Post "Slow Down" problems here

[narlee]

Yep, it is. It doesn't appear to be a "graphics" thing, as it takes some time just to get a reaction from things like clicking "Component"........................finally the "Create" & "Load" buttons come up.

I suspect 7.1 will address this and bugs that we find.

Geof Narlee.

[hand471037]

But I've noticed that it's faster at other things than 6.1, like the files I've got that have tons of linked files within them seem to be better...

I'm not finding it slower. Have you tried tuning off the 'overlay' feature within the graphics settings? Maybe it's something with your video card and such...

[sfaust]

When I first loaded it was definitely slower, especially with shadows, but I turned on OpenGL acceleration in the same tab and made sure hardware acceleration was on for the computer, and it works very smooth and quick now...

[Wes Macaulay]

The OpenGL overlay planes feature must only work on certain cards -- none of the ones I work on seem to like that setting turned on.

[Henry D]

Huge difference for me when I unchecked "using overlay planes to improve performance" and checked "Open GL acceleration" ...way faster now.

[BillyGrey]

I am having startup lag (I think) but my perormance overall has been fine.
However, I expect delays when shadows are on (it happens in SU, (bye SU)), but
Steve is correct.

Once I turned on OpenGL, and cranked up hardware acceleration in my graphics card settings, even with shadows on refresh times are negligable. Now I'm smokin'....

Thanks Steve!

EDIT:

I'm now a member of the slow down crowd...OpenGL whacks my graphics, so for now, I can't use it.

[Wagurto]

Definitely, speed is a big issue with Revit 7. I have tried all the possible combinations with the graphic setting and one looks worst than the other.
If that;s the price I have to pay I would think twice before upgrade. Any comments from autodesk in this regard? I wrote an e-mail to technical support but silence is the answer.
I hope there is something that can be done.

[beegee]

I haven't much of a speed hit at all, but I'm running dual Xeons. ( I know the dual bit doesn't help Revit other than for rendering, but duals do allow other apps to run concurrently without much trouble. )

The only new feature likely to affect speed would be shadows. Turning them off while working would be a good idea I think.

[Wes Macaulay]

Hmm - maybe $100 is the price you'd have to pay... I'm noticing no change in speed on the nVidia and ATI cards we have around here. What do you have for video hardware? A basic nVidia video card might solve your problem.

[gbrowne]

I have a relatively modest computer at work, and was finding the same issues, but the easiest way is to leave the shadows off until the last moment, and bear in mind spooling takes a quite a bit longer during printing. Apart from that, all is good.

[hand471037]

Wagurto, I'm not having the issues you are. I don't know to what impact this new graphic stuff is having out there. But my systems, a P4 desktop with a gig & an ATI Radeon 9800 and a P4 laptop with a gig and a ATI Radeon 9600 are not having these issues, and actually are finally able to make proper use of OpenGL, so I'm getting (so far) a big speed boost from Revit 7 that I didn't get with 6.1. :D

But the desktop was using an old driver, not the new one from ATI, and was slow with R7 until I updated the driver, and now it's faster than R6.1 was, on the exact same machine, with the exact same project...

not to be glib, but have you updated your current graphic card drivers, is OpenGL set up for Performance instead of Quality, ect? What kind of card are you running?

(darn, we all complain to Revit that they need to make more use of the OpenGL hardware, and now that it looks like they are starting to it's only causing problem for some- you folk at the factory just can't win, huh? ;) )

[Wagurto]

I have a Pentium 4 3.06ghz with 2 gb ram and a 980xgl quadro4 I have a 120 gb SCCS hd.
and I was flying with 6.1 If there is something with my video card setting please let me know because I am ready to go back and that will be a shame I really love the new features of Revit 7 but all comes down to speed when we talk of production. I don't have the shadows on, I tried the open gl on and off and I tried the overlay on and off same thing any time.
I you have any idea please help!!!!

[Wes Macaulay]

Wagurto, also try updating your DirectX to version 9.x -- www.microsoft.com/directx (http://www.microsoft.com/directx)

[hand471037]

How old are your video card drivers? Also where did the driver come from? With the Nvidia cards I've heard it's best to get the driver from the folks who made the card and not Nvidia directly...

[Scott Hopkins]

My system is very running slow in 7.0 as well.:( The OpenGL box on my options tab is permanently grayed out. Am I to assume that my current graphics card does not support OpenGL? I currently have and ATI Radeon64MB DDR (VIVO). Is there as easy way to determine if this card supports OpenGL?

Does anyone know of a really cheap graphics card that does support OpenGL and also works fine with Revit

[beegee]

Scott, try closing then reopening the revit session. Are the checkboxes still greyed out ?

[Mr Spot]

We've also found Revit 7.0 to be a lot slower and slightly bigger file sizes.

Running on ATI Radeon 9800XT 256MB with latest drivers
P4 3.0GHz 2Gb Corsair Ram

Very noticeable when switching betweent the two... I even find it sluggish when editing a simple titleblock family!

[GuyR]

So far I'm not noticing much difference in speed. However as in V6 it does get much slower with more than 3-4 views opened. I find "closing hidden windows" then a save brings it back to normal.

Guy

[Cathy Hadley]

I have found R7 better than R6.1 for me... at first I was very frightened, cause it really seemed to dog... but for me it was openGL on... Overlay OFF and zing... Mr. Zippy at it again...

Seems to be very hit or miss doesn't it?

2.9 gig
2 Gig Ram
nVidia Geforce FX5700 Ultra
DirectX 9

CZH

[aaronrumple]

ATI Fire GXL1 here on a Dell and I''d say 7.0 is faster... Haven't pulled in the big projects yet.

[Griff]

I also have experienced a major speed hit with 7.0. The boss is not impressed, so I may have to revert back to 6.1 till I can get this figured out. I have tried closing open view (a little improvement) I have rebooted, I have tried all the switches OpenGL on/off, Overlay planes on/off, but I can't seem to find the fix.

