2011 Just Started Running Slow

I run LT 2011 with 3GB RAM. This has been more than enough. Even 2010 was fairly fast.

As of yesterday it began running laboriously slow.

It is mainly when panning through a viewport or plotting, but it is too slow to use. I have to work in paperspace or model space and cannot draw in viewports.

As I said, it started yesterday out of the blue. Has anyone else had this happen before?

It is still amazingly slow. I have now narrowed it down to "Undo", "Plot" and zooming or panning through a locked viewport. If the viewport is not locked or is maximised then it is normal speed. Otherwise it takes about seven seconds for even the smallest PAN and peaks the CPU over 50%.

Is there a Service Pack yet?

I have been tinkering with the ribbon in the CUI, is it possible I've broken a link somewhere that it keeps trawling for?

What are your computer specs?

Intel ® Core 2 Duo CPU

E6550 @ 2.33GHz

1.98 GHz, 3.23GB RAM

Windows XP Version 2002 Service Pack 3

AutoCAD LT 2011

What about the video card?

What you're describing sounds like either not enough processing power or a weak video card.

It looks like your processor is ok, so it's got to be the video card.

Also, what else are you running alongside Autocad? Do you have any other programs open that might be eating up system resources?

Have you emptied out your Temp folder and Recycle bin lately?

When was the last time you Defragged your computer or scanned for viruses or spyware?

Turn off the Modeless Layer Manager (the floating layer palette).

Thanks for the replies. Sorry to take so long to respond, I was snowed under from CAD being so slow and then I was away for a while.

What about the video card?

What you're describing sounds like either not enough processing power or a weak video card.

It looks like your processor is ok, so it's got to be the video card.

 

Also, what else are you running alongside Autocad? Do you have any other programs open that might be eating up system resources?

Have you emptied out your Temp folder and Recycle bin lately?

When was the last time you Defragged your computer or scanned for viruses or spyware?

Thanks CAD64. I ran some cleanups and a defrag. I often run lots of software at once, however it made no difference to AutoCAD when I shut these down. I do not know how to obtain the video card specs of my machine; I do know that it borrows 1GB of my RAM.

Turn off the Modeless Layer Manager (the floating layer palette).

rkent, what do you mean by the word "modeless"? I know what you mean about the layer manager slowing things down. I have had to learn to switch it on only when necessary (though 2011 seems to be better at it). This is a different issue because it occurs whether or not the layer manager is on.

In desperation late one night I reinstalled AutoCAD. The problem disappeared the next day for a day and a half, then went back to the same slow as before.

So I reinstalled it again and this time was much more cautious about the file support paths that I set. I think this has just solved the issue. My guess is that a path was missing or a printer path could not be found. I set all our machines up to run of central libraries on the server, so it's a little ambitious.

It took hours to get the settings back how I wanted them, but it has meant I can actually finish some jobs now.

"It took hours to get the settings back how I wanted them"

Config profiles export

Saves your settings and can be imported onto other boxes. You can also write a program that updates profile paths

Yes, there is an Update (no longer called Service Packs) for AutoCAD 2011. Just make sure to download the right version. There's one for 32-bit and another for 64-bit.

I am going to down load it straight away I was about to put here we need a new post 2011 Bugs and fixes we can provide info about a couple of screwy things that are happening.

IMHO 2011 is rubbish, and will skip this version completely. It adds very little over 2010, and what it does add doesn't work properly (dynamic hatch preview for example). I hope 2012 will be to 2011 what 2010 was for 2009; one big update where they finally get things right.

The update that just came out is for 2011 vanilla by the way, but the updates for the verticals usually follow shortly after.

Still not sure how that works. Example: we have two people running AutoCAD in the vanilla profile. One has a Mechanical install, the other Electrical. Our Mechanical user's got service pack 2 installed for ages now. The electrical user kept getting fatal errors, but electrical only has service pack 1 available. I ended upgrading him to 2011 as it was the only way to fix his problems.

It might help to increase your available virtual memory if it isn't high enough. I have mine set to max at 5 times my physical memory, which would be 10 gigs.

