Symptoms or Error
A number of customers have reported that when attempting to use Autodesk2016 the wrong display adapter is being selected when using NVIDIA GPUs e.g. the Citrix XPDM/WDDM driver rather than the NVIDIA driver.
Customers may encounter an error message that “Hardware Acceleration is Disabled” owing to the graphics card not being autodesk certified hardware. It is believed this is misleading and that the message is a result of the WDDM/other default adapter being used.
This has been reported with both Microsoft Server OSs (win 2012 R2 and XenApp) and Workstation OSs (win 8.x etc) VDI (XenDesktop).
NVIDIA engineers have investigated and believe the issue is related to the application or OS selection of the display adapter or the virtualization stack (e.g. Citrix). Other applications have been shown to be selecting the correct adapter in the same environment, customers can verify this for themselves with other applications.
The NVIDIA functionality is believed to be correct and the issue is associated with a third-party that we cannot resolve. NVIDIA has reported the issues to all the relevant 3rd parties and is tracking the issue under reference: 1737851. Autodesk are aware of the issue under Citrix under reference: 11643136.
Customers report that this issue is intermittent and more common after upgrades.
NVIDIA have worked with Citrix and Citrix have concluded the issue is associated with the OS or application, customers having issues are requested to contact Citrix and notify them that they are experiencing this issue under the reference SR#70848303 where these reports are being tracked.
Details of Autodesk’s support for Citrix can be found on Autodesk’s site: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/System-requirements-for-AutoCAD-2016.html. It should be noted that some configurations such as vGPU are currently officially unsupported. Customers seeking support for unsupported configurations are advised to contact their virtualization vendor and Autodesk.
Workarounds
Some customers have reported success with workarounds, however NVIDIA does not recommend using these and advises contacting the virtualization vendor and Autodesk in the first instance. Any customer attempting such a workaround should seek confirmation from Citrix/VMware that the workaround will leave them supported.
Workaround 1: Removing the Citrix WDDM Driver
This will not persist on reboot. It is also unclear of the impact on 2D applications and unclear as to whether Citrix would support such a configuration.
Workaround 2: Disabling the Citrix adaptor
This will persist on reboot and may be a solution for those delivering just AutoCAD. However customers must seek confirmation from Citrix that this would be supported.
It is likely that disabling the default adapter could impact on the behavior of 2D applications and customers are advised to proceed with caution.
VMware situation
VMware have confirmed that they have had no reports of similar issues and believe their stack is unaffected owing to architectural features designed to streamline display adaptor selection. AutoCAD is supported for VMware virtualization and customers using a supported configuration are recommended to report the issue to Autodesk and VMware. Details of Autodesk’s support for VMware with AutoCAD 2016 can be found on the Autodesk site: /caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/System-requirements-for-AutoCAD-2016.html[/url]
Applicable Products
Citrix XenApp / XenDesktop
Autodesk AutoCAD 2016