Improving AutoCAD performance with older or low-end graphics cards

Autodesk Support

Oct 8, 2023

Products and versions covered

Issue:

AutoCAD drawings which contain large amounts of text or hatches may degrade performance. In most cases this is due to older or low-end video cards, however, depending on the amount of data being displayed high-end graphic cards may be affected as well.

Causes:

Several new system variables were introduced with AutoCAD 2015. These variables will display information about selection sets in the properties palette or high light objects when selected or hovered over. This may affect performance with some graphic cards.

Solution:

  1. Close or Autohide the Properties palette until it's needed. 
  2. Change the following variables to off within AutoCAD (type them on the command line) until they are needed: 
    1. SELECTIONCYCLING - set to "0"
    2. UCSDETECT - set to "0"
    3. ORTHOMODE - set to "0"
    4. DYNMODE - set to "0"
    5. ROLLOVERTIPS - set to "0"
    6. SAVEFIDELITY - set to "0"
    7. QPMODE - set to "0"
    8. SNAPMODE - set to "0"
    9. SELECTIONPREVIEW - set to "0"
    10. PROPERTYPREVIEW - set to "0"
    11. COMMANDPREVIEW = "0"
    12. ANNOALLVISIBLE - set to "0"
    13. WHIPTHREAD - set to "3"
    14. ISAVEPERCENT - set to "0"
    15. REGENMODE - set to "0"
    16. PALETTEOPAQUE - set to "1"
    17. DRAWORDERCTL - set to "0"
    18. LAYOUTREGENCTL - set to "0" or "1"

Products:

AutoCAD Products;

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