It might help to increase your available virtual memory if it isn't high enough. I have mine set to max at 5 times my physical memory, which would be 10 gigs.

I've heard the 2.0 to 3.5 times range kicked around for a long time but 5 times is a new one on me. I would expect that at some point you reach a point of diminishing returns due to the speed of the hard drive (unless of course you have one of the 10,000 or 15,000 rpm drives).

I hear 5 on some forum somewhere or other. I just checked ACAD help and under Memory Tuning they recommend 3 times physical memory. However it also says that most systems are limited to 2 gigs of virtual memory.

I do not understand what jasongetsdown and ReMark are saying about memory tuning. But I will check it out. My system is still 32-bit, so there's not much room to move i don't think.

Anyway, I finally got somewhere near the source of the problem. When I did a repair install of AutoCAD then the speeds went back to normal. Somewhere in there one of the support paths must have been broken, but I have not yet ascertained which one. No doubt an error by me as I unwittingly started playing around with things I did not understand fully. The price of learning I guess.

We're still stuck on 2008 due to our 32bit XP boxes. Only some are on Vista / Win7 64bit and running 2011 ... but that's the full vanilla and/or ACA. Don't know about how your LT should perform. But the performance of 2011 on 32bit (with any meaningful DWG open) is just silly, that's why we're stuck with 2008.

BTW, you've mentioned the graphics card sharing up to 1GB of RAM. That sounds like a built-in card on the mother board (something like an Intel Graphics). That card is probably your worst possible card in existence. But even if it's something like an on-board Radeon / Geforce it's not too great (see the reason explained below). You can find out what card by doing the following: (1) Right-click on My Computer and choose Properties; (2) Open the Hardware tab and click the Device Manager button; (3) you card should be listed under Display Adapters.

Why shared RAM is a BIG NO-NO:

Firstly 32bit has an absolute maximum of 4GB of RAM available to it (in theory). In practise it's a lot more like 3GB. This is because absolutely everything in the PC is addressed through the available address keynumbers for this 4GB. So your hard drive may be addressed through somewhere at 3.9GB as would your graphics card. This is bad enough, since a 1GB card with its own RAM would use up address space of 1GB ... but when that card uses shared RAM it's doubly bad: It takes away the physical RAM as installed, in adition to taking up address space ... so you're loosing at worst twice the amount of RAM. And these on-board graphics chips are usually the very low-end cards (especially those from Intel - which have near no 3D capabilities).

To answer another question, the Modeless dialog means it's a dialog which can stay open while you're doing something else. In ACad this is usually the palettes (like properties and the new layer manager). To get hold of the old Modal layer dialog, use the ClassicLayer command or set your LayerDlgMode.

And another thing I'd actually advise you against: defragging your disc does more harm than good. Unfortunately once you've started defragging you're stuck with using it. It's like an addictive drug to your PC. Fragmented files (i.e. one file split over several places on the hard drive) takes a whole lot longer to open than non-fragmented - this could cause your PC's performance to drop drastically. Defragging is a method to move files back to one spot each, but here's what actually happens:

• When windows is installed, all the files have slight gaps between them.
  
• As you generate new files, windows tries to match the size of the file into a spot which would fit it.
  
• It generally also tries to keep some gap space after it as well - so that if it gets edited it can grow slightly.
  
• This is an attempt by windows to keep the disc from becoming fragmented (i.e. to keep each file saved in one single place instead of split over 2 or more)
  

Clearly it is possible that files could become fragmented (especially if your disc is full / the file is large). Unfortunately windows doesn't do too well in such cases ... if you're using an NTFS formatted drive. If your disc is FAT32, you're in BIG trouble, and defragging is probably your only hope. In the My Computer, right-click on your hard-drive and choose properties: it should list under File system what type of format it is.

The problem with defrag is that it places all files directly next to each other (no gaps in between). So once you've edited any one of these it WILL become fragmented. Thus defragging actually causes worse fragmentation as you continue using your PC.

