9.9.2. AutoCAD, Advance Steel & 3D Design

Use this supplement together with the XSTRA Citrix Graphics & Application Performance Guide. This document contains only the additional settings and operational controls required for AutoCAD, Advance Steel and related 3D design workloads.

The specialist objective is sharp line work, crisp text, low input latency, stable GPU acceleration, responsive viewport movement, reliable standards-database access and safe multi-user operation.

Relationship to the General XSTRA Citrix Guide

Complete the general guide first to validate the shared public-internet baseline: UDP → CGP → ICA, SecureHDX AES-256 GCM, DTLSv1.2, Gateway path, latency and GPU availability. This supplement begins with the settings that differ for design workloads.

For detailed design work, Build to Lossless with visually lossless compression can deliberately use a 4:4:4 H.264 or H.265 path instead of AV1. Crisp static lines and pixel accuracy can be more important than forcing AV1; validate AV1 for motion-heavy use only when the applied lossless policy permits it.

Citrix HDX Policy Profile

Browser GPU Settings — Chrome / Edge

Windows Desktop Settings — Citrix VDA

NVIDIA GPU Settings — VDA Host / VM

Application-Level Graphics Settings

AutoCAD and related 3D design applications require a different tuning approach from general video or browser-based graphics. The priority is stable GPU acceleration, sharp line work, responsive mouse movement, fast local access to standards data, and avoiding shared-file conflicts in multi-user environments.

Requirement	Recommended Approach
Central source of truth	Store approved standards databases in a central controlled share, organised by region, country, software version or project type.
Local working copy	Copy required standards databases to a local or user-specific path at logon or application launch.
Version control	Only update the local copy when the central version is newer or approved for release.
Regional profiles	Use AutoCAD profiles or application configuration to point each user or region to the correct local standards path.
Performance objective	Reduce network dependency, avoid file locking, and provide consistent standards data to all users.

# Define paths
  $NetworkPath = “\\NetworkShare\Standards\AU_Steel_Database.db”
  $LocalPath   = “C:\AutoCAD\Standards\AU_Steel_Database.db”

  # Ensure local folder exists
  $LocalFolder = Split-Path $LocalPath
  if (!(Test-Path -Path $LocalFolder)) {
      New-Item -Path $LocalFolder -ItemType Directory -Force | Out-Null
  }

  # Copy if missing or if network copy is newer
  if (Test-Path -Path $LocalPath) {
      $NetworkDate = (Get-Item $NetworkPath).LastWriteTime
      $LocalDate   = (Get-Item $LocalPath).LastWriteTime

      if ($NetworkDate -gt $LocalDate) {
          Copy-Item -Path $NetworkPath -Destination $LocalPath -Force
          Write-Output “Updated local standards database.”
      }
  }
  else {
      Copy-Item -Path $NetworkPath -Destination $LocalPath -Force
      Write-Output “Copied standards database to local path.”
  }

Rule	Recommended Standard
Path length	Keep full paths short. Avoid deeply nested project folders and very long drawing names.
Allowed characters	Use letters, numbers, hyphens - and underscores _.
Avoid characters	Avoid < > : “ / \ | ? * and avoid spaces where possible.
Case consistency	Use a consistent naming convention. Windows treats file names as case-insensitive, but consistent casing avoids confusion.
Extensions	Use correct extensions such as .DWG for AutoCAD drawings and keep template, standards and database extensions unchanged.

Specialist Design Workload Objective

Final Validation Checklist

After completing the general Citrix validation, confirm the specialist design profile is applied, the NVIDIA GPU is visible inside the VDA, AutoCAD hardware acceleration is active, viewport movement is responsive, static line work returns to a crisp lossless state, and the correct standards databases are available without multi-user locking.