Someone mentioned DirectX. I'm not real familiar with what that is or if I need it, but I didn't find it listed when I ran Belarc Advisor.

I'm not sure how to find an updated driver at NVIDIA because they don't list Revit. If I was running Autocad, Inventor or 3ds, they list those. Any suggestions-- Please

This is my setup:

Dell Computer Corporation Precision WorkStation 340
Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1 (build 2600)
2.00 gigahertz Intel Pentium 4
1024 Megabytes Installed Memory

NVIDIA Quadro4 700 XGL [Display adapter] (this came with the computer)
Driver ver. 4.5.2.3

[Scott Hopkins]

Scott, try closing then reopening the revit session. Are the checkboxes still greyed out ?
Tried this but OpenGL still greyed out.

[ctc]

Nice new features but Revit 7 is much too slow. 5-7 second wait time to select a component. This is unacceptable.

[Chad Smith]

Has anyone found a driver that will work with a GeForce4 Ti 4200 8xAGP video card, so I can start using the OpenGL acceleration.
I'm in the same situation as a lot of others with very poor graphics performance, and even more so when using shadows (average 10-15 second wait for a screen refresh.)

[ita]

There was a significant slowing down when 7.0 was installed on my workstation - but not on the laptop. However . . . from the suggestion of Jeffery McGrew I installed the latest video card driver . . . RESULT . . . perceptibly no difference with the speed of 6.1!! Back to normal!!

Thanks Jeffery . . would not have thought of that!! :lol:

[christopher.zoog51272]

I've notice no speed reduction yet.

Have you guys installed the Microsoft hot fixes for pulling large files accross networks that revit suggests?

You know, I remember a lot of people had graphic card issues when 6.0 was release as well.

[christopher.zoog51272]

I'm not sure how to find an updated driver at NVIDIA because they don't list Revit. If I was running Autocad, Inventor or 3ds, they list those. Any suggestions-- Please

This is my setup:

Dell Computer Corporation Precision WorkStation 340
Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1 (build 2600)
2.00 gigahertz Intel Pentium 4
1024 Megabytes Installed Memory

NVIDIA Quadro4 700 XGL [Display adapter] (this came with the computer)
Driver ver. 4.5.2.3


You can use the latest Quadro based driver package (http://www.nvidia.com/page/partner_certified_drivers.html)
I use the Maxtreme driver for viz 2005 and I usually have the Quadro drivers set for "discreet combustion" because I use combustion a lot. Revit works well with the openGL options on

As I see you are running XP sp1, you may want to look at implementing these hotfixes (http://revit.autodesk.com/7.0/EN/documents/Current%20Hotfixes.htm)

[Chad Smith]

I've been printing off some elevation sheets today that have shadows on them, and damn it is slow. Each sheet takes about 4 to 5 minutes to print. Just as well I'm not in a rush with getting prints out.

[beegee]

I wonder if anyone can compare the time taken to print a similar shaded elevation from both Revit and SketchUp ? ( Maybe a new benchmark test is called for here .. :shock: )

[GuyR]

Each sheet takes about 4 to 5 minutes to print.

I wonder if it is quicker printing to PDF first?

Guy

[Henry D]

Yesterday I loaded a 6.1 project of about 31MB into 7.0 and was really suffering with the speed...for instance the tape measure took forever to pick points. But this morning after rebooting my computer, it's working fine now...so maybe some of the changes I did to the acceleration, etc. only took affect after restarting the computer.

[David Conant]

Changes you make to Revit's hardware acceleration settings do not take effect until you open the application again.

[hand471037]

I wonder if it is quicker printing to PDF first?

Guy

Not if it's the Adobe Acrobat package. :) It can take a while (but it was slow before on complex elevations, so it's just added a touch more time). Don't know about the Pinebrush PDF maker that comes with Revit tho.

[Phil Palmer]

4 detailed elevations with hidden line and shadows. printed the sheet to PDF and it took about 1 hour to produce the PDF. Its a long time BUT well worth the wait in my opinion.

Just need a batch routine now to set Revit off overnight to plot these drawings.

[WolffG]

Noticed a curious phenom today.

I'm working on a relatively simple set of drawings. 5 roof plans, all linework, no modeling. A bunch of details.
Database is about 4 Mb

Revit 7 starts out working just fine, but in an hour or so, there is a very noticeable slowing down. Simple commands, such as line or callout take a considerable amount of time to activate. (About 5-10 seconds)

Once I unload and reboot my computer, the whole thing starts all over again.

[BillyGrey]

I'll second that curious phenom.

[Yman]

I will third that one. I notice that it is better when you close all your windows of open views. Go to windows> close hidden windows. This will help speed things up again for a while until you need to do it again. I used to leave a LOT of windows open and never had a problem in earlier versions.

I think what Revit is doing is if you have 3 views open and you are working in only one and you select an object that Revit checks the other views to see if it is in that view and tries to highlight in that view also so the more views you have open then the more time it takes Revit to go to those views and do it's thing. I now try to stick to about 2 or 3 windows open (usually hidden because I work in one view at a time) any more than that and it takes a while to grab objects or just a single detail line. But this is only what I think and am not sure altogether what is really happening.

This is a little pain in the butt, but I think I can manage for now, but would like to know if this is a problem or if this is how it actually works.

Y

[Nic M.]

I had the same experience

Was experimenting in 7.0 had 6.1 open, outlook, word and autocad (1gig ram)
When I selected a command in Revit 7.0 it took ± 40 sec before the program responded
switching to other open programs went fine they responded normal on selecting commands

Closing the other programs gave the speed back to Revit 7.0 (for me no need to restart the program)
This happend twice to me since the release
I experimented further with only Revit 7 open and lots of windows open in tree open projects but all went well, no slow down.

