Excessive system memory usage causing slow performance or crash in AutoCAD Products

Autodesk Support

Mar 18, 2025

Products and versions covered

Issue:

While using AutoCAD, the program uses up most of the available memory on the system. This may happen while opening or saving a file, or while working in one or more open drawings. It could also happen only on specific files or on any file.

As a result, program performance and even general system performance becomes poor and sluggish.
Fatal error messages on the screen
AutoCAD may eventually freeze, requiring the acad.exe process to be terminated in the Windows Task Manager.
If the excessive memory usage happens when saving, it may occur after one save or it may be progressive with each save using more RAM. Eventually the drawing becomes impossible to work in and the program hangs and stops responding.

Causes:

There are several known causes:

Large number of annotative objects present in a drawing.
General file corruption.
Antivirus blocking AutoCAD or AutoCAD components
Missing user permissions.
System requirements to run AutoCAD not being met.
Graphics driver conflict.
Missing AutoCAD updates.
Corrupt user profile.
Missing or pending Windows 10 or 11 updates.

Solution:

Do one or more of the following:

Type SAVEFIDELITY on the command line in AutoCAD and change the value to 0 (zero).
Install the latest updates for AutoCAD (see: Install Updates, Add-ons, and Enhancements).
Update to the latest graphics card driver (see: How to update to the latest certified video driver).
Insure that AutoCAD is being run with a certified graphics card (see: AutoCAD Hardware Certification FAQ).
Insure AutoCAD has the appropriate permissions to run (see: What user permissions does AutoCAD require?).
C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD 20xx\Design Automation\Bin\Das.Local.exe is being blocked by firewall or anti-virus software; (this is a component used by the Block Palette to generate thumbnail previews. requests to generate the block thumbnails pile-up causing the software to get slower and slower overtime).
Install DirectX to make sure it is up-to-date (see: DirectX End-User Runtime Web Installer).
Reinstall Visual C++ (see How to remove and reinstall Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Libraries).
Reset your user settings (see: How to reset AutoCAD to defaults).
Check for file corruption (see: How to repair corrupt AutoCAD files). Test saving a brand new drawing created from the acad.dwt (or acadlt.dwt) template file versus existing drawings. If the memory usage does not increase, the original drawing most likely needs cleaning and/or repairing.
Uninstall Anti-virus software or add exclusions for AutoCAD to run correctly (see: How to set up antivirus (AV) exclusions to improve stability and performance of Autodesk software.)
Install missing or pending Windows 10 or 11 updates.
Make sure that the system requirements are being met to run AutoCAD or its verticals. (see: System requirements for AutoCAD).

Products:

AutoCAD Products;

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