Lagging

Hi,

I'm new to the forum, and joined mainly because of a huge problem I've been having lately. My AutoCAD is REALLY laggy, whenever I try to draw a line and I move the mouse around the screen there's like a two second lag. There's lag with a few other small things as well, my AutoCAD is not as snappy as it should be. On my computer it's much better, on my laptop it's really slow. I have AutoCAD 2010 btw. Does anyone know what may be causing this problem?

you already said one of the things that can cause it: laptop vs desktop. The laptop just haven't got the oomph that a desktop has and it will be lagg-ier.

you already said one of the things that can cause it: laptop vs desktop. The laptop just haven't got the oomph that a desktop has and it will be lagg-ier.

What do you mean?

I don't think there are any problems with that. The laptop I just bought about a week ago and it has a great graphics card, it has a 4gb RAM and a I5 processor.

My computer is about six years old and has 512mb ram and an ancient processor. My laptop actually is more powerful than my computer, by far.

And there are other students who have autocad on their laptops as well in my class and their autocad works great.

If your desktop is 6 years old, it's probably running XP and your new laptop is probably not, right? Try turning off as much of the unnecessary windows stuff like transitions and Aero or whatever. Try closing the Layers and Properties palettes. Turn off SELECTIONPREVIEW. Turn off hardware acceleration (or turn it on if it's already off)

and now we know more

The graphic card that you have, is it one that is certified by Autodesk? Check this list.

What OS do you use?

What are the full specs on your laptop?

btw, I'm not GREAT at using CAD yet, I can create simple drawings and such but not a pro at using all of its features yet. (so I might not understand all the CAD language perfect)

The specs on my laptop are:

http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/hp-pavilion-dm4/4507-3121_7-34113120.html

Processor Intel Core i5 2.26 GHz

Hard Drive 500 GB - 7200 rpm

Graphics Processor/Vendor 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5450 switchable graphics [HDMI, VGA]

4gb RAM

And yes, my laptop is windows 7 while the computer is xp. Could that be a problem? I heard windows 7 isn't that great with programs. Is it possible that I just got a bad version of AutoCAD or something...

You have a 64-bit system which should be a step up from a 32-bit system.

However, your laptop has a GPU (graphics processing unit) instead of a dedicated graphics card. That means, at some point, you may see a performance lag as the graphics chip cannot keep up with the demand and starts to borrow resources from the physical (installed) memory (RAM). Sound familiar?

How many programs do you run concurrently? Ex. - Right now I have Win7, an antivirus program, AutoCAD 2010, Firefox, and Winamp running all at the same time. I could open AutoCAD 2004, 2007, Excel and Access and still not see a lag. But I'm running a desktop system (64-bit) with 8GB of RAM and a 1GB graphics card. Your mileage may vary.

No...you do NOT have a bad version of AutoCAD. It's not like having a bad apple in a basket of apples.

And Windows 7 is a much better OS than Vista and somewhat better than XP in my opinion. I'm running Win7 Ultimate 64-bit.

You have a 64-bit system which should be a step up from a 32-bit system.

 

However, your laptop has a GPU (graphics processing unit) instead of a dedicated graphics card. That means, at some point, you may see a performance lag as the graphics chip cannot keep up with the demand and starts to borrow resources from the physical (installed) memory (RAM). Sound familiar?

 

How many programs do you run concurrently? Ex. - Right now I have Win7, an antivirus program, AutoCAD 2010, Firefox, and Winamp running all at the same time. I could open AutoCAD 2004, 2007, Excel and Access and still not see a lag. But I'm running a desktop system (64-bit) with 8GB of RAM and a 1GB graphics card. Your mileage may vary.

 

No...you do NOT have a bad version of AutoCAD. It's not like having a bad apple in a basket of apples.

 

And Windows 7 is a much better OS than Vista and somewhat better than XP in my opinion. I'm running Win7 Ultimate 64-bit.

