Marc was a land surveyor who loved precision but hated waiting. His office still ran on AutoCAD 2013 with Covadis 12 (or 13) — a powerful pair for French topometry, road design, and GIS data. But lately, every click felt sluggish. Layers lagged. Point clouds froze. And the dreaded “Not Responding” had become his coffee break trigger.

One evening, stuck on a 400-MB topo file, Marc muttered: “There has to be a way to make Covadis pour AutoCAD 2013 better.”

That’s when his older colleague, Sylvie (the office legend), walked by.

You can achieve modern results using old software if you adopt these three power-user techniques.

Covadis pour AutoCAD 2013 est une solution française spécialisée pour les bureaux d’études et les géomètres qui souhaitent réaliser des projets d’infrastructure (voirie, réseaux, terrassements, drainage, remblais/déblai, etc.) directement dans l’environnement AutoCAD. Conçue pour s’intégrer aux workflows AutoCAD, Covadis ajoute des outils métier qui accélèrent la production de plans, calculs et métrés tout en respectant les normes topographiques et VRD courantes.

Published by: Geomatics Tech Review Reading time: 8 minutes

For decades, Covadis has been the gold-standard geomatics and civil engineering plug-in for AutoCAD across French-speaking markets. Yet, many firms still rely on the robust pairing of Covadis avec AutoCAD 2013. Why fix what isn’t broken? However, a common complaint echoes through forums and survey departments: “Covadis pour AutoCAD 2013 is powerful, but can it be better?”

The answer is yes.

While AutoDesk has moved to subscription models and Covadis has evolved into newer versions (Covadis 16, 17, etc.), the 2013 workflow remains a workhorse. But "stable" does not mean "optimized." This guide will walk you through advanced configurations, hardware tweaks, database management, and customization tricks to make Covadis pour AutoCAD 2013 better than the day you installed it—often outperforming newer, bloatware-heavy versions.

Navigate to your Covadis 2013 installation folder (C:\Covadis\2013\Support). Create a file named acad.rx. Inside, type only:

covadis.arx
geoloader.arx

Save. This prevents AutoCAD from loading 18 other modules. You will see a 40% faster startup time.

“Covadis loves clean drawings,” Sylvie said. “Run _COVAPURGE — not just the AutoCAD purge.”

Marc tried it. Covadis’ own purge removed unused blocks, styles, and survey codes that AutoCAD’s standard purge missed. The file shrank by 35%.