VisualCAM was developed to operate in true 32-bit protected mode with virtual memory. This allows VisualCAM to address the entire memory range of the CPU, even if the actual installed amount of memory (real memory) is less.
While virtual memory is a very powerful feature, there is no substitute for real memory for maximum speed. You should also keep in mind that other applications that you may have running on your computer, such as e-mail programs and other utilities that run in the background, often use a significant amount of available memory. This can cause performance problems in VisualCAM, because not enough memory may be available to process large amounts of data. For example, if you have no other applications running on a 256 MB system, 20 MB of Gerber files will load quickly into VisualCAM. If you load those same files while other applications are running, you may notice a lot of disk activity as the virtual memory manager begins to "thrash" due to the disproportionately small amount of real memory available.
If you receive an error message, such as "memory allocation error," this indicates that your system has exhausted its allocated swap space. You can help keep the swap file usage down by occasional use of the Edit|Purge command and disabling the Undo feature, if it is not required. Purging compacts VisualCAM’s internal database and allows more efficient use of memory.