CAD Workstations Many CAD programs need a lot of computing power and most CAD systems use good quality graphics screens to display drawings. One possible configuration consists of a minicomputer with 4 graphics terminal, a printer and a plotter.

A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications.

Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems.

The term workstation has also been used loosely to refer to everything from a mainframe computer terminal to a PC connected to a network, but the most common form refers to the group of hardware offered by several current and defunct companies.

Workstations offered higher performance than mainstream personal computers, especially with respect to CPU and graphics, memory capacity, and multitasking capability.

Workstations were optimised for the visualization and manipulation of different types of complex data such as 3D mechanical design, engineering simulation (e.g., computational fluid dynamics), animation and rendering of images, and mathematical plots.

Workstations were the first segment of the computer market to present advanced accessories and collaboration tools.