Slow Drawing? Things I do to get back on track without crashing AutoCAD and starting over

[steve-NEO]

Hello everyone,

I get a lot of DWG files from my customers and sometimes AutoCAD likes to "lock up" when working with them. I get the random lock up issue and wanted to share with the community. This is common for me and these are my work arounds. I find #6 to be the most useful.

Assuming all drivers and software is up to date, here are the things I do get control back, not every item I list is usable in every situation:

1) Purge, -pu for "Deleting registered applications", and AUDIT (obviously this can make for a slow moment but will help)

2) Wait - Seems simple, right? Patients is KEY when doing this.

3) XREFs, for me, are tricky. When I start having slow issues, I start working with or around the xref.. Sometimes it will fix the problem by making the geometry an xref, sometimes no difference. 

4) Cancel the command with ESC

5) Control, Shift, ESC to open the Task Manager, look for AutoCAD in the Process tab, right click and select GO GO DETAILS. This will open the Details tab in the Task Manager and highlight right click ACAD.exe and select Analyze wait chain, this can sometimes give you clue as to what is causing lag.

6) Start another session of AutoCAD, strangely, this gives me control back to the original file in the original instance of AutoCAD. Close the second instance and your back in business.

7) Work local vs network based can help too or vise versa.

8) Ive learned how to draw and toggle the OSNAP on/off (F3). Things GREATLY improve by doing this trick. Turning it off helps AutoCAD not have to process every OSNAP point.

9) Right clicking or selecting the grip/node of a block. THIS is the one that hurts me the most, as there is no way to speed up the right click properties menu, I've played with the settings and, for me, no difference. I tend to visit my step 2....wait...it does become responsive eventually. 

10) When No. 9 occurs, I will save the file, close AutoCAD and start again with a fresh instance. This does help at times.

11) WBlock everything out and into a new DWG file can help too but that is tricky depending on your Paper space requirements. 

I think this is everything. 

I hope that this helps someone in their day of drawing and designing.

----Steve----

Win11 Pro

AutoCAD 2024

13th Gen Intel, i9-13900KF

3000Mhz.

24 Core(32 Logical Processors)

Levono computer

32MB System Ram

MVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080

1920x1080x60hz Video Resolution

[pendean · Accepted solution]

if you have to restart the program as a solution, your setup is likely the issue too.

Clear out your OS login's TEMP folder.

if this is a laptop, it needs to be plugged in and power options set to HIGH PERFORMANCE

RESET 2024 back to defaults. Do not re-load add-ins and add-ons for a while.

Turn off GFXDX12 (autocad restart required)

In GRAPHICSCONFIG command, turn off Smooth Lines and HQ Geometry.

reset CACHEMAXFILES (set it to 0, restart autocad, set it back to 256).

If this is a VPN type setup, your IT can do more to help.

[steve-NEO]

Thank you for that. I will give them a try. This is a desktop set up and inside the office.

[paullimapa · Accepted solution]

If you suspect there are problems with one of the dwgs I would try the RECOVERALL command & then select the dwg with lots of xrefs:

[steve-NEO · Accepted solution]

Hello everyone, my post was meant as a tip and got some GREAT additions to this tip.! Thankyou for your additions, have a wonderful day.