Revit 2010 Crash with no warning

[csoderlund]

Does anyone know why Revit would disappear from my screen with no option to save a recovery file?? It has happened to my computer and one other in our office. I'm working on it one second and then completely closes out the next. We have all the lastest updates. Any help would be appreciated.

[bbeck]

Filing a Support Request is probably your best bet. You could poke around in your Journal file and see if there are any DBG_WARN messages. Open the file with Audit, Check Warnings....etc.

[ron.sanpedro]

Does anyone know why Revit would disappear from my screen with no option to save a recovery file?? It has happened to my computer and one other in our office. I'm working on it one second and then completely closes out the next. We have all the lastest updates. Any help would be appreciated.

You might want to provide a little more info. like how much RAM you have, how your machine is configured, how big the file is and how big the links are, both RVT and DWG. You can also monitor your RAM use with Task Manager, Resource Monitor or WorkSharing Monitor. If you are running out of RAM, that is your explanation.

Gordon

[patricks]

Does anyone know why Revit would disappear from my screen with no option to save a recovery file?? It has happened to my computer and one other in our office. I'm working on it one second and then completely closes out the next. We have all the lastest updates. Any help would be appreciated.

This is most often a sign of Revit trying to use more memory than is available. Any program that does this will disappear as your described, so it's not just a Revit issue.

Let us know how much RAM you have installed, and also what your Page File is set to.

[fixin.to]

Out of curiosity, what are the specs of your computer? We experienced a tremendous amount of this same situation in our office when running Revit 2010 on Windows XP 32 bit systems with 2 GB RAM. We have since upgraded to Windows 7 64 bit with 8 GB RAM and no longer have this problem.

[houston.cad]

We have the same issue occasionally on different machines. One is 64Bit Vista with 16gb of ram and the other is 32bit xp with 3gb ram.
Sometimes revit will blink out when nothing is being done on the computer.
It doesn't happen that often.

[csoderlund]

Windows XP 32 bit with 2 GB of RAM. The program has crashed or disappeared at least 4 times today.

[fixin.to]

Windows XP 32 bit with 2 GB of RAM. The program has crashed or disappeared at least 4 times today.
Yeah that was the same setup as ours - most likely it is crashing because it is running out of RAM.


We have the same issue occasionally on different machines. One is 64Bit Vista with 16gb of ram and the other is 32bit xp with 3gb ram.
Sometimes revit will blink out when nothing is being done on the computer.
It doesn't happen that often.
On our new machines running Win 7 64 w/ 8GB RAM we will see it blink out also (screen will go black for a few seconds). We have narrowed down this problem to the NVIDIA Quadro 560 video cards that we have in most of our machines. A few computers that we have with newer video cards don't have this problem. We've tried different drivers but nothing helps. :banghead:

[spyguy0045]

heh, if the same thing happens on a computer with 16GB of RAM means it's probably not an error related to strictly the amount of RAM... Was the 16GB machine that experienced problems running the x86 or x64 version of Revit? Perhaps it's an issue with memory allocation on the graphics card? Quadro NVS560 is not a particularly strong workstation card...

[Joef]

Used to be in the olden days (a year ago?) a program like Revit would start using the hard drive as RAM and would simply slow down and not just disappear. I doubt that the problem is entirely due to the lack of RAM, but it is convenient for Autodesk to claim that this is the case as it saves them having to fix it.

[ablaydon]

Have similar problems with my station

Revit 2010, Windows XP, 32-bit, 4GB Ram

[ron.sanpedro]

Used to be in the olden days (a year ago?) a program like Revit would start using the hard drive as RAM and would simply slow down and not just disappear. I doubt that the problem is entirely due to the lack of RAM, but it is convenient for Autodesk to claim that this is the case as it saves them having to fix it.

In 32 bit Windows, the maximum amount of virtual memory that any one app can address is 2GB, or 3GB if the 3GB switch is applied. That 2 or 3 GB is address space, and actual usage will be made up of a mix of both physical RAM and paged memory. But if Revit or any other program needs to take advantage of more than that 2 or 3GB at once, then you crash. No amount of page file can take you past that hard limit of addressable memory. In 64 bit Windows the address space is like 2TB per app, so your page file use can grow and grow. Within limits, because all apps share the total page file, and often the page file is static, at only 1-2 times physical RAM. But you would likely not run out of both physical and paged memory without multiple RAM hog apps open at once.