I like to add that I'm verry pleased with the overall speed of 7. There is no difference with 6.1 even with shadows on in a 3d model spinning and zooming

Dell Dimension 4550
2.8 Mhz / 1gig ram / ATi radeon 9700PRO
Open GL turned on / overlay planes off
Average file size of my projects ± 8Mb

[Henry D]

Also experiencing the same. Good speed the first hour or so but then I lose speed and have to close and restart Revit to get the speed back.

[adegnan]

I just started watching the SOM-Revit recorded webcast and then clicked Save in Revit. OVER 3 MINUTES TO SAVE!! It took, literally, 2 minutes before the "save" progress bar started moving, then one full minute to save. (I could tell because of the clock on the webcast.) It's not like the webcast was draining all my resources. This is wierd...

Other than that, things seem to function at normal speed 95% of the time, as long as I'm not playing with shadows. And I can live with slow shadows; I just don't need to turn them on all the time.

[DaveP]

Have you guys watched the Task Manager while this slowdown is happening?
Do either Ctrl-Alt-Del & pick Task Manager or Right-click on the Windows Toolbar & select Task Manager. Then go the Performance tab.
The top window shows how much of your CPU you're using.
The window in the middle shows how much RAM you're using.
The very bottom line shows Commit Charge. The numerator is how much RAM you're using, and the denominator (if I've got my grade-school math right) shows total Virtual memory. Virtual memory includes hard drive swap space and is typically twice your physical RAM.
Watch that numerator. If it gets above your physical memory (1024M if you've got a Gig of RAM), you'll see a real slow-down, because your computer is using your hard drive instead of RAM.

[Yman]

Boy, I can't imagine I would run out of ram, I have 2 gig and a 2.4 ghz processor. I'll keep experimenting.

Y

[BillyGrey]

Given the frequency of this occurrence is this an issue we should be monitoring? And even if we do, what to do about it? I just had to restart a moment ago, because of this situation.

When I booted up this a.m., I came here, checked in, then opened Revit. I have had no other processes running. It slowed down and the only window I had running was the one I was in.

I am a full time user, and sit in front of Revit 8-12 hrs on all office days, and 4 to 6 on "client" days. I have a feeling the others experiencing this issue may be in a like situation.

I am fully committed to the success of Revit. I want to help and I know these kinds of issues will be addressed when we shed light upon them.

cntr+alt+end-of-blabber

[anthony.67953]

Me 2
I am also experiencing a slow downs on my 3.02 Gz Laptop and a Duel processor Dell workstation. Maybe the factory can look into this and give us a report.

[ilya.bass]

Me 2
I am also experiencing a slow downs on my 3.02 Gz Laptop and a Duel processor Dell workstation. Maybe the factory can look into this and give us a report.

The Factory is lnvestigating. Apologies for any inconvenience.

Please expect this fixed soon.

Thanks
- Ilya

[BillyGrey]

Thank You, ilya.bass.

[Scott Hopkins]

I am having similar slow down problems....:cry:

[Chunk]

Same in this neck of the woods on some of our older machines. Both single and dual Windows XP Pro workstations. Only ones that don't seem to be affected are our dual Xeon 2.4Ghz Server 2003 workstations (we're using server grade boxes as Revit rendering workhorses). All machines, new and old, have at least 1GB RAM and Radeon 9800 video cards.

[andremiko]

Not only is it slowing down, now its starting to CRASH & BURN......:veryevil:

[adegnan]

Well other than that one 3-minute save and an occastional pause... when selecting an object or tool, it is now going OK. A little slower than 6 but not bad.

[adegnan]

So is this good or bad? I have 785,712 total memory.

Commit charge is 1789/2825. 1789M is bigger than 784M, so I better upgrade to 2 gigs ram?

Does that mean I'm going in VM too much? Should my page file usage be 0, ideally?

I have quickbooks and customer manager running in addition to Revit. Revit file is 30 megs.

[Scott Hopkins]

The Factory is lnvestigating. Apologies for any inconvenience.

Please expect this fixed soon.

I truly hope this issue is the #1 priority of the Revit team and that they are all working 16 hour days scrambling to fix it. The Revit 7.0 slow down issue is becoming a HUGE PROBLEM for me! I have spent a few days working on projects in Revit 7.0 and it is a little too late for me to go back and open up the old 6.1 files. I mistakenly thought it was a video card OpenGL problem so I went out and bought a new card. Now I have a little less flicker when rotating the model but doing any actual work on my files is painfully slow. I am in danger of missing some important deadlines if this problem does not get fixed ASAP.

[FK]

Try this.

If you've been working on a file and performance has been gradually deteriorating, close and reopen all open views one by one, no need to unload the file. This can release some tied-up resources. The other advice, don't open views you don't need, still stands.

If you've just loaded the program and performance is poor right away, this does not apply. Experiment very closely with graphics settings: set Display Properties -> Troubleshoot -> Hardware Acceleration to full and try different combinations of Revit Options -> Graphics -> Video Card Capabilities. Don't forget that you need to close and reopen the project to see changes.

[hand471037]

Also, don't forget that some graphics cards have a 'Quality' vs. 'Performance' setting for the OpenGL within the Driver settings under 'Advanced' in Window's Display Properties Control Panel. I set both my ATI cards fully to 'Performance' under the OpenGL settings and it made a nice difference. 'Quality' is only needed for fancy games, really.

However, on a laptop here with an older ATI card, it wouldn't even run stable without both OpenGL & Overlay turned off (and it runs at the same speed as 6.1, 'cept shadows are slow). And with one of the Dells here, OpenGL on but Overlay off seems best (but it's slightly slower than 6.1). My two computers both on is Best (And then it runs faster than 6.1). So you've really got to play with those settings first, make certain your drivers are current, and *then* if it's still too slow start bugging the developers... ;)

Also, just on the flip side, I've been rendering heavily and runing more than one session of Revit at a time on the same machine and have no issues with the dreaded out of memory messages...

[sfaust]

OK, I have an Nvidia QuadroFX 500. I am experiencing a little bit of the slowdown, but not bad at all. I just found a setting in the advanced properties that Jeffrey mentioned to enable overlays for OpenGL. Does anyone know if it should be color indexed or RGB?

