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The only way for a program to address more than this is to switch to a 64 bit architecture. I would love to see VW do this, but I'm not holding my breath.

I have been trying to get any of the NNA members to respond on here as They could not as yet answer my question on this, as to why is it different.

As Orso has brought it to our attention, simply switching OS will double it, but if there is different way to get more RAM without changing OS(which could cost a fortune) then maybe this activation switch would be a good thing.

What do we do to aquire this switch??

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How do you activate this 'switch'? Why doesn't Windows always have it activated?
Do a google for 3GB and it will tell you what you need to do for your OS.

For Vista, it does not use a boot.ini file so you need to set one of the system params with bcdedit as follows.

-----------------------------------------------------

Run up a command line with admin rights...

bcdedit /set IncreaseUserVa 3072

Then reboot

To turn off

bcdedit /deletevalue IncreaseUserVa

3072 is 3GB, you can set it lower. The more you give to the app, the less the OS has - squeeze the OS space too much and it will become unstable.

-----------------------------------------------------

Use at your own risk. The reason why it is not enabled by default is down to backward compatibility - some software may be unstable with this switch.

As a result of this note, I am currently running with 3072 user virtual address space. But I don;t have anything that will cause me to run out of user address space so can only test for stability not whether running VW in this mode is indeed advantageous.

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From what I have read and understand from the links Iv;e posted above, the system will only be unstable if you take away to much RAM from the OS, but you can still gain a lot by pressing it's limits. So maybe you could press it till 2.8GB and it will still be stable. depends on your setup.

As Ian has mentioned he took it to 3072 and still have a stable OS.

So what I understand is that he could allocate more to the applications but he does not want to risk that, and besides he now has 3GB with a stable system.

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Not that difficult actually. I can't remember the exact line one needs to enter. But here's what I did. Google search "winxp enable /3 gig switch" and you'll come across a bunch of articles about enabling this.

It will involve you opening up a command prompt window and entering about 1 line of command. restart and there you go.

To the best of my knowledge, Windows doesn't always have this enabled because in some cases it can cause problems with some hardware. I tried it on one machine I have, and it worked great. The next one I tried, the graphics card got all irritable on me.

IanH mentioned that he thinks that only VW2009 takes advantage of the extra RAM. I've been holding off getting 2009, but this would be a reason for me to upgrade. Please post your results and let us know how this works out.

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I'm sorry guys, it's my office notebook and i'm not at all qualified to clean up a possible 'mess' if something goes haywire. (on my own PC i would have tried but i just don't trust XP and my own competence to take the jump on my company hardware.) To add to this my graphics card has always been unstable.....

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I have sent a PM to Dave Donley asking for clarification of the status of Vectorworks being large users address aware.

My system has been running in 3GB mode at 3072 for about 48 hours so far and its working as per normal.

It would appear that you may run into issues with some graphics cards (possibly those having a lot of on board RAM that use up a significant chunk of kernel address space) and some old software (IIRC someone said that Photoshop 5 was not happy in 3GB mode)

The 3GB mode is obviously one not to be used by default unless you have issues, but apart from having to rely on others within an organisation to enable the mode, it would appear to be an option that can be easily tested and reverted if stability issues arise.

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The issue with the 3gb switch will largely depend on the amount of video RAM.

For example if a x86 system has a 1gb card, the /3gb switch will never work.

Hopefully NNA has fully reengineered memory allocation under Windows. R12 had severe memory issues and was unable to run under Windows x64 if more than 2gb of physical ram was present.

2008 sp2 would not run under XP professional x64 unless "xp compatibility mode" was selected.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Allowing Vectorworks to use more RAM on Windows

Out of the box the Windows version can use up to about 2 GB of RAM before running out of memory, whereas the Mac can use up to 3GB before running into problems.

For 2009 we enabled VW to recognize what is called the "/3GB switch" on Windows, that allows VW to use 1GB more than the default. Here is the info to enable the additional 1GB:

http://kbase.vectorworks.net/questions/663/Windows+3GB+Switch

Enabling more RAM for VW can limit the memory available for Windows system resources, which could potentially cause stability problems. For this reason we intended to provide the info for users who report persistent out of memory problems while rendering and not recommend that all users enable the switch.

Those of you who have persistent out of memory cases on Windows might consider trying this.

Hope this helps,

Edited by Dave Donley
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The issue with the 3gb switch will largely depend on the amount of video RAM.

For example if a x86 system has a 1gb card, the /3gb switch will never work.

Actually it will. You simply adjust the amount of user address space accordingly. It may not give you an additional 1GB but you could still get more than 2GB.

Also, the 3GB switch controls the user/kernel split of virtual memory rather than RAM. I don't know for sure, but just because a graphics card has 1GB, it may not necessarily follow that it needs 1GB of kernel mode virtual memory.

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Allowing Vectorworks to use more RAM on Windows

For 2009 we enabled VW to recognize what is called the "/3GB switch" on Windows, that allows VW to use 1GB more than the default. Here is the info to enable the additional 1GB:

Does this mean only VW2009 or am I misunderstanding and that infact with any version of VW the switch can be enabled? :confused:

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You can enable the switch when using any version of VW, but only 2009 (and presumably later) can take advantage of the additional user virtual memory (>2GB <3GB) that the switch provides.

Edited by IanH
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