When I WAS running it I had CAD open, Google Chrome, and an anti virus program (norton). To be honest, the laptop has NO problems running several programs. It is a great multi tasking laptop. I have an ever larger program on my laptop then AutoCAD it's called MatLab it's for computer programming, and I ran that before concurrently with other programs like word excel powerpoint etc. I thought the lag could be caused because of what you mentioned but I tried running other programs and they ran fine.

Additionally, the drawing I am trying to complete now is HUGE and there are SEVERAL layers...it's actually a huge site. What I thought could be causing the lag is that there are several layers and the drawing is larger. I turned all the layers off and freezed them, still lagged.

To be even more sure I opened a new AutoCAD file and began drawing something randomly from scratch, the first time I told CAD to make a line it lagged.

I also don't think you have a hardware problem. AutoCAD has some quirks that can cause poor performance even on very high powered computers with certified graphics, the trick is to find the specific conflict, which could be anything from a mouse or touchpad driver, antivirus, firewall, another program, or a Windows feature. I'd start by turning off and closing everything that is absolutely necessary to operate your computer, (including all extras in AutoCAd). If the problem goes away, start turning stuff back on in ascending order of how much you need it, to see if you can isolate when the lagginess comes back.

Have you tried closing the Layers and Properties palettes? Turning off Selection Preview in Options > Selection? Turning off hardware acceleration in AutoCAD?

What is the drawing file size you are referring to? Several layers? That's a mere drop in the bucket. We've had a couple of forum members talk about having a couple of hundred layers.

Does this drawing have a bloated scalelist?

Does this drawing use layer filters?

Are you current with any updates for AutoCAD Architecture 2010?

I also don't think you have a hardware problem. AutoCAD has some quirks that can cause poor performance even on very high powered computers with certified graphics, the trick is to find the specific conflict, which could be anything from a mouse or touchpad driver, antivirus, firewall, another program, or a Windows feature. I'd start by turning off and closing everything that is absolutely necessary to operate your computer, (including all extras in AutoCAd). If the problem goes away, start turning stuff back on in ascending order of how much you need it, to see if you can isolate when the lagginess comes back.

I don't know how to turn off all the things that I may not need. I'm new to windows 7 so I don't wanna turn off something I might actually need. I don't know what extras I can turn off on AutoCAD either, it's such a large program

What is the drawing file size you are referring to? Several layers? That's a mere drop in the bucket. We've had a couple of forum members talk about having a couple of hundred layers.

 

Does this drawing have a bloated scalelist?

 

Does this drawing use layer filters?

 

Are you current with any updates for AutoCAD Architecture 2010?

The file size is 1988kb or about 2.4 mb. There are less than a hundred layers, there are perhaps 60-70.

I'm sorry I don't know what the rest of those things are. I'm an aspiring engineer, not quite an engineer yet lol. Everything is up to date, I JUST got AutoCAD on this laptop.

How much experience do you have using AutoCAD? And how did you come by this knowledge?

I took a class in freshman year of college (currently in my last year) but the class was easy. I also took another course outside of school, a "boot camp" about 2 years ago and learned the program REALLY well I knew how to do 3d etc. But I haven't used CAD consistently so I forgot a lot of things.

Do you have the Layer Properties Manager open while working?

You never answered the question re: update.

The link to AutoCAD Architecture 2010 Update 2. There are two files available for download. One is for 32-bit systems and the other is for 64-bit systems.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?linkID=9240658&id=15135553&siteID=123112

You can try turning off hardware acceleration, per Nestly's recommendation, to see if it makes any difference by typing 3DCONFIG at the command line. This will bring up the Adaptive Degradation and Performance window. Click on the Manual Tune button. This will bring up the Manual Performance Tuning window. Deselect Enable hardware acceleration. Now click on the OK button at the bottom of the window to return to your drawing. Test it. Any difference? Yes/No/I can't really tell? You can always reset it if you want to.

Sorry I didn't see the update post that you're talking about, which one is it again? (I already responded but for some reason my post isnt showing)

Hardware acceleration is already disabled so that's not the problem, must be something else. :/

Post #16 contains a link to the AutoDesk website for the update to your product. Choose wisely.