Also, if anyone has this same card, I see the performance vs. quality slider, but it is grayed out and I can't figure out why, can anyone help?

[FK]

I don't think we use color indices, but I'm not sure what that setting really controls either. Try RGB...

[Wagurto]

It is true and it is a fact!!! revit 7.0 slow down the system. I don't know why afert 20 or 30 minutes revit get so slow that I have to close revit and re start again. I do not understand how some guys over here are claiming that revit 7.0 it faster than before. We all love revit but we can not be so blind and not to recognize this huge problem. I don't know and I dont understand why some computers will perform fine while others not. I think that is time that revit factory recognise this problem and offer an explanation to the users. I have a hp pentium 4 with 2gb ram 980xgl nvidia video card and 120 gb sccs hd, is it some thing wrong with that?
I just download all available hot fix, service packs, latest drivers, direct x, drivers, configure and reconfigure my pc. I don't know what else to do. I just wich I can hear a honest answer from the factory.

[beegee]

The factory have acknowledged that there is a problem for some users and are working on a solution.

The Factory is lnvestigating. Apologies for any inconvenience.

Please expect this fixed soon.

Thanks
- Ilya
Stay calm. I'm sure there will be a new build out before too long to address this issue.

[Arnel Aguel]

Yeah please be patient the factory guys are always listening. We are pretty sure that they are looking into it right now day in day out.

[Wagurto]

I am just so glad of hear that, I am stack now because I converted 3 of my working projects to Revit 7.0 altogether with the library components and I understand that there is no way back to 6.1 so I will be waiting patiently for that patch.
Thanks

[Yman]

I notice I get better speed back when I keep closing the hidden windows. Try that every once and a while. Do not keep more the 2 or 3 windows open (hidden) all the time or that will really slow it down. I worked all day yesterday without restarting revit and kept closing the hidden windows every once and a while and that kept me sane.

Y

[Kroke]

Yeah, same here. I sorta wish there was an option to automatically keep hidden windows closed. Something I could toggle on/off if I wanted to view mutiple views, or perhaps a cap, of say 3 to 5 windows open max. Once the 6th one opened, it would close the first hidden one. That would be nice.

[Doug]

What is up with Revit 7.0... why is it s o o oOOO slow?
My system is Pentium 3.2 with 1 gig of ram, lot of harddisk space.

Sure am glad I didn't delete 6.1... I started a new project but after an hour quick stopped with the long re-gen and placement of any doors & windows

[sfaust]

have you looked around the forum for the other posts on this. There are some possible configuration settings to mess with. There is still an issue with some machines and the factory is looking into it.

[Scott D Davis]

No problems here at all.

Running it on a laptop (P3 2ghz, 256 Ram) and on a desktop (P4 2.7ghz, 1 gig RAM). Read other posts and see if those suggestions help.

[Scott D Davis]

I have merged the "Slow Down" problems into this one thread. REMINDER! Please search these forums before posting a brand new topic with the same issue, THANKS!

It does not help for one user to post the same issue over and over again in different threads. This just makes it harder for the Revit Development team to sort through the information.

[narlee]

Scott,

There was also another thread started 10/27 entitled "It's Slower."
Thanks for consolidating them.


Geof Narlee.

(ed by SD: got it, thanks!)

[beegee]

No problem with R7.0 speed here either.

Running dual Xeon 2.86 Ghz, XP Pro SP1, 1 Gb Ram, NVIDEA GeForce 2 GTS.

[narlee]

Think they need to spend some time on this one...

File size 10M, Athlon 3000+ XP with 64 Ram of NVidia GeForce 4 MX, 512 Ram of Memory (I know that not much, tried to upgrade but there's a hardware issue, but never had a problem with 512 before)...

All the "slow" problems people have listed and believe I've tried the different combos of OpenGL, Planes etc. Program

When dealing with in-place families R7.0 is very fast. When dealing with walls, windows and so forth, ridiculously slow.

And it's crashed twice, second time w/out giving me a chance to save a recovery file or to send "problem" to Autodesk.

Can't take it anymore...I usually wait for the "build-fixes" Revit kind-of-typically needs to send out shortly after an upgrade, but made the mistake of jumping right in with this one. Wish Revit would issue betas for the Revit community to check out before they made an official upgrade available. Love the Factory's people and the product, but wish they would vet the product better before making an "official" release.

[narlee]

Sorry, might have missed one graphics combination. Will try again...It's tricky because it seems, as others have noted, that the "slow" problem is not static but can creep up on you as you get into a project...arhhhhhhhhh...

[narlee]

Yep, that didn't work either. It definitely seems to degrade as you build a project. It doesn't seem to be graphical stuff. When you call for a wall, you can sit there and watch it generate wall-type & options bar in slow motion. Same with detail lines. If you copy an Anderson window. It starts out at the same speed as R6.1 and quickly starts to slow down the procedure as you add even 15-20 windows. There was something quirky and inconsistent about shadows when I tried them before, even on simple models. Can't trust using this version 7.0. It needs to be returned for repair.

Geof Narlee.

[narlee]

BTW, Scott or someone thought this was important - yes, I am running Windows SP2.

Also, a thought. It may be that the Revit Team doesn't have funds and time for a "lab full of hardware configurations." I, for one, would be happy to donate a little time to responding to beta-version test requests. I'd rather wait another month or so for a vetted version. Maybe they could get a beta out 6 weeks prior to AU and have the "cleaned-up" version ready for presentation then.

[Wes Macaulay]

I think the 7.0 build issued so far is being considered something of a pre-release... this isn't the version (in all likelihood) that's going to ship on CD in December. It's a ****-shoot isn't it? I know the Factory beta tests new builds internally, but they can't hope to parrot all the ways we abuse the software in practice ;-)

And as we encounter problems we've got this great forum which acts as a direct line to the Factory so they can figure out what's up. It's a drag when the problems are impacting your capacity to work though.