Gordon

[eric.piotrowicz]

For the x32 bit machines its very likely to be a memory shortage causing the crashes. Do you have the Worksharing Monitor running? It has a nice system performance display that shows a live graphic of memory used. You can also check this using the Windows Task Manager > Performance tab. If you are getting near 90% it doesn't take much to send it over the edge and then Revit bombs.
For those x64 bit machines with uber RAM and still having issues crashing, I'll relay this experience. We had a new box that was having constant crashes. After far too much time checking all the wrong things we found that half of the RAM sticks in it were bad. After we swapped those out it hasnt had a problem since.

[Joef]

I ran huge models in Revit 2009 and never once did Revit "disappear". Same computer I am running now. Explain this please.

[twiceroadsfool]

Revit used to "disappear" for us in 2009 as well. "Huge models" is relative. Ours werent ginormous, but we had a few that were medium sized files with about 10 links. All links combined (and loaded, which we needed for plotting, obviously), was about 575 MB. It would vanish in an instant.

And no one is denying that 2010 is a system resource hog compared to 2009. Plenty of machines in our office had trouble with 2010 that didnt in 2009 (sub 4 GB RAM 32 bit stations).

We upgraded to the new workstation standard, and all is fine. ive seen ONE crash from a new machine, and im not convinced it was the same crash.

[spyguy0045]

In 32 bit Windows, the maximum amount of virtual memory that any one app can address is 2GB, or 3GB if the 3GB switch is applied. That 2 or 3 GB is address space, and actual usage will be made up of a mix of both physical RAM and paged memory. But if Revit or any other program needs to take advantage of more than that 2 or 3GB at once, then you crash. No amount of page file can take you past that hard limit of addressable memory.


This actually sounds like the right answer, and the x64 editions probably have different issues (perhaps graphics related). Best course of action for the OP is probably to enable the 3GB switch and keep an eye on the system memory in task manager or the worksharing monitor.

[fixin.to]

This actually sounds like the right answer, and the x64 editions probably have different issues (perhaps graphics related). Best course of action for the OP is probably to enable the 3GB switch and keep an eye on the system memory in task manager or the worksharing monitor.

Enabling the 3GB switch is unlikely to fix the problem. Revit 2010 uses more memory than previous versions did. We had 2 dozen 32 bit Win XP computers with the 3GB switch enabled and they all crashed constantly. The only solution is to add more memory to the computer, which necessitates upgrading the operating system to 64 bit to support the additional RAM. Once we moved to Win7 x64 with 8GB RAM, we no longer had a problem with Revit crashing.

[rogeralanpeck]

I experienced many of the same problems...I have I think at least a temporary workaround that may help. It's crude...but it works for me.

I've been running with the Wokshare Monitor plug-in (system performance window open) just to watch what's happening. I'm dealing with access to a central file in the 80mb range. In my case, Revit will eat all available Virtual Memory and then start into physical memory. Once a certain amount of memory is consumed...(Virtual + Physical)...Revit just pops like a bubble with no opportunity to save.

Try running with the WorkShare Monitor open to keep an eye on virtual memory (It will send notification to your Revit session when VM gets low). I WAS entirely closing out of Revit and reopening as this message occurs at intervals of 45-60 min. The interruption to work flow was and is aggravating.

I accidentally ran across something slightly less aggravating.

Save and/or Sync (of course) Then simply minimize your entire Revit session to the tray...and watch what happens to VM! You can then get back into your session with a lower VM footprint and keep going...MUCH better than closing and reopening.

I've heard some criticism of the WSM and it's footprint in memory...it at least gives you warnings when VM gets low. I run with it open at all times.

btw...for info's sake my system stats are:
Revit 2010
4GB Memory (with 3GB switch enabled)
32 bit, WinXP.

Haven't had a chance to test this theory on 64 bit systems.

Subsequently, this temporary release of memory only appears to work for VM. The memory drift that eats away at physical memory continues to build over time. Keep an eye on the physical memory too. When it gets into the red-zone close out of Revit altogether and reopen the application. A pain yes, but it beats restarting the application every 45-60 min.