Revit Performance

[ROBinHI]

I have a user that is having an issue with Revit performance (RAC2009). Before placing this user on a faster workstation or researching\purchasing a faster workstation I wanted to research and see if there are limitations in the Revit software.

Current workstation system (copy clip from invoice):
Dell Precision T3400 Q6600, 2.40GHz, 10662X4MB L2, 375W.
4GB, 800MHz, DDR2 ECC SDRAM Memory, 4X1GB, Dell Precision T3400
nVidia Quadro FX1700 512MB dual DVI Graphics Card
250GB SATA 3.0Gb/s
WINDOWS XP PRO SP2

The file we're having performance problems with is a site plan which consists of roads, trees, cars, and pads. File size is approximately 20MB in size for the site. There are about 20-30 buildings references into this site plan file. When working on the site file it takes several minutes to complete an individual task. I've asked them to audit which did not help.

I am unsure of the site area or building areas to give you an idea of the size of the project, not sure if that would matter?

Any suggestions? Does this sound like something Revit should be able to handle or is it the workstation that needs to be of higher performance?

[btrusty]

how big is the sum of all revit & attached files?

e.g. 20mb file, great; but 20-30 referenced 60mb files will kill you

revit theory is 20mb for every 1mb of file
e.g. 20mb file = 400mb of ram; but if you have 20x 60mb references
1200 + 400 = 1600 (about 1.6gb)

that much in winxp is going to hurt that that, since it cant use more than 3gb, and unless you are using the 3gb revit fix, then you arent going to be getting more than 2gb associated with revit.

win7 and revit x64 will be the most performance for least cost (since in theory you are on subscription) so the only real cost will be the man hours to reinstall the machine, and the cost of win7 x64

***
[hardware: core2duo 2.66, 2gb ram, quadro 3400/4000; 7200rpm sata drive]
we had a project that was 160mb file in 2008
we were unable to open it in 2009 to upgrade it

[hardware: core2duo 2.66, 4gb ram, quadro 3400/4000; 7200rpm sata drive]
we were testing out a win7 x64
we were able to open it without a problem (other than it took about an hour to open/convert/upgrade from 2008 revit file to a 2009 file)

[matt_dillon]

Additionally, review warnings. How many unresolved warnings are present in the project. A large number of those can have an amazingly negative impact on performance.

[ROBinHI]

I've just counted about 27 reference files totaling about 125MB with the 20MB site that makes roughly 150MB. If my calcs are correct 150MB total size of all files multiplied by 20 = 3000MB (~3GB)?

The XP machine has 4GB installed (3.X avail). This user has claimed to use one of our mobile workstations which is running Vista 64 | 8GB RAM and another Workstation running Vista 64\12GB RAM and still no noticeable increase in performance.

I'm trying to reconfig a Mac Pro to install\boot Windows Vista 64 (all I have) which runs Dual Quad Core Xeons and 10GB RAM to see if we can work on it there.

I'll ask the user about the review warnings.

EDIT: BTW, how do get to list review warnings? I don't recall how to get there and I'm not actually working on this project... researching for while these guys continue to work. Thanks


Thanks for your input so far.... appreciate it and any other suggestions you guys can give.

[cliff collins]

You need more RAM.

Switch to Windows 7 64 bit and RAC 64 bit and add as much RAM as will fit in your machine. You will be glad you did.

Blunt, maybe--but real world good advice--if you want to work on files of the size
you mention or larger.

cheers........

[ROBinHI]

You need more RAM.

Switch to Windows 7 64 bit and RAC 64 bit and add as much RAM as will fit in your machine. You will be glad you did.

Blunt, maybe--but real world good advice--if you want to work on files of the size
you mention or larger.

cheers........

How much of a performance increase can I expect from Windows 7 x64 and Revit 64 vs. Vista x64 \ Revit x64?

[cliff collins]

Not much, just a bit more stable, and it utilises RAM a bit better.

If you can add more RAM, that is where you'll see the most improvement.

cheers.......

[ROBinHI]

Not much, just a bit more stable, and it utilises RAM a bit better.

If you can add more RAM, that is where you'll see the most improvement.

cheers.......

All I have for the time being is Vista Business x64 and Revit 64-Bit. I will try this on the Mac Pro running the Quad Xeons and 10GB RAM. If I have time I will also attempt to on an i7 VistaBizx64 running 12GB RAM and see what will happens.

Thanks again guys!

[matt_dillon]

You can access the Review warnings tool on the "Modify" ribbon in Revit 2010; in Revit 2009 and prior, it will be on the "Tools" pull down. In both cases, if it's greyed out, you're golden - that means you have no unresolved warnings (which is rare in most cases).

One thing you want to try to do going forward is to educate your users on the importance of dealing with warnings when they occur rather than letting them sit. The warnings found in this list are the "leftovers" from those little warning boxes that come up and tell you something, only to disappear as soon as you click something else. Because they don't cause you to either cancel or do some other option (like unjoin geometry or remove constraints), many users just assume that they're no big deal. Sometimes they ARE no big deal - like when Revit is playing Captain Obvious to tell you that what you just created is not visible (I love that one) - in that case it's not a problem necessarily with the model. But others are more critical - such as when Revit tells you that you just created a wall on top of another - it's kind of a "by the way" thing that allows you to keep working but with the expectation that you're going to deal with it and resolve it shortly.

Frankly, I'd like to see an indicator on those types of errors that would let you know if it was a benign error or one that you really need to address soon - a simple little icon or something. Once you have more experience in Revit, it's pretty easy to tell the benign ones from the more critical ones, but for new users it can be confusing.

[wmullett]

You said +20 referenced files...are they CAD?...ouch

You really should place linked files in worksets that you can unload or not load when you open.

[bregnier]

For linked files and saving to central the network speed also has a HUGE impact. If you're still using 10/100 network switches and ethernet cards this would be a relatively cheap and very profitable upgrade.

[ROBinHI]

Matt, thank you for pointing that out.

Wmullet, the 27 reference files are Revit files, building models that are referenced into a master site plan. Most of these building models range from 3-12MB where majority of them are under 6MB but totaling about 150MB including the ~25MB site plan.

[ron.sanpedro]

It is worth noting that RAC 2009 was more of a port of 32 bit Revit, while RAC 2010 is more of a "native" 64 bit app. The net result is that all other things being equal, 2010 will take more advantage of 64 bit than 2009 will. If you are needing the extra RAM, this is a pretty good argument for moving to 2010, or 2011 here in a month or so.

Another thing worth mentioning to users is NOT to expect their new 64 bit environment to be faster. 64 bit and extra RAM basically addresses stability issues, but if a model can be opened in both environments, it is likely going to have similar performance in both the majority of the time. I find it useful to explain this because when they are expecting Revit to be faster and it isn't, it then actually feels slower, and eventually Windows 7 is slower. And IE 8 is slower. Everything is slower. Not really, probably only My Network in Windows 7 is slower, but better to just set realistic expectations from the get go. ;)

Gordon

[bregnier]

One more thing that will improve performance is to use worksets to isolate only the elements you want to show up in your site file, and then only load those worksets when you link. It sounds like you might already have pretty sparse building files, however.

Are none of these buildings duplicate types? If any of them are existing buildings that are not part of the project they should be modeled natively in the site file. It sounds to me like some of the problems you're having are related more to the number of links and not necessarily to project complexity.

Another thing to check out might be the density of the topographic control points, if you are using 3d topography.