[Chad Smith]

..., but they can't hope to parrot all the ways we abuse the software in practice ;-)
This is the reason why I think there should be a beta testing program for Revit too, just like just about every other Autodesk software.

[beegee]

This is the reason why I think there should be a beta testing program for Revit too, just like just about every other Autodesk software.
Beta testing of Revit does happen, but is not as widespread and "open" as for other software.

[Chad Smith]

I've been printing off some elevation sheets today that have shadows on them, and damn it is slow. Each sheet takes about 4 to 5 minutes to print. Just as well I'm not in a rush with getting prints out.
4-5 minutes for printing to an A3 printer.
In excess of 15 minutes to print to our large format printer. And that's for a sheet that has just 2 elevations.

Unfortunately I am forced to not use shadows anymore until the print speeds are increased. :cry:

[Chad Smith]

I too am starting to see this slow down issue that others are having.

I currently have Revit idling with no projects open, and the Revit.exe process is chewing up roughly 600 megs of memory. Sounds like a memory leak to me.

[Marek Brandstatter]

Beta testing of Revit does happen, but is not as widespread and "open" as for other software.Time for a change then? There is so much goodwill and enthusiasm for Revit on this forum, it's a shame to see Revit's solid reputation take a hit. Because Revit is a single file project environment, where its not possible to save back to an earlier version, it is all the more critical that severe bugs are identified and fixed before prime time release.

I suggest the Factory consider enlisting a much wider base of real-world users to *exhaustively* test in order to avoid this happening again in the future.

[Martin P]

Time for a change then? There is so much goodwill and enthusiasm for Revit on this forum, it's a shame to see Revit's solid reputation take a hit..

Something has happened pretty much every time I download a new release from the Web to be honest, from bitter experience I just do not use a new release from the web on any projects that are going to cause me a problem. There was one release that I couldnt even print anything!!

I think the very least that should happen is they tell us that basically we are Beta testing Revit when we install the first issue to the Web. That has been my experience almost every time, there have been unknown bugs..... a bit of warning about expecting a couple wouldnt go amiss - that said it has always been fixed very, very quickly.......

[Doug]

This is the first time I have had Revit Crash & Burn without any message or warning!!! I lost 2 hrs of work. I was pushing the Slow responding Revit 7.0 to see what happens...
Now I know!!!
Careful... make sure you save often.

Doug

[hand471037]

Something has happened pretty much every time I download a new release from the Web to be honest, from bitter experience I just do not use a new release from the web on any projects that are going to cause me a problem. There was one release that I couldnt even print anything!!

I agree. Unless you know that you need something within the new release immediately, it's best to test prior to a full switch. That's the case with any software.

But I don't think they should call it a 'beta', for it's well-past that point. I can see how folks would think it's a beta, however, because Revit refuses to make patches and service packs, and instead releases full builds (which, IMHO, is better). So instead of getting something like AutoCAD, where it's expected that you're going to be downloading a service pack or patch in the future, we get a full build, and then another when problems are worked out.

But I don't think it should be called a Beta, for it's stable and all the features are present. Maybe 'pre-release' would be better. For example, with Mandrake Linux & Deibian Linux, they have two versions; one that's got the latest and greatest, and another that's rock-stable. If you need/want the latest & greatest, or don't mind the possibly of issues arising, you use the latest & greatest. If you're setting up a server or something, you use the stable & solid. Every few months, when the full round of testing is done and all the issues from the field have come back, minor changes are made to the latest & greatest and that then becomes the 'stable' version. Just like with Revit, we're downloading a fresh build, straight from the factory, which is most certainly *not* the version that's gonna wind up on the CD come December...

[BillyGrey]

The whole idea of releasing a software knowing it is not fully verified for the sake of using the core group of users as digital guinea-pigs seems either totally far fetched, or totally inapropriate.

I'm not so sure it is either of those scenarios, I just know that I have a couple of major projects that are now running in sporatic slo-mo. This is very distressing. Additionally, I don't think it will be a good idea for me to upgrade the balance of my work, or immediate future work until this issue is resolved. My machine is 2 months old.

I wish the team good-speed and fine logic in the fix.

I will run more graphics set-up tweeks and report back.

[Wes Macaulay]

Fedor probably left one of those bombs (http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?p=39293)in there and forgot to take it out... :p

[Scott Hopkins]

Revit 7.0 is driving me F**king crazy! Yes I am closing hidden views! Yes, I have tried every combination of OpenGL and Overlay Planes. I even went out and bought a new 128 Meg DDR graphics card which was no help. If I don't save close and reopen the file I am working on every 10-15 minutes Revit 7.0 almost grinds to a halt. What the hell went wrong between Revit 6.1 and 7.0???? I am only working on a small residential addition. This is really unacceptable. Why is it taking 5-10 seconds to move a wall or draw a detail line? AARRRRGGGGGG! :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

[FK]

Fedor probably left one of those bombs (http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?p=39293)in there and forgot to take it out... :p
Aieee! No, my bombs are well-behaved bombs. They don't slow things down, they blow things up!


The whole idea of releasing a software knowing it is not fully verified for the sake of using the core group of users as digital guinea-pigs seems either totally far fetched, or totally inapropriate.
Well, once you come up with a way to fully verify software, you are welcome to collect your $ billions from the software industry. We make an honest and sustained effort to find and fix problems before any release. If a serious deficiency slips through our hands, it's an exception, not the rule, and we address both the bug at hand and the process that did not catch it. Still, it's just impossible to foresee all ways a piece of complex software can go wrong.

Thank you for good wishes and, as Ilya said, expect a better behaving build soon.

[narlee]

I think Jeff McGrew hit the right balance of terminology. To me, the most important thing is forewarning people. For instance, I wasn't aware that CAD software upgrades are so buggy. I don't mind waiting the extra month or two, but I'll be forewarned henceforth.

