AutoCAD Physical Memory Limitation

[dhauser]

We have encountered an issue that I cannot find any info. Our users have created 3d models that no need to be flattened to 2D based on the views setup in the layout tab. We are using the Bentley Flattener that comes with there AutoPlant suite. The files are very large 200 mgs plus. When we flatten the drawing the Memory usage for the ACAD.exe process max'd out at 1 GB even thought we have 2 GBs on the system on a 3.0 GHz Dual Core processor. Initially the machine only had 1GB of RAM so we increased it with no increase in performance. We reduced the Pagefile and turned the 3GB Switch on for Windows XP. 32 bit XP by default only allows for 2GB for applications. The switch allocates 3GB for apps and 1 for OS. This did nothing for performance.

Each setting change AutoCAD max'd out at 1GB is there an application limitation that anyone has heard of. If not does anyone have any suggestions? The Flattening process takes 30mins for the file we have been testing regardless of the setup.

Any help would be appreciated

Thanks

[Harold Pei Jr]

Why reduce your pagefile? It makes no sense. You're messing with the wrong thing. If you have 2 gigs installed, max out the pagefile to the 4 gigs allocated. This works with the 3 GB switch. If it's less, then the 3 GB switch is pointless. In fact, you should put it to 4 gigs if you have even 1 GB of RAM.
Increase the pagefile, see if that increases your used memory.
BTW, what did you set your paging file to?

[mmccarter]

I'm not familiar with Bentley Autoplant. But for flattening both dgn and dwg drawings I often simply open a 2d seedfile in Bentley Microstation and reference in my 3d drawing, then merge it into master and save it.
This creates a 2D drawing based upon the world UCS. If you require a specific view to be flattened then a bit of clever UCS action set in 3d and then xref the drawing into it prior to bringing into the microstation 2d seed file might be the way to go.

We have used this method on some drawings which were around 400mb in size successfully in the past.
Best of luck