Hardware Acceleration

GstarCAD 2026 · Whats New

In daily use, we often need to process and calculate graphical data. However, the CPU, which has many tasks to handle, cannot meet our requirements for the speed of image processing and computation. Therefore, we have introduced a hardware acceleration feature in GstarCAD version 2025. This feature utilizes the GPU, which is adept at handling images, to assist the CPU in solving problems, thereby improving the display of graphics and work efficiency, and enhancing overall performance. With hardware acceleration enabled using the GPU, you can also achieve real-time display effects of higher quality and efficiency compared to the CPU, and has a better highlight effect.

Activation Method

Hardware acceleration can be automatically determined based on the user's hardware device, or it can be manually controlled on and off through a command (command name: GRAPHICSCONFIG). Alternatively, you can click the performance settings button on the status bar to make adjustments.

After clicking this button, a dialog box will pop up as shown below:

Hardware Configuration

Displays the current user's hardware environment, including information about the graphics card, driver version, and OpenGL version.

Graphics Display Settings

Hardware Acceleration: Check the box to enable hardware acceleration and use the GPU to optimize graphics rendering. If unchecked, the mode switches to the default "Software Mode."
Smooth Line Display: Removes jagged edges from the graphic for a smoother display effect.

If hardware acceleration cannot be enabled, it may be due to the hardware environment not meeting the conditions for enabling hardware acceleration:

(1) OpenGL4.2 or below or the driver version is too low, you can try to upgrade the system's graphics driver.

(2) If you experience incompatibility issues or performance issues, try turning off hardware acceleration.

(3) For the best software experience, Windows 7 and below are not supported.

Compared with the previous version, GstarCAD 2025 also has better performance in the following aspects:

Highlight Display

Provides a clearer highlight effect, more distinctly identifying the selected object, allowing users to more accurately recognize, select, and operate them, enhancing the user experience. The effect is shown in the figure:

A new system variable SELECTIONEFFECT has been added to control (when hardware acceleration is enabled) the highlight display style of objects when they are selected.

A new system variable SELECTIONEFFECTCOLOR has been added to control the color of the glow highlighting effect when an object is selected.

Basic Visual Style Support

Added support for Concept and X-ray visual styles: Concept visual style is often used in the initial design phase to make graphics appear simpler. X-ray can more clearly show the relationships between objects. Visual styles can control the display method of drawings, making the drawing objects clearer and improving drawing efficiency.

Visual Styles--Concept

Visual Style--X-ray

Light Source Improvement

We have also optimized the light sources to make the lighting effects softer and allow for real-time preview and adjustment of lighting effects to meet the needs of the scene. This mainly includes the following points:

Point Light can produce uniform illumination effects in all directions, which can meet the requirements for simulating indoor lighting or general environmental lighting;
Spotlight can concentrate light in a small area, which can meet the user's needs to highlight specific objects or emphasize focal points;
Optical area network can display the range or area formed by light, and simulate the radiation range of light.
Target Point Light: Designate a point as the light source, commonly used to simulate light bulbs or flames;
Free Light Domain: The light from a free light domain is not blocked by surrounding objects and illuminates the surrounding environment, etc.

Hardware acceleration off