crash, bang, wallop! ( Radiosity Crash)

[gmak]

All of a sudden Revit is crashing when I try to 'radiate' a scene. This is on a file that I've been working on for some weeks. The end of the journal says:

' 15-Jul-2004 15:49:11; Start Photorealistic calculation.
' 15-Jul-2004 15:54:07; Exception in render thread c0000005 flags 0 addr 7802f3fc
' 15-Jul-2004 15:54:07; Fatal Error in Render Thread. Please call client services

(I have contacted Revit support)

Has anyone else run into this? I'm getting to about 50-75% complete and then everything goes. In some cases, it is even causing the computer to reboot (ouch!).

The last things I did to the model were to add a couple of in-place families (some wall panelling and a desk surface). Both have bimapped materials.

Anyone experienced this?

[hand471037]

have you tried to use radiosity with the model before? and did it work? or is this the first time?

[gmak]

I've been using radiosity with the model all along and it was fine.

[SkiSouth]

I've run into a limit (where that is - I don't know) after a project had gotten so large or
so many textures before it would not Radiate. Is this an interior/exterior project? - Of course checking the memory during the solution (that failed) it was bumping 896 MEGS of ram to run the radiosity. You can open the Task Manager in windows (a second monitor helps here- if you don't have one, shrink the Revit window slightly to give you access to the manager while revit is running- put it on the performance window and see if Revit continues to process while you think it is locked up - This is usually the only way I can be sure I haven't locked the box when rendering. If the program collapses to the blue screen of death, its probably bad data somewhere. Other thoughts:

Did you <esc> or cancel the Radiosity solution anytime before it stopped working. - Like -oops I forgot that, let me add it first, and then <esc> the solution? I've had issues before with the radiosity seemingly holding bad info after that.

Can you still load and radiate an old backup file prior to your family addtions? If so, add one family and see if it will radiate. If so, reopen the same file and add the other family and radiate again. If successful, try adding the other family (that worked previously and see if
it still works. ) Continue in this vein to see if you can determine why it failed.

If it is an exterior model, unless you have a WHOLE lot of detail, or late evening etc. The radiosity solution is almost more trouble than its worth.
Some thoughts on approaches I have taken.

[al]

What version are you on? I have noticed the new build 20040616_2100 handles memory differently/better than all previous versions with Radiosity. The RAM doesn't grow as fast. If you aren't on this version you could copy your file and try it on another computer with the new version?