AutoCAD Performance

[anthonyadams]

Does anyone know if going to a SSD (Solid state Disk) will improve the performance

and response of AutoCAD Electrical? I've already maxed out the memory

on my machine. (32gb)

[drathak]

Probably some.  The biggest slow downs we have encountered are with things stored on a network.  Shared symbols and menus don't seem to hurt, but you do NOT want your working folder oni a network drive.  So I suppose a slow drive on your local could be a problem that an SSD would fix.

It will certainly improve program launch speeds.  Where else are you experiencing performance issues?

[Icemanau]

You may be confusing RAM with HDD space. RAM is the working memory of a computer while the HDD/SSD is the storage.

The only way you would max out 32G of RAM would be if you had multiple memory intensive programs running. This would be programs like video editors and other programs that work with large files.

HDD space on the other hand will fill up and require expansion quite regulary. If you go for a SSD, us it for the Operating System only. The size of them versus the cost at the moment is not worthwile for anything less. Also SSD's have a finite number of read/write cycles. This will cause the drive to fail after a time. This means the drives are best used for mostly static files (like the O/S). That said, if you set the OS up on a SSD, it will increase teh response time of a computer. My home system went from about a 2 minute boot up to about 1 minute when I installed a SSD.

First of all, pick up a decent disk management suite and defrag your HDD, this will provide a speed increase in accessing the data on it and may solve your problem.

Best option would be to get your tech support to install a SSD as the C drive, do a clean windows install, and add a 1 or 2 Tb drive for programs and data.

If this is partitioned properly, you would have plenty of room for ACAD, the dwg files and so on.

Regards Brad

[dougmcalexander]

I run Electrical on a 64-bit laptop with 8GB of RAM. It runs very quickly. I can't imagine that you're having problems with 32GB of RAM. The truth is, Electrical still runs well on my 32-bit desktop with Windows XP and 3GB of RAM. Inventor is happier with more RAM but Electrical is not considerably more intense than plain vanilla AutoCAD. Like drathak said, AutoCAD Electrical will crawl if you attempt to relocate the project scratch databases to a network drive.

That said, an SSD can improve load times if it is your C drive, like Brad explained. But follow Brad's advice and keep data on a HDD. A SSD functions similarly to a thumb drive and usually has a shorter life expectancy than a HDD.