Regarding FK's comment, I agree but will henceforth (God, I love that word!) proceed as though I'm a beta/pre-release tester and happily check out the new stuff and participate in the "bugs" discussions to help Revit de-bug it. We're lucky to have the great Revit Team and they're lucky to have a great Revit Community.

One thought. If this forum's moderator's could post the warnings to Revit novices at the next upgrade, so they don't get surprised and don't get themselves in trouble with ongoing projects (Revit doesn't issue a warning stating "Not ready for use with Mission-Critical Work."

Confidently Awaiting the CD (cleaned-up disk),
Geof Narlee.

[Richard McCarthy]

Revit 7.0 is driving me F**king crazy! Yes I am closing hidden views! Yes, I have tried every combination of OpenGL and Overlay Planes. I even went out and bought a new 128 Meg DDR graphics card which was no help. If I don't save close and reopen the file I am working on every 10-15 minutes Revit 7.0 almost grinds to a halt. What the hell went wrong between Revit 6.1 and 7.0???? I am only working on a small residential addition. This is really unacceptable. Why is it taking 5-10 seconds to move a wall or draw a detail line? AARRRRGGGGGG! :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:


LOL
:)

I don't mean to laugh at your misery, but please calm down Scott .....
I am lucky I didn't just jump on the ship and convert my projects to v7.0 straight away... I learn early on to NOT install any "#.0" point release.. stick to what works and wait till #.1 or atleast #.3 and you should be alright atleast..... (sometimes even after 2 tries to patch it still won't work... case in point MS's WinXP SP2..)

I remember in 6.0 release that there was a bug that made updating extremely slow (5 minutes for refresh and almost 2 hours for the whole site to regen..) so I can fully understand your pain... (I am lucky my ex-boss is a very understanding vegetarian.. or else who knows what I might have end up as some kinda soup LOL...)


But still I think v7.0 is a great toy.. love most of the new features... and I am wishing up a new list right now too..

[BillyGrey]

Thanks Fedor,

I am happy to say I did make some progress today.
I re-downloaded the latest direct-x from ms, and then d/l'd the latest nvidia
drivers I could find, re-tweeked my settings, and viola, it ran better.

I am having some graphics display issues with OpenGL running, which is odd,
because my machine fully implements it. But that is a welcome nuisance compared to what it's been like. Before I re-installed my drivers, I could not even run OpenGL, and that was a mystery, and a misery. Again, the machine is virtually brand new.

I'll keep posting as these issues crop up, or disappear.

Thanks all, and lets keep supporting the folks who are having it bad, and keep supporting the Factory till these issues are resolved.

Bill Cooper

[Griff]

I knew better than to be one of the first to download and switch my project over to a new release of any software. But Revit is so good, I forgot it still isn't perfect. I had to come in on the weekend to add all the information I added since upgrading to 7.0 to get my project back to 6.1.

The dragging of the levels was so slow it drove me nuts. I know the factory has modified the levels, but I hope the way they act now isn't design intent.

All in all, the new features are going to be great and IMHO, Revit has by far the best development team I've ever seen and from what I've gleaned, I'm sure they are working hard to overcome this slow down problem. I'm sure a fix is on the way. For all those that haven't been able to move their projects back to 6.1, I hope it's soon.

[narlee]

What's "IMHO?"

BTW, I also did the MS updates and NVidia updates, but to no avail.

Geof Narlee

[Griff]

IMHO= in my humble opinion, kind of like BTW :-)
I'm with you. I installed the MS fixes, downloaded new NVIDIA drivers and directX 9, and tweaked all the settings mentioned in these posts, but still couldn't get any speed.

[adegnan]

So is this good or bad? I have 785,712 total memory.

Commit charge is 1789/2825. 1789M is bigger than 784M, so I better upgrade to 2 gigs ram?

Does that mean I'm going in VM too much? Should my page file usage be 0, ideally?

I have quickbooks and customer manager running in addition to Revit. Revit file is 30 megs.
So this computer is a couple years old, 1.8 ghz. Is it worth upgrading RAM or should I get a new computer?

[FK]

1.8 GHz is not so bad. You know better how much money you'd spend on how much performance, but it's reasonable to let it work for another year, with as much RAM as you can put into it.

Make sure new RAM is exact same type/speed/etc. as existing, and it's not exceeding the capacities of the motherboard.

[Steve Cox]

Thought I'd pass along my trials and tribulations to resolve this issue. I've been fighting the sluggishness of Revit 7.0, as many of you have, since I installed it on the 25th. . I've installed and uninstalled graphic drivers left and right as well as different combination of this and that but to no avail. I even bought a new graphics card (Nvidia GeForce FX5700) in hopes of fixing it. That was fruitless too. I've listed below the two workstations we use, 12 Dells and 12 TriStars Half were on SP1 at the beginning and now all are on SP2. Nope, upgrading did not make a difference either. I've also been in contact with Revit support and the last word is they are working on a new build to resolve this strange behavior and it could be days away or a couple of weeks away. Yesterday we started the quest of reverting back to 6.1 for production. Only three projects will remain in 7.0. Too much work has been done to date to redraw them in 6.1. We've been using Revit since 3.x and this is the FIRST time we've had to drop back and punt on any major release or build. The first release in my opinion which was not ready for prime time. With that said I only have myself to blame for not testing in-house first. Needless to say this won't happen again.

Anxiously awaiting the next build because 7.0 does kick butt!

Steve

PS See you at AU.

Dell Precision 360 3.2GHz
2GB RAM
nVidia Quadro FX 500 128MB
Windows XP Pro SP2


TriStar StarStation P4 2.2GHz
1GM RAM
3D Labs Oxygen VX1 32MB
Windows XP Pro SP2

[Jarod]

Just downloaded and installed 7.0 and running into the same slowness.

XP Pro Service Pack 2
P4 2.2 ghz
768 mb ram
Nvidia Ti4400 128 mb

Will be waiting for next build...:(

[beegee]

Ok, let me throw this out there.

