By Dennis Collin
A frequent question that is often asked is how can to improve AutoCAD performance generally? For drawing files, this is quite a lengthy topic but commands like Purge, Audit and Recover are good starting points. However, there are other things that can be set if it is just AutoCAD that is slow and a budget is not available for a new system or hardware upgrade.
Disable creating a new AutoCAD file on start-up
When you start AutoCAD, it will create a new file using a default template. The thing is, we do not always want to create a new file when we open AutoCAD. Quite often we would rather continue working with a previous drawing.
Another reason to disable the default template is that you often have many different drawing templates. When you create new drawings, you probably want to have a choice of which template to use.
You can change this behaviour by changing the STARTUP system variable to 1. Instead of creating a new file, it will let you to decide to create a new file from a desired template or open an existing drawing.
For AutoCAD 2012 or later, you can set the value to 2 instead. This setting will start AutoCAD without opening any file or any dialog boxes, thereby speeding up the start-up process.
Disable the 'Splash Logo'
Disabling the splash screen can reduce load times. Whilst this may not have a significant effect on newer computers, it may help performance on more vintage hardware.
To disable the splash screen, right click the AutoCAD shortcut on your desktop.
Click properties on the contextual menu.
Add /nologo switch on the target field to disable it.
A typical line will read something like.
"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2022\acad.exe" /product ACAD /language "en-US" /nologo
(This tip works for most recent AutoCAD & AutoCAD LT based products)
Now when you double click the shortcut, AutoCAD will not show the splash screen when loading.
Disable Transparency and preview effects
Once you are in AutoCAD, if further performance improvements are required try disabling the transparent command line box and palette menus, along with hatch preview functions, hatch transparency, quick properties and automatic selection cycling.
Optimise Windows Performance
Within Windows disable fancy graphical options like the Windows Aero feature, or under System Properties tick the optimise for best performance option, to gain the maximum speed from your hardware.