Visual Basic Applications run very slow in AutoCAD 64bit

If you use VBA inside of 32bit AutoCAD you will have noticed that it is around 1000x times slower when running the same VBA code inside of 64bit AutoCAD.

This is because AutoCAD 64bit ships with the 32bit VBA DLL in a separate out-of-process executable rather than loading the VBA DLL inside of AutoCAD itself. Therefore, a lot of marshaling is incurred communicating between the out-of-process VBA executable and 64bit AutoCAD.

Other issues you may be seeing: Run-time error ‘429’: ActiveX component can’t create object

Affected, all 64bit versions of (and variants of)

  • AutoCAD 2008 | AutoCAD 2009 | AutoCAD 2010
  • AutoCAD 2011 | AutoCAD 2012 | AutoCAD 2013
  • AutoCAD 2014 | AutoCAD 2015
  • AutoCAD 2016 | AutoCAD 2017
  • AutoCAD 2018
  • AutoCAD 2019
  • NOTE: Autodesk stopped making 32bit AutoCAD since AutoCAD 2020

The solution to slow running AutoCAD VBA

The best solution is to install 32bit AutoCAD on 64bit Windows, here are the affected versions along with their solution text…

AutoCAD VBA Enabler downloads

AutoCAD VBA enabler modules can be downloaded using the links below…

AutoCAD 2010 VBA 32bit 64bit | AutoCAD 2011 VBA 32bit 64bit | AutoCAD 2012 VBA 32bit 64bit | AutoCAD 2013 VBA 32bit 64bit | AutoCAD 2014 VBA 32bit 64bit | AutoCAD 2015 VBA 32bit 64bit | AutoCAD 2016 VBA 32bit 64bit | AutoCAD 2017 VBA 32bit 64bit | and newer

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