AutoCAD 2010 - the 2 GIG glutton

AC 2010 _regularly_ consumes over 2G RAM.

On a relatively non complex mechanical chassis DWG that's 36M on disk.

Can this possibly be anywhere near normal?

(please, no square-zero answers. is 2G RAM consumption ballpark or not?)

TIA

(btw, 16411 valid objects in dwg file, only a few blocks, no images, no hatches, nothing seemingly complex)

You're pushing around a 36MB drawing and wondering if it is reasonable for AutoCAD to be consuming 2GB of memory?

What are your system specs?

What OS are you running too?

what diff does it make? yet here it is: duo 3GHz, 8G RAM, win7 64bit, uber nvidia card

What diff does it make?

Try running the same drawing on a 32-bit system using Vista Business, 3GB of RAM, AutoCAD 2004 and a no-name graphics card or an integrated GPU then get back to me with the results. I'll wait.

helpful, thanks

i was running 2004 and 2007 before and never noticed this (what seems like) incredible ballooning of memory consumption. of course i had no 3D then, though i would hardly call this current file anything even remotely "complex" 3D. i'm wondering how in the hell anyone could use AC for designing a building or anything beyond a simple chassis, if my simple chassis consumes 2G RAM. it seems certain something must be out of whack. not even windows consumes 2G, and that's saying, as you know, an awful lot.

helpful, thanks

Yes, I know. I was trying to prove a point.

Now back to your problem.

What else is running in the background?

Are there xrefs attached to this drawing?

Is there a large amount of hatching in the drawing?

Is the scalelist bloated?

Are you current with all updates to 2007?

Is this a 2D or 3D drawing? If 3D what visual style are you working in?

You're complaining about using 2GB of RAM on a system with 12GB RAM installed? Some people will wish they had your system and your problem.

actually, saving my file into AC 2004 format and opening it with AC 2004 (installed on the same machine) consumes only about 600M or RAM and is comparatively lightning quick in overall response.

rephrase:: sanity check - has anyone else noticed 2G (or more) RAM consumption by AC 2010 (running on any hardware) while loading relatively simple mechanical drawings that include a basic 3D model, having a saved file size anywhere around 40MB ?

nothing else real running in bg, except usual basic windows.

zero xrefs.

zero hatching.

scalelist is reset to stock.

all updates? dunno, have update 2 installed to AC 2010.

3D model with 2D sheets and basic dims (adding the dims recently caused file size to increase miniscule amount, by maybe 100kB RAM usage).

working in wireframe and conceptual.

2G seems egregious to me for a 36M file, that's all. it's a 56x increase.

purged all unused blocks reduced filesize from 36M to 33M, but RAM usage stays approx same. are there parts of AC that can be unloaded to boost speed? it takes a long time to load. also, while orbiting, AC frequently (like every time) "locks up" for 5 to 10 seconds while it apparently loads something from virtual/disk temp mem. what on earth is it swapping out, and why? i mean, i've got fairly great everything, but the performance is actually getting worse and worse. makes me sure there's something else very, very wrong, and need sanity check if anyone else seeing anything even remotely similar.

is there any benchmark for AC? is there a standard file? a standard procedure? any basis of comparison at all? or does autodesk literally have us all totally in the dark in terms of performance?

I just finished pushing around a 34MB 3D drawing of a building with installed equipment on my work system that pales in comparison to yours with little or no problems. (Note: specs under my avatar are for my personal (home) system.) I am running...

WinXP Pro 32-bit SP3

AutoCAD 2011 32-bit

Intel core 2 duo 2.66GHz

4GB DDR2 800MHz RAM with 3GB/Switch enabled

nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB DDR3 vidRAM

15,000 rpm SCSI hard drive

I don't know what's wrong with your system that you should be having the problems you speak of.

Where did you get this system? Did you build it yourself?

is there any benchmark for AC? is there a standard file? a standard procedure? any basis of comparison at all? or does autodesk literally have us all totally in the dark in terms of performance?

Cadalyst Benchmark Test available here.

http://www.cadalyst.com/benchmark-test

You can probably benefit from this as well. Performance Monitor for AutoCAD from AutoDesk.

http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/acad_perf_mon/

Suggestions for tweaking AutoCAD performance.

http://cadit.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/03/autocad-performance.html#tp

We noticed a significant system slow down when we upgraded to 2010 LT. Drawings that formerly opened without trouble (no more than 3 to 4 meg) would be sluggish and causes crashes. One guy even dropped back onto 2008LT. Our machines are utter rubbish however but 2010 LT does use significantly more resources than 2007 LT. The only reason we put up with it is that 2010Lt has so many more full AutoCAD commands than previous versions.

I did partially solve it using the annotative scale cleanup and registry clean up apps from Autodesk website.