By Chris Smith
Recently, I have been having issues with AutoCAD throughout the day; crashes at unexpected times, files that will no longer load that I was working on minutes ago, workflows between products that would work and then stop for no reason.
If you also get similar issues and there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the sometimes-fatal errors, there is a relatively easy solution that you can try.
In my case, the issue was with the onboard Intel display card. There could be several reasons why this issue came to pass. Driver mismatch, windows updates… the list could potentially be very long. To prevent similar issues in the future you can force AutoCAD to use the display adapter you choose.
To do this, just follow the simple steps below.
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Edit display settings
Right clicking on a blank space on the desktop will bring up the context menu (right click menu). At the bottom of the list, you will see an option for Display Settings.
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Edit your graphics settings
Clicking the Display Settings option opens the Settings window. Scroll to the bottom of the page and select the Graphics Settings link.
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Browse for AutoCAD
Select the Browse option and search for the ACAD.exe file. I have included the default file path in the image below. If you have chosen to install the application to a nonstandard file path, then you can file the exe file location by right clicking the app shortcut an checking the properties for the file path.
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Open the Options window
Once AutoCAD has been added to the list, you should get 2 buttons to click. Choose the Options button.
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Select High Performance
Here you can force the application to use a particular display adapter. In my case I chose High performance as I have the hardware to cope with the requirements. If you have issues with High Performance, then try Power Saving instead.