it in your Windows Control Panel (choose Start > Settings > Control Panel > Mouse). You do not need to install a new driver.