Of all those experiencing slow down problems with 7.0, who is running SP1 only ?

[Chad Smith]

I'm running Windows 2000 with SP4, and experience it from time to time.

[beegee]

Looking back through these posts I found Griff is running XP with SP1 and having problems - so that shoots down my theory. :roll:

[Chunk]

Not sure if it'll help but we're running 14 workstations with XP SP1 on PIII and P4 chip sets (some single processor some dual) and 4 workstations with Windows Server 2003 with all current security updates on dual Xeon chips . The Server 2003 workstations aren't affected nearly as much as the Windows XP workstations are by the memory bleed/performance issue.

Like everyone else, especially those who share IT roles in their firms and are the target of user complaints, we hope the solution from Autodesk isn't far away!

[christopher.zoog51272]

Interesting..... our Xeon chips running win 2k sp3 are not experiencing the slow down either. My home machine seems sluggish from time to time, but that only and athlon 2000+ with 512 mb ram

[narlee]

Beegee,

I'm on SP2.

Geof Narlee.

[BillyGrey]

There has been alot of speculation as to what is causing the problem with the slow-downs in general.
I'll bet that Chad S. and Chunk were spot on when they predicted memory leaks to be the culprit.
If thats the situation, then we wait for the fix. Overtweeking might be in vein. I don't know why some machines are more affected than others, but like Iliya said, factory is working on it :)...

[ita]

Running Windows 2k Pro w- SP4 - had speed problems initially (P3 850 + 1GB RAM - Matrox G450 video) but updated drivers seem to have resolved the issues. About to replace the box - so we will see how that goes!!

Laptop - Windows 2k Pro w- SP4 (P4 2400 + 1GB RAM) - runs like a freight train (at speed) :grin:

[Richard McCarthy]

I have just installed the demo/trial of Revit 7, and it seems to work fine for the 1st day, then when I start REALLY getting into it with some residential sketch design and some detailing, it just slow down to an unacceptable level. It takes 30 second to respond to EVERY of my command, including just clicking modify and not having anything selected. It sometimes gets even slower and upto 2 minutes in waiting for a response.. I fully agree it seems to be some kind of perpetual memory leak.. strange thing is that, once the syndrome appear, EVERY project you have Revit 7 touch on BECOMES SLOW.

I consider I am running a pretty beefy system, Athlon 2.6ghz, 1GB of memory and GF4 card, so I don't see how this can be my hardware problem...

[adegnan]

There has been alot of speculation as to what is causing the problem with the slow-downs in general.
I'll bet that Chad S. and Chunk were spot on when they predicted memory leaks to be the culprit.
If thats the situation, then we wait for the fix. Overtweeking might be in vein. I don't know why some machines are more affected than others, but like Iliya said, factory is working on it :)...
What do "memory leaks" mean? Would that cause a 30-meg project to run my virtual memory up to 1.5 gigs? If so, see my post earlier in this thread with an image of Windows Task Manager. I haven't recreated that situation, and my memory more typically stays within the 764 megs RAM that I do have... but I experience more minor slow-downs working with roof and sketched geometry even within the RAM that I have.

I've been monitoring my RAM/VM usage and haven't again exceeded the physical RAM since that post, even with QBP, IE, etc running as well.

P4 1.8 ghz
764 megs RDRAM
dual monitors (1 AGP, 1 PCI) >>>Don't ever do this! I hate the dual cards! Need a dual-head card!

[sbrown]

Don't go out and start buying new hardware, the factory has acknowledged a problem and are trying to fix it. Right now the solution is to close and re open revit frequently and close hidden windows. Memory leaks from what I understand are when a program takes memory and doesn't ever give it back, so thats why revit would run good when you first open it, but as you go and go it takes more mem and soon your system is low on mem even though you have more than enough. I could be way off, but thats what it seems like from my experience.

I do think there is a second issue that makes it worse regarding the way video uses memory and keeps it.

Try this as a test if you have a slow project. Once you notice the wall command take forever. Close and reopen, now does the wall command work again. If not, then its a diff. problem.

[anthony.67953]

My 2 cents ... I think the factory placed additional code in the program for other ad ons such as MEP and turned those features off. That could be causing the slow down.

[BillyGrey]

For a nice explaination of memory leaks, here's a link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_leak

It will all sound very familiar.

Google it and you will get some nice returns too.

Also, I will say that I am pretty sure the situation is a memory leak, so if your problem is the slow-slow down, I also would hold off in running out and buying any hardware (unless of course, you really need a good excuse to :) )

This could boil down to isolating one line of loose code out of , ummm, how many thousands or hundreds of thousands??? That's the situation factory is probably faced with.

[p.vicini]

I have followed the suggestion to install the last direct X and the newest driver fo my graphic card.

Before R7 was very slow, after it works very fast....almost like 6.1

[Mr Spot]

There is a new build of revit out that supposedly fixes the speed related issues!



YAY!

[Chad Smith]

Sooo.... where did you get a hold of the link to that build? :shock:
It still shows Build Number: 20041022_2030 on the Revit download page.

[tbarnesarc]

Sooo.... where did you get a hold of the link to that build? :shock:
It still shows Build Number: 20041022_2030 on the Revit download page.

It is the same build!

[Chad Smith]

It is the same build!
The one on the link the Mr Spot posted says build 20041102_2030, the one on the Autodesk download page says build 20041022_2030.

Unless you meant they're the same build, just with different filenames.

[Mr Spot]

No. It's definitely the new build. Make sure your internet isn't loading from the cache...

[beegee]

I'm only seeing the current build.

No announcements from the factory neither...

[Prodev75]

Could it be that with all the new little buttons(Enhancements) the thing runs a little slower. I took 2 machines on the production floor both which are identical in everyway and copied a rather large project file (78meg) from our network onto the local disk of each. One was left in version 6.1 and the other was upgraded to version 7.0. I then when into the windows task manager(ctrl + alt + delete) and veiwed the memory usage. The 6.1 verison of the project showed 210,645k and the version 7.0 version showed 710,234k. Wow! I will double check my results 2morrow. But I thought that was very interesting has anyone else conducted such a test?

