Solution:

To optimize performance, you can make adjustments within your environment to create the best possible chance for success in the operation of your AutoCAD product. The check list below is a general list that has shown success for users on a broad scale: 

In the Windows environment: Verify your hardware meets or exceeds the minimum system requirements

(see System requirements for AutoCAD). Remember you will have other programs that may also take a great deal of RAM on your system. If you are planning on running them at the same time, you should have at least 2GB of RAM free available when all programs are active.

Verify you are using an approved/certified driver for your video card (see Autodesk Certified Hardware).

Download and install the latest service pack and hotfixes for your AutoCAD software (see Autodesk Downloads).

Set AutoCAD to run as administrator (see How to set a program to run as administrator).

Set User Account Control (UAC) to "Never notify" (see How to turn off User Account Control in Windows).

Change the desktop theme in Windows to Windows Basic. Stop and disable the Windows Presentation Foundation Font Cache:

1. Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services.2. Scroll down to 'Windows Presentation Foundation Font Cache 3.0.0.0'.3. Right-click it and go into Properties.4. Stop the service.

Delete the contents of your temp folder (see How to delete temporary files in Windows).

Within AutoCAD:

Toggle hardware acceleration on and off (see How to enable or disable hardware acceleration in AutoCAD). One way may work better than the other for your specific system and the types of drawings you work with.

Go to Options to the Display tab and turn off the "Show Tool Tips" and "Show rollover Tool tips" and then shut off "Quick properties."

You may also try and do a cleanup on slow drawings that may have performance issues (see How to repair corrupt AutoCAD files)

Note:  You will want to test the steps above to find the best configured results in your specific environment.  Not all changes will have the same effect on all systems which is why it is important to test and compare results. 

Optimize your computer settings for performance

If you use Windows 7 or Windows 8, you will see it has fancy graphic effects. Slide

effects, shadows, translucent selection, transparency, and many more that we don’t

need. It looks fancy, but they consume many resources. Even if you use Windows XP,

this will help to reduce Windows to consume too many resources.

Press Win key (the one Windows logo) and type on search ‘advanced system settings’

– without quote. Click the icon when it appears.

If you use Windows XP, right click my computer then choose properties. Click advanced

tab.

Under performance category, click settings.

In performance option dialog, visual effects tab, choose adjust for best performance. It

will disable any visual effects so your computer will have better performance. Your

Windows may not look pretty, but we care more about performance, right?

Click OK until all dialog boxes are closed.

Remove application that you don’t need

Too many applications will also degrade your computer performance. So why keep it if

you don’t need it?

Some computer brand has many applications pre-installed. Games and utilities that we

never use. And sometimes we install freeware to try but never use it anymore. Remove

them.

If you install Windows skins to make your desktop looks like Mac OS or Windows 7,

remove it. You don’t need it.

There are several web applications that you can use instead of installing desktop

clients. I use Tweetdeck, webmail, Evernote and several more applications using

browser.

Unless you really need it, don’t install it.

Turn off what you don’t need on startup

Now we have removed applications that we don’t need. Now let’s make change to

Windows startup.

Many applications start automatically when you start Windows. Sometimes you can turn

it off later, sometimes it’s still running on background and we never notice it. If there are

too many applications start during startup, it will take some times until you can use your

computer. Now let’s turn off what we don’t need.

Hold Win key and press R. Type MSCONFIG then ENTER. This will open system

configuration window.

In services tab, click check hide all Microsoft Services. Many Microsoft services are

important, so just let them run on startup.

Now you can uncheck what you don’t need to start automatically. Do the same thing on

startup tab.

Services run on the background, so you will not see any application to start. Do not turn

off anti virus or other security services. If you are not sure, you can leave this tab.

On startup tab, you will see applications that will run immediately after you start

Windows. Skype, download manager, Instant Messaging, and many more. This should

be easier. You know the applications, don’t you? If you don’t use it on daily basis,

uncheck it. You can start it anytime using start menu or double click the application icon

on desktop.

Cleanup your hard drive

There is no definite answer of how much space we should have on hard drive. Most

answer will say 10-15% at minimum, related to disk fragmentation. More than that, your

Windows will run very slowly. If you already uninstall what you don’t need, now let’s

cleanup some space.

Open Windows Explorer. Select a drive you want to cleanup then right click. Choose

properties. Click disk cleanup.

Disk cleanup will not delete your data files. It will only remove temporary files that the

system created. Like browser cache, recycle bin, temporary folder, etc.

After you cleanup your hard drive, you may want to defragment your drive. I don’t feel

significant improvement by defragmenting my drive, but cleaning up drive space really

helps.

Cleanup your registry

This is not everyone favorite. Many people are worried to mess with Windows registry.

They afraid some software will not run after cleaning up registry. It’s correct.

Registry keeps information of your software. Many settings are stored there. The larger

the registry, it will consume more of your computer’s resources. The thing about registry

is, when you uninstall a software, it may not removed from registry as well. Some

information will be kept there. When you decide to reinstall the software, it will

remember your old settings. If you like to install and test many software, your registry

will be very big.

If you want to try cleaning up your registry, you can try CCleaner.

Warning: Working with registry may damage your system. Remember to create

registry backup every time you clean up your registry. When something goes wrong,

you can double-click the backup registry to restore the old value. Never work with

registry without creating backup!

If you don’t know how to create a registry backup and how to restore it, you shouldn’t do

this!

Check your network

Do you save your file on shared folder over network? Or probably you share templates

and libraries over network?

