None of the firmware settings will change the memory in use in any way.

The defaults should be fine unless the system is clearly running very hot (in which case disabling turbo boost may help appreciably).  3D modeling software is probably more bound by your GPU than anything else -- and that's the one part of the system that adding RAM can't address.

You really need a higher specification system to run what you want to -- this system is just not designed to handle 3D modeling workloads.

You need to put the workload in perspective:  this is a lightweight, mid-range business notebook.  It's just not designed to run heavy duty modeling software any more than a Toyota Corolla is designed to haul a 5,000 pound trailer.  

Thanks for the reply.
Yes I realise that potentially I will need to invest in an upgrade, but my main concern at this momento is that my notebook is performing slower with 32GB RAM than it was when I had 16Gb. I have also upgraded the 128gb SSD to a 500GB Samsung 980Pro, which should read/write quicker than the original one. 

The original setup has been running this type of software without much problem for about 2 years. I just expected to see an increase in speed with these upgrades. Never expected it to slow down.

Adding RAM that isn't used can slow things down under certain circumstances -- and the 980 Pro is a PCIe 4 drive, so it's not going to be much faster on your system (which is PCIe 3), since the system doesn't support PCIe 4 speeds.

Is the new RAM running at the same speed the old RAM was?  If you try to install RAM that has a shorter cache latency than the system supports, you can very often wind up having it default to the slowest speed.  DDR4-3200 can wind up running at 2133 MHz if you try using high performance RAM in a system that doesn't support it.