Autocad over VPN connection

[Anonymous]

I have a remote user with his own Autocad license connecting with a cable connection from his own office into the main office which has a 15-25 Mb FIOS connection via a SBS2008 managed VPN link.. The remote user complains that working with drawing files is painfully slow (opening, saving, etc.). Should the remote user get reasonably fast response times or is it recommended to remotely connect to a remote desktop on the inside of the main office network?

[TravisNave]

Client should use Vault and work locally on drawings.  Otherwise a Citrix solution might be something you might consider.  Using any other remote solution violates the EULA. 

[GTVic]

AutoCAD constantly checks the contents of folders in your support path and the DWG path and potentially also your startup path or "my documents" folder. We had a user open a large drawing on his C drive but AutoCAD was using his H:\ (corporate network location for HOME folder) drive as the startup folder. The H drive was over a slow VPN connection. Because AutoCAD was checking the status of the H:\ drive over and over and simple 40 second startup and DWG load turned into 20 minutes. Note that we were not even using the H:\ drive for the file, AutoCAD just selected that as the default "my documents" folder and added it into the support path. In that case changing the startup path default to a valid data folder on C: in the AutoCAD shortcut resolved the issue.

There are products that allow you to store drawings on a network and check them out for local access. For example Adept 2011. But my main point is not to let AutoCAD reference a slow VPN location (home folder, startup folder, dwg folder, xref folder, any support folder, plot log folder, backup file folder, etc.).