Speed Up AutoCAD
Posted November 18, 2008 
Comments(5)
Comments(5) Here are a few things you can do to help speed up AutoCAD.
- Type IMAGEQUALITY and set it to “Draft” for faster-loading images in AutoCAD. When plotting however, you might want to switch it back to “High”.
- Type IMAGEHLT on the command line and set it to 0. This will make AutoCAD highlight only the raster image frame when selecting it, not the entire image.
- Set GRIPOBJLIMIT to a really low number to reduce the number of grips displayed when selecting multiple objects.
- The system variable ISAVEPERCENT is set to 50 by default. Increase this number (100 max) to force AutoCAD to do full saves less frequently. If it is set to 0, AutoCAD will do a full save every time. The benefit of a full save is that it eliminates the wasted space in a drawing file – but it is slower.
- Type VTOPTIONS on the command line to change how AutoCAD handles animated view transitions. It is a good idea to turn off the animated view transitions when dealing with large drawings.
- Jimmy from JTB World posted a great suggestion for working with drawings that contain a XREFs, XCLIPs, & viewports. He suggested setting the system variable INDEXCTL to 3 to speed things up when switching between drawings.
If you have any tips for speeding up AutoCAD share them here as comments.
Speed up AutoCAD…
You’ve been kicked (a good thing) – Trackback from CadKicks.com…
The following is in our Office AutoCAD Manual. It deals with speeding up the opening of an AutoCAD drawing file. It was derived from management.cadalyst.com:
02.21 TO SPEED-UP DRAWING FILE OPENING TIME:
The Problem:
• Some Drawing Files take a lot more time than others.
One Possible Cause of that Delay:
• AutoCAD may be searching the Drawing File for a Digital Signature. During the installation of AutoCAD, a shell extension loads onto your computer to determine if a file is digitally signed by displaying a specific icon in association with that file when viewed from Windows Explorer or the file’s Open/Save dialog box. To determine whether a file is digitally signed, the shell extension looks into each drawing file before displaying it. If you have a folder containing many drawing files, this activity will slow your system and unnecessarily decrease your productivity.
The Cause of that Cause:
• On June 30, 2000, President Bill Clinton ushered in a revolution for Internet commerce by signing the e-Signatures bill into law. This law mandates that electronic “signatures” on legal documents be accorded the same legal status as traditional signatures on paper documents.
• Thus, AutoCAD must search for a Digital Signature.
• Thus, the Delay.
The Solution:
• Since our Office does not currently use Digital Signatures, we should turn-off the Search for a Digital Signature. Once it is turned off for a Drawing File, no future search will be made at the opening of that Drawing File, and no Icon will be placed with its name, (until the Search is turned back on.)
The Steps:
• First, not in AutoCAD but in Windows Explorer, find the Drawing File and
Highlight it.
• Second, Right-click on that Drawing File.
• Third, an options box is displayed.
Click on the 2nd line: “Enable/Disable Digital Signature Icons.”
• Fourth, the Signature Validation Options dialog box is displayed.
In the center, Uncheck the:
“Validate digital signatures and display special icons.”
The note at the bottom of the dialog box points out that the new setting will not take effect until the next time you log on to Windows. So, once you have clicked on “OK,” log off of Windows Explorer by going down and clicking on “Start” , then clicking the “Log Off” button.
Then, you will have to log back on.
Read Y’all Later – KLYPH
Wow! Thanks for sharing KLYPH.
This is a time consuming matter if you have lots of drawings to process. Is there af way or tool to do tje job for you?
Couldn’t you just select a bunch of AutoCAD files and right-click them producing the same results?