.NET 2gb Memory Limitation Fix

Most users won’t hit this limit and shouldn’t worry about it until they do.  However a handful of our users processing extremely massive surfaces have reported an error message like “System.OutOfMemoryException” and/or “Array dimensions exceeded supported range”.

In the event that this occurs, you will need to make a minor revision to a supplied file with your CAD engine.  If you don’t feel comfortable with this type of operation seek help from your IT support.  The file to edit is ascii and lives in the CAD engines primary folder.  It’s quite small and you can use notepad to edit it.

First, backup your profiles:

1. Start your CAD engine.
2. Issue the OPTIONS command.
3. Click the Profiles tab at the top.
4. For each profile listed, select the profile name in the list, click the [Export] button, and specify a file name and path on a drive you are likely to keep (and back up).

Second, backup the file:

1. Close all sessions of your CAD engine.
2. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the CAD engines primary folder, for example in a recent AutoCAD it should be “C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2019”.
3. Look for a small file with the same name as the CAD engine, that has a “.config” at the end, like “acad.exe.config”.
4. Select the .config file, Right Click and choose Copy.
5. Right click outside the data columns (just before the scroll bar) and choose Paste.  This creates a file with a name like “acad.exe – Copy.config” that you can use if needed.

Third, modify the file:

1. Select the original .config file, Right Click and choose Open With > Notepad.
2. Find the last <runtime> section by scrolling down the file contents.  After the last </runtime> tag, press enter twice to create a couple new blank lines.
3. Paste the following into the blank line area.
   <runtime>
       <gcAllowVeryLargeObjects enabled=”true” />
   </runtime>
4. From the File menu, choose Save.

For comparison, here is a file modified for AutoCAD 2019.

---

<configuration>

<startup useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy=”true”>
<supportedRuntime version=”v4.0″/>
</startup>

<!–All assemblies in AutoCAD are fully trusted, skip publisher evidence–>
<runtime>
<generatePublisherEvidence enabled=”false”/>
</runtime>

<runtime>
<gcAllowVeryLargeObjects enabled=”true” />
</runtime>

<appSettings>
<add key=”EnableWindowsFormsHighDpiAutoResizing” value=”true” />
</appSettings>
</configuration>

---

When you restart your CAD engine, loading the massive files should succeed.