Out of Memory

[kmarquis]

My team and I keep getting messages throughout the day as we attempt to save to central that we're "out of memory" and forced to close without saving. We're working in 2010 on 32 bit machines. The project is only up to 62,000 kb which seems small. Is it almost impossible to work in Revit 2010 on a 32 bit machine?

Thanks.

[rganter.97143]

Do you meet these settings?


3 GB RAM
6 GB virtual memory setting
not a lot of windows open simultaneously
not a lot or large Revit or CAD links in the model


If you do, and if you have more than 3 GB of RAM, try enabling the 3 GB switch. This usually works for us.

[swalton240189]

My team and I keep getting messages throughout the day as we attempt to save to central that we're "out of memory" and forced to close without saving. We're working in 2010 on 32 bit machines. The project is only up to 62,000 kb which seems small. Is it almost impossible to work in Revit 2010 on a 32 bit machine?

Thanks.

How much RAM do you have?
The general rule is for every 50 MB of compacted file size you need 1GB or RAM. The limit of a 32bit machine is somewhere between 3gb and 4gb depending on amount of video card RAM and other factors.

We used to have this problem which prompted our upgrade to 64bit.

Sometimes there are things you can do to mitigate your problem and a 62mb file isn't that big (should need 1.5GB of RAM).

When you "run out" of memory:
1.Close all other programsthen try saving local.

2.Sometimes opening a 2nd session of revit then closing it frees up memory.

3.If you can save local. Do that then restart your computer. Open your local file then Save to Cent.

Preventative Measures:
1. Halfway through the workday save local, save to central close revit, Restart your computer, re-open revit. Open a new local copy.

2. Compact the central file at least once a week.

3. Download the worksharing monitor and get all team members to use it. when physical memory gets in the orange save local

4. Separate your model into different worksets and don't load the ones you don't need for that day's work.

5. Get a fresh local copy every morning don't use the one from last night.

[kmarquis]

How much RAM do you have?
The general rule is for every 50 MB of compacted file size you need 1GB or RAM. The limit of a 32bit machine is somewhere between 3gb and 4gb depending on amount of video card RAM and other factors.

We used to have this problem which prompted our upgrade to 64bit.

Sometimes there are things you can do to mitigate your problem and a 62mb file isn't that big (should need 1.5GB of RAM).

When you "run out" of memory:
1.Close all other programsthen try saving local.

2.Sometimes opening a 2nd session of revit then closing it frees up memory.

3.If you can save local. Do that then restart your computer. Open your local file then Save to Cent.

Preventative Measures:
1. Halfway through the workday save local, save to central close revit, Restart your computer, re-open revit. Open a new local copy.

2. Compact the central file at least once a week.

3. Download the worksharing monitor and get all team members to use it. when physical memory gets in the orange save local

4. Separate your model into different worksets and don't load the ones you don't need for that day's work.

5. Get a fresh local copy every morning don't use the one from last night.

It seems we're doing everything right. I have the right specs, I always purge and compact, make new locals, etc. I just get this box about twice a day that says "Out of Memory"

I've been using Revit for about 4 years and never experienced this issue before so it's very frustrating.

[swalton240189]

It seems we're doing everything right. I have the right specs, I always purge and compact, make new locals, etc. I just get this box about twice a day that says "Out of Memory"

I've been using Revit for about 4 years and never experienced this issue before so it's very frustrating.

That's strange. Is it just this project and not other ones of similar size?
You could try contacting autodesk support. They may be able to find something in your journal file that is causing it. Sounds like a memory leak

[cliff collins]

Not the easiest answer--but:

64 bit OS and Revit with at least 8 GB of ram (or more) is the way to go.

We have recently realized this and upgraded all machines to 64 bit Windows 7
and 64 bit RAC, 8-12GB ram.

Problem solved. Ownership just needs to be convinced--that's the hard part!

cheers...........

[the_gibson]

We didn't have the same issue as you are BUT we were crashing a lot in our office and this post really helped us sort things out. Especially the bit about enabling the 3GB switch.

http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=108242&highlight=fixing+revit

[ron.sanpedro]

My team and I keep getting messages throughout the day as we attempt to save to central that we're "out of memory" and forced to close without saving. We're working in 2010 on 32 bit machines. The project is only up to 62,000 kb which seems small. Is it almost impossible to work in Revit 2010 on a 32 bit machine?

Thanks.