Windows introduced the NTFS file system to try and alleviate fragmentation (in addition to other reasons), but it's not perfect - and far from the best. The Linux's ext3 file system for example constantly keeps files from getting fragmented by moving them if it finds that they grow too close to the boundaries of the gap left for them - sometimes even rearranging other files to increase gaps. In practise an ext3 file system will rarely become more than 1% fragmented (even tested at 90% disc usage). With NTFS it's not uncommon to see fragmentation of 2-5%, even on discs which are less than 50% full. After defragging and usage of a month or so it's quite common to see this increase to 20-30% fragmentation. On FAT based file systems (i.e. since DOS) fragmentation was not even considered, so they tend to get fragmented a whole lot - this was the original reason for defragging.

About the memory tuning. Right-click on My Computer and select Properties. Go to the Advanced tab and click the Settings button under performance. In the Performance options dialog, open the Advanced tab then click the Change button in the bottom Virtual memory group. In the Virtual memory dialog choose Custom size and modify the size used to be 1.5 to 5 times that of your physical RAM (you may need to play around with this size to get the optimal performance, but generally 2 times would do nicely). If you have 2 hard drives, also select the one with the least programs on it as to paging file's drive - this would make for faster swapping as programs can read their code without interrupting RAM usage to the virtual RAM.

You are correct about the support paths though. If this happens again, you may try a program called FileMon (or something similar). It can tell you what is being done while a program is running. But most importantly it can also highlight stuff like files / folders not found.

Same thing here. ACAD 2011 LT just started to freeze on a file ACAD 2004 would handle with ease. I tried to follow several advices but nothing worked.

It is all happening on new workstation with 64bit Win7.

You can't read new files with old versions of AUTOCAD... ok so you have to buy the new version. What then? Well, it doesn't work!

The bottom line. It should work after installation without any additional mumbo-jumbo, and it should work better than any older version.

Imagine you bought the hammer this way back in 2004, and it is a good, sturdy hammer. One day comes hammer sales rep and informs you that you old hammer will not support new nail type. So you buy a new one. It turns out that it has all those nice additional functionalities. One thing that is most surprising is that it is no more good for plain simple nail hammering.

AUTODESK, please give us a hammer, cause we are in nail hammering business.

Same thing here. ACAD 2011 LT just started to freeze on a file ACAD 2004 would handle with ease. I tried to follow several advices but nothing worked.

 

It is all happening on new workstation with 64bit Win7.

 

You can't read new files with old versions of AUTOCAD... ok so you have to buy the new version. What then? Well, it doesn't work!

 

The bottom line. It should work after installation without any additional mumbo-jumbo, and it should work better than any older version.

 

Imagine you bought the hammer this way back in 2004, and it is a good, sturdy hammer. One day comes hammer sales rep and informs you that you old hammer will not support new nail type. So you buy a new one. It turns out that it has all those nice additional functionalities. One thing that is most surprising is that it is no more good for plain simple nail hammering.

 

AUTODESK, please give us a hammer, cause we are in nail hammering business.

Does your computer have a Mother Board? Did you install a processor (which one)? What about RAM, did you install any on this computer (how much)? Do you have a graphics card of some type? Are you having problems with any new files or just older files?

What type of nails are you hammering (finishing, 16d etc.)?

Well, SLW210, since it is a computer (not a hammer) it comprises the components you inquired about.

Lenovo Workstation E20

Intel Core i5

3.2 GHz 650M 4GB RAM + 4GB extra (DDR3 1333MHz)

VGA LENOVO NVIDIA QUADRO 600 1GB

Windows 7 pro is OS and it is brand new installation.

It seems that installing updates for ACAD 2011 LT solved the problem. But it worked till today just fine.

The thing that bothers me the most is complete lack of information and support on the subject. Our sails rep said that it is probably the driver issue?! Why did it work in the first place then...? The matter was solved by chance only.

Why this peace of software runs equally fast/slow as 2004 version was running on much weaker computer when dealing with the same file is a mystery to me.

As to the nails... when you get the handle without the head it doesn't really matter what type of nails you have...