If you think opening and saving files are very slow, test to save it locally on your hard

drive. Of it works fine, you may want to ask the IT guys to check your network problem.

Conclusion

It is unavoidable to upgrade your computer to keep up with the technology. The

common lifetime for computer is 3 years. After that you need to purchase a new one if

you want to keep up.

However, if you don’t want to purchase a new one yet, you need to optimize what you

have. Don’t install what you don’t need, focus the computer settings for performance,

and make it efficient.

You are here: Home / AutoCAD / AutoCAD Tips / How to speed Up AutoCAD: configuring

AutoCAD (part 2)

How to speed Up AutoCAD: configuring AutoCAD (part 2)December 11, 2012 by Edwin Prakoso 16 Comments

Previously we covered how we can optimize our system to run faster. What we did before can help to improve overall system performance, not specific to AutoCAD.

In this article, we cover specific configuration for AutoCAD. Let’s see what we can configure to speed it up.

Minimize startup processLike what we did when we optimizing our system, we can optimize AutoCAD to not load what we don’t need. There are several processes that you can disable.

Disable splash screen

When you start AutoCAD, it will load splash screen like below.

Disabling the splash screen is believed can reduce loading time. It may not gives significant effects on new computers, but it helps on slow computer. At least it will not load image and consume memory for that process.

To disable splash screen, right click the AutoCAD shortcut on your desktop. Click properties on contextual menu.

Add /nologo switch on target field to disable it. Now when you double click the shortcut, AutoCAD will not show splash screen when loading.

There are many more you can do with startup switch. If you are interested, you can see more about AutoCAD startup switches here.

Disable creating new file on startup

When you start AutoCAD, it will create a new file using default template. The thing is we don’t always want to create a new file when we open AutoCAD. Many times we want to continue working with previous drawing. So the opened drawing is usually useless.

Other reason why it would be useless is when you have many templates for your drawings. When you create new drawings, you probably want to use other template.

You can change this behavior by changing STARTUP system variable to 1. Instead of creating a new file, it will let you to choose to create a new file or open existing files.

If you use AutoCAD 2012 or later, you can change it to 2 as well. It will load AutoCAD without opening any file or any dialog boxes.

Disable InfoCenter

InfoCenter or Communication Center provides information related to your products. It has several tools, like AutoCAD Exchange, Stay Connected, and Autodesk 360 sign in.

There are many reported problems that say it prevents AutoCAD from starting. After AutoCAD starts, it will run a background process as WSCommCntr4.exe. It takes your computer resources without you noticing it.

You can disable InfoCenter by changing a registry value or install this free program from ManuSoft here.

This is my AutoCAD title bar looks like after disabling InfoCenter. As you can see, no more sign in and AutoCAD Exchange icon there.

For AutoCAD 2013, you MUST sign out from Autodesk 360 before disabling InfoCenter. If you disable it while you’re still signed in, AutoCAD will not be able to run. It will give fatal error message.

If your AutoCAD can’t run after disabling InfoCenter, enable it again. Your AutoCAD should be able to run normally again.

Be careful when working with registry!

See how you can disable Info Center here.

Drafting SettingsThere are many new drafting settings have been added. There are useful for sure. However, they consume many resources. Let’s see what you can turn off to get better performance.

Dynamic Input

Dynamic Input is always accused to degrade graphic performance. Many veterans don’t like to use it. Try to turn it off.

Quick Properties

Quick properties is a small properties palette that will appear when you select an object. I like it. But again, if you use slow computer it can be annoying.

Selection Cycling

Selection cycling is a small window that will appear when you select overlapping object. Anything popping up automatically will consume resources. Try to turn it off and use manual selection cycling instead. You can manually cycle between object by pressing SHIFT + SPACE.

Live/Quick PreviewLive preview also consume resources. There are several live preview you can see when editing objects in AutoCAD.

Hatch

Hatch Quick Preview is very heavy. I’ve seen some old computers can take few minutes before they can use hatch command. Literally. You can disable this feature by changing HPQUICKPREVIEW to off.

Selection Preview

Selection Preview is quite fancy in recent versions. It show transparent color when you use window selection and highlight faces in 3D. Transparent display can degrade computer performance, especially graphical performance.

If you want to disable it, open AutoCAD options. In selection TAB, Preview category click visual effect settings. Disable selection effects here.

In AutoCAD 2013, one more thing that you can turn off: property preview. It’s below visual effects settings button.

If you often to override object properties, you might want to turn it off.

Command Line

You can undock AutoCAD 2013 command line and make it just one line. It will show three command history and can be transparent.

Again, transparency is not good. You will get better performance if you just dock command line.

PurgeNow the drawing file itself. AutoCAD keeps many objects and style definition. If you don’t use them, you can remove them from drawings using PURGE command. You can manually select object then click purge button. You can also choose to purge all automatically.

Another purge option that many people are not aware off is PURGE REGAPPS. Regapps can make your drawing 5 times larger than it should be. You can purge regapps by typing –PURGE (notice the – in front of PURGE command) then ENTER. Choose Regapps. You can find detailed information about Regapps on Without a Net here.

By purging unnecessary objects, it will make your drawing file smaller. And it can affect performance significantly.

What else?Of course if you have powerful machine, you can just turn everything on. But if you can’t purchase a new machine yet for whatever reason, try to optimize your system. Anything looks fancy, live, automatic and transparent usually consume a lot of resources. Keep an eye on those things.

Unless you really need it, you may want to try turning off feature that you don’t use. Now what else do you think we should turn off to gain performance?