Karen,
are you monitoring ram usage with Task Manager or something? I have seen what appears to be a small Revit model actually baloon in use, usually due to big linked DWGs and such. I tried adding up the total on disk files size for all files linked into the Revit file, but in the end I find just watching Task Manager is the best answer. On 32 bit Windows XP, with 4GB of RAM, 3GB switch, etc. I would get a crash once the Task Manager showed memory use over about 3GB. And that graph helps in convincing Management to spring for the upgrade. ;)

Also, I have some luck with just minimizing Revit for a moment, then trying STC again. If you just did an export to DWG or something, which uses up a bunch of RAM, the minimize will free it up and STC will have a better chance of succeeding. But if you are just maxing things out in normal use you may not get a good STC even if you reboot.

Best,
Gordon

[patricks]

I ran the 3GB switch for nearly 3 years with XP Pro x86 and 4GB RAM installed, before upgrading to 64-bit and 16GB RAM. I rarely, if ever, had memory problems in Revit specifically, except for a weird memory error message sometimes in Revit 2009 after closing the program. No memory problems at all with RAC 2010 on a 32-bit machine (had to run with hardware acceleration turned off to keep from crashing, though).

[brethomp]

We have experienced similar issues on the few 32bit machines that we have left. There seems to be a dramatic memory leak in that version of Revit 2010. On projects hovering around the 50 mb in compacted size, we typically will need to restart revit every 4 hours or less. If you graph the memory usage, you will see a slow decline in the available memory as you work, starting at over 50% free, down to almost zero after about 4 hours. At this point the 32bit version of 2010 gets very unstable.

I'm not sure that all of our 32bit boxes suffer the same way, it's hard to tell since we give these boxes to those that don't use Revit much. We also follow all of the suggestions above, and have been forced to upgrade our machines for these small files, that would have been just fine in Revit 2009.

I have an open support request on the issue, but it is now in the "development" black hole.

[patricks]

I have never experienced any sort of memory leak with any flavor of Revit 2010.

While Revit would often hog resources to the point of causing problems with other apps (when the 3GB switch was enabled) I never saw Revit 2010 itself have problems with memory.

[brethomp]

I have never experienced any sort of memory leak with any flavor of Revit 2010.Sorry I should have been more clear in my post. I'm not suggesting that all copies of 2010 on 32bit have this issue, just that I have experienced something similar to the OP on a few of our 32bit machines. Most of our power users have been upgraded to 64bit due to project size and don't have random crash issues. It's rare that anyone who still has a 32bit machine spends much time in Revit here.

While debugging a random crash issue for a couple of users, subscription support noted many of the journals from the crashes had low memory at the time of the crash. To see this more clearly I wrote a script to parse the journals for the time codes and free memory numbers, and then graphed it. In the attached graph, is one example a 32bit machine with 2GB of RAM with a ~55Mb central file, with no links. Most of the lines start with about half of the memory free, predictable following the rule of 20. But, over time Revit was using up more and more RAM. Most of the journals ended with near 200k of Virtual memory, and an "Exception" error. I haven't gotten around to graphing some non-crashed journals form different machines for a comparison yet.

Our solution was:
- Have the users restart Revit every 4 hours.
- Upgrade the machines with more RAM, and sometimes 64bit.
- And most of the tips above from other posters.

These seem to be new issues with 2010, since these same users worked on larger projects in 2009 without any issues, and on their same computers. But these are just my findings, others may vary.

[patricks]

That still seems odd to me. While I have only used Revit 2010 in my office on machines with 4GB RAM or more, I do have it installed at home on my machine with XP Pro x86 and only 2GB RAM. While it definitely feels a bit more sluggish, I still have not had any problems with crashing as long as I keep hardware acceleration turned off (my home machine has an nVIDIA Quadro FX550 graphics card).

I suppose it could be the project size, as I haven't really worked on projects larger than 50MB on my home machine.

[Elmo]

Simply put it is the 32 bit OS that is holding you back. Any new client I talk to nowadays I recommend going 64bit.

[twiceroadsfool]

Simply put it is the 32 bit OS that is holding you back. Any new client I talk to nowadays I recommend going 64bit.

Tons of people are having trouble with memory leak, and the "Out of memory" warning, AS WELL AS the "suddenly gone" syndrome without a save dialogue. its frustrating to say the least. Some of those people are even ON 64 bit stations with 12 gigs of RAM.

More frustrating, is that we even have some machines running XP32, with 2 gigs of RAM, and theyre doing fine, working in models that are 130 MB with another 100MB of files linked in. And theyre doing fine (albeit moving slow).

