Big Projects too large for Revit

[nwitte]

We are currently looking to move from ADT to Revit and have heard rumor that Revit cannot handle large projects. Sometimes we do large Medical and Educational projects that involve 300 to 400 thousand square feet with over 1000 rooms with doors, windows, equipment, and finishes. Almost 50 pages of architectural drawings (200 pages total). What are the practical extents of Revit with large projects? What are the largest projects you've done in Revit and does it start to bog down. How many worksets make your large projects manageable?

Thanks

[jeff.95551]

I'm doing an apartment building in Revit that's about 320,000 square feet gross, highly detailed (railings, balconies, cabinetry, furniture, etc)- the file runs between 100-125mb depending on compacting. It's broken into 6 worksets right now, and we will probably add another 3 or 4 to keep things moving. It does slow down - moving a door takes 3 or 4 seconds on my machine (a really fast notebook) and maybe 2 seconds on a high end workstation. Given that, you couldn't pay me to go back to ADT. Every 3 seconds too long that it takes me to move a door is probably worth a minute or two in manual coordination, headaches, cuss words, etc that I don't have to spend in ADT. The guys with their faces in the screens will get frustrated with the speed - the guys in accounting watching the total number of hours spent on a project will be dancing in their cubicles. The project I'm doing right now will finish at about 1500 total hours in Revit - I did a similar project in 2d Autocad two years ago (there were other factors, as well) that ran over 9000 hours. And the Revit docs will be much better drawings.

Big picture - put the drafters on decaf and go for it.

[fmihelcic]

We are using Revit on a 725,000 sq ft. 9 floor Hospital. The file is about 190,000 Kb. We are using 3.25 gighz 4 meg ram . We have enabled the windows 3g switch. That seems to make the computers perform better. There are several areas the model is slow with. Changes to sheet title blocks working with patient rooms as groups to name a few. We did two other projects on Revit one was 125,000 sq ft the other was 60,000 sq ft, On both of those projects the focus was on creating the model and hard copy deliverables. On this project the focus is on how to create the model with consideration to Revit's speed issues.

[Elrond]

If your large projects are campuses and can be broken down into linked files for each building that will speed up some processes too.

[czoog]

We a handful of very large projects underway in Revit. The most visible, of course, being 1776 ft tall WTC Tower 1 which is in DD/CD phase right now. We are also doing:

-a super tower project in Asia. It is currently 114 floors, 555 meters tall (1820 ft) and about 325,529 SM Gross (3.5 million SF). A morphing lattice design, with unique floor plates at every level, similar to the first design for T-1. Currently in DD.
- A 1.5 million SF mixed use project in the US, consisting of 6 mid-rise (22 story) towers on top of a massive low rise podium. Currently in DD.
-A nearly 4 million SF low rise office project in Europe. Currently in SD.

These are among the largest projects ever attempted in Revit, as far as I know. We use a combination of higher end hardware (3.6Ghz dual core/4gigs/256MB Quadro minimum), worksets, linked files, and strict user guidelines to manage performance. As some point I will be able to go into greater detail, but I just wanted you to know that large projects can indeed be done in Revit.

hth,
Z

[Elrond]

~snip~
-a super tower project in Asia. It is currently 114 floors, 555 meters tall (1820 ft) and about 325,529 SM Gross (3.5 million SF). A morphing lattice design, with unique floor plates at every level, similar to the first design for T-1. Currently in DD.
~snip~

So Chris, when can we expect to see some images of this over in the Gallery?

[Wes Macaulay]

Big picture - put the drafters on decaf and go for it.

Jeff -- I'm going to quote you on that one!

[truevis]

... strict user guidelines to manage performance. As some point I will be able to go into greater detail...

Many of us would be very interested in those user guidelines. I'd think even smaller projects would benefit from this knowledge gained from your experience.

[patricks]

We a handful of very large projects underway in Revit. The most visible, of course, being 1776 ft tall WTC Tower 1 which is in DD/CD phase right now. We are also doing:

-a super tower project in Asia. It is currently 114 floors, 555 meters tall (1820 ft) and about 325,529 SM Gross (3.5 million SF). A morphing lattice design, with unique floor plates at every level, similar to the first design for T-1. Currently in DD.
- A 1.5 million SF mixed use project in the US, consisting of 6 mid-rise (22 story) towers on top of a massive low rise podium. Currently in DD.
-A nearly 4 million SF low rise office project in Europe. Currently in SD.

These are among the largest projects ever attempted in Revit, as far as I know. We use a combination of higher end hardware (3.6Ghz dual core/4gigs/256MB Quadro minimum), worksets, linked files, and strict user guidelines to manage performance. As some point I will be able to go into greater detail, but I just wanted you to know that large projects can indeed be done in Revit.

hth,
Z

I commend you guys for doing these sorts of projects in Revit. No doubt you're at the forefront of Revit capability in many respects. If/when you can put some of the knowledge and experiences you all have learned down on paper, it will no doubt be of great benefit for all the rest of us Revir'ers who are striving for the best performance and productivity out of our offices. Are you guys collaborating directly with Revit developers at all? I would think they would want to include some of your experiences as far as making things run smoothly (if they do run smoothly) into future training publications, tutorials, etc.

[tomnewsom]

We're doing a 50,000sqf extension to a very ornate parisian style building - in the same style (ie exact replica of existing facades). 3 basements, 8 floors of accomodation, complicated alterations and linking into the existing building. All the stonework has been modelled in Revit, and all construction documents will be too. Although not as large in area as other projects mentioned here, it is very complex and probably pushes Revit in other ways. I can't tell you where it is or post images of it, but I'm sure it would make a great advert for how flexible Revit is.