Extremely Slow Layout Switching in AutoCAD
Yesterday I spent a little over 2 hours trying to fix an AutoCAD setup for an architect. Of 5 computers in the office one was opening files and switching layouts with a very long delay - about 2-3 minutes before you could return to work. Sure, the files were big and had many objects but the workstation was an HP Pentium 4 3.2 GHz with 512 MB of RAM…
The problem was that each time AutoCAD regenerated the whole project it kept working and working… The most time was spent on formatting text so I started poking around in AutoCAD options and then started looking at Windows’ display settings. It was obvious that the whole delay was caused when redrawing the layers.
Well, we finally found the solution. There was nothing else to change in AutoCAD and changing the system Display settings did not affect the speed at all. So I turned off font smoothing in Display | Appearance | Effects and all of a sudden AutoCAD started working like it was supposed too. All 3.2 GHz to your command 
I often say this, and it’s so far been true: the simplest solutions are always the hardest to find. I’m an administrator and programmer with years of experience and yet there are problems like this one that waste a lot of my time…
If you ever have this problem I hope Google points you here