As much as i hate to say it (because i dont mind 2010 one bit), through "butt dyno (simply what ive witnessed, without hard data to confirm)" there seems to be a relation to the number of times the UI has to *rebuild* itself... like when you tab through opened projects or families, or between families and projects. Its SIMPLY my own personal theory with no data, but heres why i think that:

Dual Core machine, XP32, 2 gigs of RAM. User in the 130 MB model (with 100 MB of linked in files). She can work in there ALL DAY without an issue, doing production work. modeling, In place family editing, detailing, sheets, notations, tagging, keynoting, putting in walls, doors, furniture, etc.

Another Dual Core machine, XP32, 2 gigs RAM. User in a 65 MB file (done much better and cleaner than the previous), with only a 20 MB RST file linked in. User spends a decent amount of time making new families, tabbing through those and project. Revit crashes MUCH more for this user.

Me: Dual Core, XP32, 2 gigs RAM. Working in BLANK project (template), and a bunch of families and annotations. It runs out of memory (program vanishes without warning) about once a day, if i leave revit opened all day. If i restart at lunch, its fine.

FWIW, it does that to me if i go work on one of the new rigs too. The new rigs are Quad Core (i7 3.07) with 12 Gigs RAM on Vista64.

[swalton240189]

Most Intel and AMD chips made in the past 3 years are 64bit compatible so you are not looking at a lot of cost for upgrading. $200 for windows 7 x64 pro, $340 for 8gb of ram at crucial.com plus labor time of 2-6hrs depending on how much stuff needs to be backed up transfered.

I think it's worth it.

[Elmo]

Tons of people are having trouble with memory leak, and the "Out of memory" warning, AS WELL AS the "suddenly gone" syndrome without a save dialogue. its frustrating to say the least. Some of those people are even ON 64 bit stations with 12 gigs of RAM.

More frustrating, is that we even have some machines running XP32, with 2 gigs of RAM, and theyre doing fine, working in models that are 130 MB with another 100MB of files linked in. And theyre doing fine (albeit moving slow).

As much as i hate to say it (because i dont mind 2010 one bit), through "butt dyno (simply what ive witnessed, without hard data to confirm)" there seems to be a relation to the number of times the UI has to *rebuild* itself... like when you tab through opened projects or families, or between families and projects. Its SIMPLY my own personal theory with no data, but heres why i think that:

Dual Core machine, XP32, 2 gigs of RAM. User in the 130 MB model (with 100 MB of linked in files). She can work in there ALL DAY without an issue, doing production work. modeling, In place family editing, detailing, sheets, notations, tagging, keynoting, putting in walls, doors, furniture, etc.

Another Dual Core machine, XP32, 2 gigs RAM. User in a 65 MB file (done much better and cleaner than the previous), with only a 20 MB RST file linked in. User spends a decent amount of time making new families, tabbing through those and project. Revit crashes MUCH more for this user.

Me: Dual Core, XP32, 2 gigs RAM. Working in BLANK project (template), and a bunch of families and annotations. It runs out of memory (program vanishes without warning) about once a day, if i leave revit opened all day. If i restart at lunch, its fine.

FWIW, it does that to me if i go work on one of the new rigs too. The new rigs are Quad Core (i7 3.07) with 12 Gigs RAM on Vista64.

Do you guys clear out your Temp files regularly and do you defrag your machine at least once a month? I have noticed that if you don't do this it will lead to a lot of those crashes.

As for the 64bit machine I would recommend setting you page file up 200 gb if you have the hard drive space. My one client swears by that as he has 4 machines setup like yours but with that setting and he has never had a crash.

[twiceroadsfool]

Do you guys clear out your Temp files regularly and do you defrag your machine at least once a month? I have noticed that if you don't do this it will lead to a lot of those crashes.

As for the 64bit machine I would recommend setting you page file up 200 gb if you have the hard drive space. My one client swears by that as he has 4 machines setup like yours but with that setting and he has never had a crash.

When the crashing started, i checked both of those things. The temp files are practically empty, and the machines get defragged regularly.

Besides, theres a consistant pattern of what seems to cause it, which lends itself not to a hardware issue. As i said, if im doing certain things i can get on any of the machines and get them to work fine... For certain things, lol.

[iru69]

Do you guys clear out your Temp files regularly and do you defrag your machine at least once a month? I have noticed that if you don't do this it will lead to a lot of those crashes.
While I agree it's good practice, it would be highly unusual for either of those things to have anything to do with Revit crashing.