[tbarnesarc]

They are definitley different builds. I did read the number correctly. I am installing right now.

[Mr Spot]

Man, that makes a huge difference...!!! Thanks Revit team :)

[hand471037]

just installed, no issues, and it seems to make a difference. I'll know more tomorrow when I open one of the large files...

[studio3p]

Where is this new build of which you all speak? I've cleared my temporary internet files and I'm still looking at a link to the original build.

[beegee]

I'm with you Joe.

I have build 20041022_2030 installed. Thats the build I'm seeing on the download site also, even with cache cleared.

[studio3p]

This is cruel.

[funkman]

cant see the new build of 7.0 either, but am currently downloading Revit 8

not really....where is it?

[beegee]

It has not yet been officially released.

Should be very soon now though.... ( Steve and I are saying by Friday... :grin: )

[hand471037]

woops. wow. huh. there was a link in Mr. Spot's e-mail that directly went to the Revit download server. That's what I clicked on last night, and it's not there now.

Very strange. Better double-check what I've got on my laptop then...

[hand471037]

OK, so wow, that must have been a leak. 'cause it is a different build. I've got it on my desktop now, and working with a larger project, and now the OpenGL accelleration doesn't want to really work like it did before with the old build, but now certain minor things are faster. But then the only noticable slowdown before with the old build for me was (for whatever reason) when editing Schedule Properties. It seemed to take too long for that window to pop up, and the appearce tab took more than a little while.

But then I'm doing lots of rendering, and this project is huge, and the machine I've got only has a gig of ram, so I'm restarting Revit a lot anyways... so maybe this new build solves some problem I wasn't noticing within the old build.

But at least it looks like light is at the end of the tunnel for those that are having major problems...

[daniel.hurtubise70031]

Updated driver, Turn on Open GL on the card AND on Revit 7.0
Runs like a smotth baby

[andremiko]

The magical mystery build..........does it exist...........will it be available.........check back next time when Jeffrey says Oh wow, I've got it, I've got it :lol:


Has Autodesk released any offical statements on 7.0 and its problems?

[Scott Hopkins]

Updated driver, Turn on Open GL on the card AND on Revit 7.0
Runs like a smotth baby
Runs smoothly for about 5 minutes then slowly grinds to a halt over the next 5 minutes....

[andremiko]

Runs smoothly for about 5 minutes then slowly grinds to a halt over the next 5 minutes....
...... and then Crash and Burn :veryevil:

[Chunk]

Like Andrea_Miko says...crash and burn :veryevil:

Installed latest driver for ATI Radeon Sapphire 9600 Atlantis, turned on all OpenGL features in both ATI settings and Revit Settings-Options then was unable to save any files back to the server :banghead: Could only save files to a local drive. Turned off all Hardware Acceleration settings in Display Settings and voila...was able to save to the network again.

With OpenGL support features configured the save progress bar would hit 100% and then Revit would disappear (kind of like the mystery update to 7.0 someone was touting). Event log identified an error in Revit.exe caused by a fault in Utility.dll.

I'd rather work slowly then not at all at this point and wait for an official patch from Autodesk.

[andremiko]

Chunk

Its like you read my mind. I just finished running all kinds of scenario's and finally turned the hardware acceleration off on my video card and BINGO no more :veryevil:

[papurajx]

The one on the link the Mr Spot posted says build 20041102_2030, the one on the Autodesk download page says build 20041022_2030.

Unless you meant they're the same build, just with different filenames.


Where is Mr.Spot's POST for the download?.....I will give it a try. Even after removing the cache, I still see the build 20041122_2030 under Revit Download.

[Chad Smith]

Don't know, looks like Spot removed the link shortly after posting.

[beegee]

Just to clarify, ... the current build is 20041022_2030, and that is the build on Autodesk's download site.

A new build has not been released yet.

[mark.68887]

So just to clarify....wait...no.....not again!

I AM wondering however, will there be a mass/widespread awareness of a fix if/when it becomes available. I HAVE read through the entire thread (all 14 pgs @ 1024x whatever) and tried various settings to no avail. thanks in advance and I look forward to getting involved in this forum.

Viva la Revit!

[beegee]

I AM wondering however, will there be a mass/widespread awareness of a fix if/when it becomes available.
Yes, no worries there. :wink:

[mradikov]

I have double Zeon and 1 Gb ram and this is driving me crazy.
The thing is that when i unclicked the "overlay" button it ran much faster for a while.
Then it crashed and slowed down again.

Martin

[Steve Cashman]

I installed Revit 7.0 on a 3.4Ghz Xeon with 1GB of RAM and it ran fine to a couple hours. I just recently ground to a halt requiring a complete exit and restart.

[Haden]

I AM wondering however, will there be a mass/widespread awareness of a fix if/when it becomes available.
Sans fanfare, I noticed today that there does appear to be a new build on the download site:
Build Number: 20041113_2030

Has anyone else discovered this yet, and tried installing it, or is this the "Mysterious Build?" Better yet, does anyone out there have an inside bit of info as to the specific fixes addressed by this build? Is it safe to try?

[hand471037]

hadens,

This is the offical new build, not the 'mystery build'.

There's a post from Steve Burri at Autodesk about it here on AUGI and over at the Revit Newsgroup that's got a list of the problems it solves.

[Haden]

Thanks, Jeffrey! I don't check the official Autodesk Revit discussion group regularly, so I did not know about Steve's post. I am downloading and installing now, and hope others will quickly take advantage as well.

Although the list of addressed items is very helpful, it is a little unclearly worded. I assume that some of the bullet points are describing previous problematic behavior which has been fixed, while others are describing the new behavior after a fix. Maybe at some point soon a more consistently worded list could be issued.