Run Civil 3D without Map Features to save memory
Submitted by rkmcswain on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 11:53
I normally read the RSS feeds from the Autodesk Knowledge Base pretty regularly, but I missed this one. Tony's Civil 3D World alerted me to a new kb article (TS13390398) from Autodesk that describes how to set up shortcuts to launch Civil 3D without loading the Map 3D functions. According to the article, this can save 85MB of memory.
I downloaded the file and followed the instructions, but I did not see any change, at least by comparing the memory usage according to the Task Manager. Both used about 246,000 K. The download (script) from Autodesk simply makes some registry edits, so I started wondering if this was failing. So I found the keys it is trying to modify and watched them before and after running the script, and sure enough no changes were occurring. I verified this using Process Monitor which told me "ACCESS DENIED"... So even though I have full admin rights, these registry edits are being blocked by Windows 7 I suppose. That is a story for another day...
Anyway, I went ahead and manually modified the registry values per the script file, and observed the memory usage in Task Manager.
- Enabled = 246,000 K
- Disabled = 222,000 K
So I'm not sure where the 85MB figure came from, but I was able to observe a smaller, although minimal, memory footprint by disabling the Map features. Now if they would just create a UI for things like this.
Please leave a comment with your results if you try this.
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Slick Tip
That is a pretty slick tip. It always amazes me what hidden features and techniques are available within the Autodesk programs. When someone says, "You likely only use about 10% of the program," I sometimes think they are giving too much credit. Not true with many people out there...especially power users, but there really does seem to be an unlimited amount of tweaks possible.
I was thinking about this
I was thinking about this recently... It would be really slick if there was some sort of GUI tool where you could go in and select the features to enable/disable. So if you were working on some generic details for example and you only needed the basic command set you could disable Civil 3D, Map, etc. It could work for add-ons too, like AutoTurn, ToolPac, etc.
Have you ever seen what all loads with Civil 3D?