As for the 64bit machine I would recommend setting you page file up 200 gb if you have the hard drive space. My one client swears by that as he has 4 machines setup like yours but with that setting and he has never had a crash.
Setting a pagefile to 200GB is crazy-talk and you should stop recommending that, lol.

:beer:

[Elmo]

While I agree it's good practice, it would be highly unusual for either of those things to have anything to do with Revit crashing.

Sounds odd but I know it does help. Have had plenty clients calling in stating their software keeps running out of memory and we had them clean up the temp files. Did the trick for them.


Setting a pagefile to 200GB is crazy-talk and you should stop recommending that, lol.

:beer:

Even if it is crazy talk, explain to me why my client hasn't had a crash yet then? Especially on large rendering views that take 2 days to complete.

[iru69]

Sounds odd but I know it does help. Have had plenty clients calling in stating their software keeps running out of memory and we had them clean up the temp files. Did the trick for them.
It doesn't make any sense. However, if you're really sure the temp files are crashing Revit, hopefully you've spoken to Autodesk about it, because that would be a really major bug.


Even if it is crazy talk, explain to me why my client hasn't had a crash yet then? Especially on large rendering views that take 2 days to complete.
It's a bit like being a party planner and recommending enough food to feed 2,000 people even though there are only 20 guests... and then suggesting afterward that you did the right thing because they didn't run out of food. It is pointless to set your pagefile to 200GB. Even 20GB would be excessive for 99% of users.

On both these points, sometimes what appear to have correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation.

[sthedens]

We are in the process of switching our Revit users' PCs to 64-bit and 8GB RAM. In the meantime we have tried to enable the 3GB switch on our 32-bit 4GB PCs. This worked on some machines, others went into a login-reboot loop, only to be resolved by an admin login in safe-mode. The PCs we could enable the 3GB switch on have now stopped functioning with the USB mouse disabled and network connectivity lost. I assume this is due to XP updates that are installed automatically.

Lesson learned: 3GB switch is a dicey solution at best. The kernal becomes unstable without the resources it expects to have.

[ftonelli]

Well, we're getting error messages almost to the point that I can't work on a certain project any more. We've got XP64, Quad processor and 24gb RAM.

Mind you the biggest linked in file is 550mb plus other linked in files.

[Elmo]

Those files are massive! Anyone you could try cleaning them up before you open up the main file? Audit, purge and file save as for all files in question. Before you attempt this though, do a disc clean up and make sure nothing else is running.

[mtaylor.139332]

Your last statement is the key. LARGE projects cause more issues than small ones - obviously. We are talking a compacted file of 120Megs. Our 32bit machines are unstable shortly after getting new locals.. Which means random 'poof Revit's gone' and 'Out of Memory' errors. Our 64bit machines are stable platforms.
All this in 2010.
When using 2009, we could open these files just fine on the 32bit machines.

Personal Opinion:
Autodesk has created a great program, but IMO, has created a memory issue for all of us.
Throwing more powerful computers at it seems to be the current fix.. but I think they need to get to the bottom of it or it will soon be unmanageable.

[patricks]

We are in the process of switching our Revit users' PCs to 64-bit and 8GB RAM. In the meantime we have tried to enable the 3GB switch on our 32-bit 4GB PCs. This worked on some machines, others went into a login-reboot loop, only to be resolved by an admin login in safe-mode. The PCs we could enable the 3GB switch on have now stopped functioning with the USB mouse disabled and network connectivity lost. I assume this is due to XP updates that are installed automatically.

Lesson learned: 3GB switch is a dicey solution at best. The kernal becomes unstable without the resources it expects to have.

I ran my old x86 setup with the 3GB switch enabled for years without much issue. Although on 2009 especially, I would run into issues where I couldn't open PDF's or other files after a few hours, unless I rebooted the machine. Never had the problem on prior versions or 2010. I suspect 2009 had a memory leak or something.

[kmarquis]

Just a follow up to my original post about running out of memory. I've since received a 64 bit 8GB computer and I haven't had any trouble since.

[matt.fleming]

This is an old post but I thought I should comment.

32bit machines cannot be used with Revit unless your project is really small.

8GB in my opinion is the BARE MINIMUM these days. (When I custom build computers for a household I don't put anything less than 8GB just due the the fact RAM is cheap and people tend to keep every browser, word screen ect open and want fast response)

I would look for a machine with 64bit Win 7 and 12 - 32GB of RAM.
RAM is dirt cheap. I have seen 32GB of DDR3 RAM for $300.