Fatal error - Out of memory - Shutting down.

[peterlowe]

So AutoCAD does not have enough memory available to run properly..  why is this?

I am working on a file that is 36MB, admittedly that is large... during a process AutoCAD crashed with the above message.

However my laptop has 4GB of RAM, that 4000MB! approximately 100 times the size of the file I am working on.. Surely there is enough space within the 4GB to hold a 38MB file temporarily, work with it and spit out a result?

What is the problem? what could I possibly do to make sure that AutoCAD does not crash due to lack of resource? Buy a new computer with 8GB of RAM? so it is 200 times the size of the file instead of 100?

Is there anyway to dedicate sections of the computers memory solely to AutoCAD?

I am sorry for the negative attitude on this but I am very frustrated. I have no choice but to work with the files I am given, I do reduce them by deleting the information not needed and purging but often thats the first problem, AutoCAD crashes while trying to reduce the size of the file.

I am running windows 7 with a core 2 duo chip, a fairly modern machine and AutoCAD LT2010.

Any gurus out there can help me improve the performance?

[george.drayton]

A file which saves as 38 MB is like a file from a few years ago which would have been over 100 MB because of the compression which is currently used. Not trivial. Have you tried deleting unncessary scale lists? Have you shut down other applications while you are working on this file. Have you tried using the WBLOCK command to write out the existing drawing to a to a new file - this is usually the best technique to clean up a file after purging eveything you can. Have you set the 3 GB "switch" in boot.ini to help the O/S use about 3.5 GB? The other option is to install a 64 bit O/S many GB of RAM and install 64 bit LT.

[peterlowe]

Thanks for your reply George, I will look into all of those things.